Mr. Donovan, in your paper — which you had mentioned previously here — you say the following with regard to some years past:
A Political Parties Act was effectively stalled by the king and failed to materialize...Because there were no political parties, the functioning of the Parliament was inefficient...
Now, in our studies we've had many people say, when we talk about democracy, that it's a very difficult thing to design. The suggestion is that there's a favouring of flexible democracy design. That may or may not include what we think of from day to day that we should have, such as political party bodies.
With a society like Afghanistan's, which has gone through a long history of foreign intrusions... As a matter of fact, even the border is by design, not by community. It separates communities.
Is there a possibility that in a unique situation like Afghanistan's, their form of elders councils and tribal councils would be an effective way to bring them in under some kind of overall parliamentary governance, utilizing some of their customary approaches to governance? Is there a possibility that your democracy approaches are flexible enough to incorporate that?