DAND DISTRICT CENTER, Afghanistan - In the beginning of July, the Dand District Center in the Kandahar province was officially recognized as a district by the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan. With this type of government recognition comes increased funding for security and development at the district level.
The DDC held a meeting known as a jurga, bringing in representatives from 134 villages in the district. They came together to form a representative government, which works within subcommittee membership to help govern and perform all the functions of the government in conjunction with the district leader.
According to Lt Col. John Paganini, commander of the 1st Squadron, 71st Cavalry Regiment, this is the first time they’ve had the opportunity to hold an event like this in DDC. He explained it’s a significant step forward in Afghans taking lead in a truly representative government for the people to serve themselves.
“The most positive thing to come out of today was the government’s willingness to have a more decentralized process, rather than retain all the decision authority and power at the district leader’s position,” Paganini said. “The jurga represented the ability to bring in a representative body from throughout the district to help make decisions.”
There are 30 villages throughout the DDC that don’t have community development councils. The CDC is the village level government body that helps ties the district government together.
“Thirty villages came forward today and said ‘we want that, we want to be part of progress, we want to be part of the way ahead’ so we are now going to institute programs to develop CDC’s in those villages,” Paganini said.
During the jurga, villagers also had a chance to discuss the peace jurga that took place in May in Kabul and how to implement those results at the district and the village level, in recognition down to the village leader level.
“The district government here is very progressive and understands the way ahead,” Paganini said. “They understand the process and the way to better governance is through representative government at the village level and then bringing that village representative up and forming a district level government so the district governor has true representation down to the lowest level. This district has that sort of leadership.”
According to the colonel, when the residents return to their villages, they’re will explain what the government is doing, what it means to be a citizen and what is different from the last 30 years of conflict.
“What they’re going to do is influence the villages next to them and the adjacent villages that did not participate, and bring them on board,” he explained. “The next time we do a jurga, we can truly select a representative body from throughout the district that forms the government that brings DDC to the next level.”