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Editorial: Debasement of the jirga in Pakistan

The terrorists of the Tribal Areas have sent threatening letters to the elders of the Bajaur Agency promising them unspecified punishment for attending the grand Pak-Afghan joint jirga in Kabul. The grand jirga was, generally speaking, a failure because of the refusal of a large number of elders from the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) to attend it. Even the MMA secretary general, Maulana Fazlur Rehman, who has a significant party presence in FATA, refused to attend it.

Hundreds of tribal elders have been killed by the terrorists merely because they form a part of the tribal system run by Pakistan. They were the backbone of the jirga that worked in tandem with federally appointed political agent. The two institutions derived their legitimacy and power from each other and both have declined since parallel authorities emerged on both sides: the Taliban and Al Qaeda took control of the territory and the Pakistan military mobilised into the area superseded the political agent.

In the coming days, a deeper surgery into the traditional system in FATA will be performed by the terrorists who are determined to detach the tribal territories from Pakistan and make them safe havens for the Taliban and Al Qaeda. The moving force behind the big change is fear and intimidation, a factor that actually threatens the entire territory of Pakistan as the writ of the state declines. The process of retreat from the state jurisdiction into jirga and panchayat has been going on for many years in Sindh, Balochistan, South Punjab and the NWFP.

Many city-dwellers of Pakistan tend to think well of the jirga system mainly because of the delay they face in the mainstream judicial system of the country. But the fact is that the jirga is hardly based on any principle of justice. There is a network of power relations behind the jirga that determines the nature of the decisions it takes. Modern research into the system as it survives in the Pushtun territories has found that the authority of the local malik continues to be decisive. The jirga will not take a decision it cannot implement in the face of local powerbrokers. And the new power emerging in the region are the Taliban and Al Qaeda.

The jirga is hardly Islamic although the tribal elders wear flowing beards. Only last week a family in the settled area of Mardan in the NWFP refused to accept a thirteen-year-old girl as “swara” because she was mentally defective. She was offered to them by the local jirga as recompense for a crime committed against them by a man who did not have a sister or a daughter to give. The jirga even asked the man to buy a girl to satisfy the victims of an earlier elopement.

The Supreme Court on Wednesday took note of another jirga outrage in Sindh where the Sindh High Court has outlawed all jirgas but without anyone paying heed to what the court had decreed. It is sad to say that a PPP MNA was allegedly found guilty of having presided over a jirga that decided to hand over five minor girls for marriage to a family to compensate for a murder in Jacobabad. Three of the 14 jirga members were already in police custody; the court ordered the arrest of the other 11. The police, the court found, was too scared to go and arrest the local grandees involved.

South Punjab, closer to the tribal ambience of Sindh and Balochistan, has also joined the general trend of detachment from the national judicial machinery. The famous case of Mukhtaran Bibi hit world headlines in 2005 when a panchayat or council in South Punjab ordered a woman to be gang-raped to satisfy a party it favoured because of its local influence. But, instead of coming to the help of the victim, the police freed the rapists and took her into custody. Later Mukhtaran Bibi became a global celebrity, writing a book on her experience, and highlighting the decline of Pakistan into its tribal hell.

The power of the political agent and the jirga has passed into the hands of the Taliban commanders who take policy directives from Al Qaeda. The Al Qaeda hierarchy does not favour any concessions to either the Musharraf government in Pakistan or the Karzai government in Afghanistan. The policy opposes all efforts at coexistence with the “slaves of America” even when such arrangements may redound to the advantage of the local politicians. For instance, bad blood has been reportedly created between Al Qaeda and the MMA-JUI leader Maulana Fazlur Rehman after he helped arrange “deals” between Islamabad and the Waziristan insurgents.

Which way will the people go? Pakistanis need to have security before they can decide what they really want. If they are not under any threat or intimidation, and they are offered a choice between democracy and dictatorship, they tend to approve of democracy and its material progress. But in times of default, they always plump for whoever can give them security or, obversely, who can destroy it. That is where the state of Pakistan is under threat. *

Second Editorial: Who is the most popular leader?

According to a new BBC poll, Nawaz Sharif has emerged as the most popular leader of Pakistan. The late Zulfikar Ali Bhutto has made to the second place while Ms Benazir Bhutto has been placed third after her father. Surprisingly, the generals have dominated the three lower positions of the poll: General Ayub is fourth, General Zia fifth and General Musharraf sixth. Even more astounding is the fact that Qazi Hussain Ahmad and Imran Khan are not even in the reckoning. In 2004, a BBC poll had found the clerical leaders as the most “trustworthy” leaders of the country.

The PPP has slid because of the “deal” and PMLN has come up because of Mr Nawaz Sharif’s London APC and his party’s generally confrontational attitude. The two parties remain the main contenders in Pakistan’s bipartisan system. The decline of the clerics, despite their confrontational rhetoric, may have to do with their insignificant weight in a national sample, leaving them considerable leverage in the peripheral areas of the country. *

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