Chief minister of Pakistan’s North Western Frontier Province called grand jirga of NWFP parliamentarians in Islamabad on Tuesday. Interior Minister Aftab Ahmed Khan Sherpao called this Jirga unconstitutional and undemocratic.
Few weeks ago a jirga in Karachi, called for city wide transport strike. The strike took a violent turn, one man was killed and several people got injured when angry Pakhtons and Afghans allegedly attempted to attack a neighborhood of Urdu speaking people.
English language media doesn’t cover much of Pakistan’s rural areas but if you read the Urdu newspapers you would notice that each day there is a jirga held in some part of the country. Most of the times these Jirgas act like a criminal court, sometimes ordering sever punishments to accused parties. These local Jirgas are also dealing with land and property disputes, domestic and family issues and all this happening not only in the tribal areas, where the Jirga system has a formal legal status, but also in rural Punjab, Sindh and the Pakhton neighborhoods of Karachi.
Jirga system is on a rise and unfortunately government of Pakistan is unable to stop people from organizing a Jirga. It is totally legal to organize jirga meeting. Authorities can not take any action against the jirga until someone files a complain either to local police or to the courts. Even then they will have to prove that the decision made by Jirga is illegal, criminal or violates any Pakistani law. Even Government of Pakistan calls for Jirga to solve trouble in Wazirstan and Bajor tribal agencies.
What else better describes anarchy?
Where is judiciary in Pakistan?
Tags: taliban, fundamentalism, terrorism, afghanistan.
Congratulations on your new blog.
The rise of informal systems like jirgas is a well-known phenomenon which happens in societies where the legal system is unable or unwilling to deal with problems in an expected or timely manner (or if it is too expensive).
reading english is a big headache for me
Interesting post. I’m not really sure about the constitutionality of jirgas (and I’m probably gonna sound really ignorant abt them in general), but I guess as long as they’re adjudicating rights and obligations only between the parties that are asserting claims before them (i.e. their holdings don’t affect missing parties, as in small land disputes, etc.), then it really is more like out-of-court dispute resolution w/ the parties’ consent. Of course, their decisions are not always that circumscribed, but assuming that parties bringing claims before a jirga trust it more than they trust the formal legal apparatus, why not?
Criminal cases do need to be brought to and resolved in formal courts, though. The jirgas shouldn’t be able to hear them.
BTW the name field is not allowing more than 6 characters.
Munazza I agree with you, and we had such jirga and panchayts working in the region since centuries. This is good Jirga but still their growing popularity and the way these courts provide “quick” justice is an alarming situation.
Congratulations on starting this blog.
About Jirga, you have mixed up. Zakaria and Munazza both are right. Law of our country allows and even encourages jirga or panchaet in cases generally were criminal act is not involved, and in case of murder also but for reconciliation , not punishing. Jirga system, though not carrying the same name, is also in vogue in many countries.
Congrats for your new blog,
Jirga also known as Panchayat in Punjab and elsewhere are centuries old institution to settle disputes and dispense justice in the rural areas. The inhuman strain of jirgas is quite recent and a direct result of British meddling with traditional structure. Prior to advent of British the principal of Tribal Collectivism was the soul of decisions made by a Jirga. But when the British introduced the landlordism in the sub-continent (which was no-existent before the permanent settlement of Bengal in 1793) in the words of my teacher “the decision making became arbitrary and vindictive†thanks to the newly acquired status of crony landlords and “the new-style jirgas both raised the frequency of grievance and conflicts and weakened the traditional means for resolving them.â€
The case of Jirgas in tribal is very complicated as compared to the other parts of the country and that can’t be explained in this short comment and shall try to come up with a post on the system as it is practiced in the FATA.
Would love to read your post on this topic. My interest is in the growing popularity of this culture and how these community meetings are transforming into authority, challenging formal institutions, and how this is going to affect Pakistani society as a whole.
I wonder if in rural areas the authority to dispense “justice” simply flows from one’s status as a jagirdar…if it does, the problem may be intertwined w/ the old one of feudalism and the govt’s inability/lack of will to stem it.
Munazza you are right, as the sindh’s minister for local bodies said earlier that devolution plan has empowered 20 feudal families in Sindh instead of empovering masses. Now you have them in federal, provincial, local governments. They have all the financial resources, strong support of generals, beuraucracy and the mullah. Who can stop them from heading local panchayats?
The authority to dispense justice doesn’t flow from feudal status of someone. But the feudal control of major portion of the village resource enables him to influence the system. Just take the example of the Mukhtaran Mai, what happened with her? At rural level Jagirdar is the government. For past sixty years our government repeatedly failed to impose agricultural income tax on the Jagirdars which reflects their grip at the affairs.