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PAKISTAN-AFGHANISTAN: Kabul Peace Jirga Falls Short

Analysis by Ashfaq Yusufzai

PESHAWAR, Aug 14 2007 (IPS) - In a sharp departure from Pakistan’s repeated denials of providing sanctuary to the Taliban, President Pervez Musharraf for the first time acknowledged in his speech to the Kabul peace jirga that there is support for the Taliban in the tribal areas of his country.

Musharraf’s surprising eleventh-hour decision to attend the concluding session of the four-day meeting of Pashtun-tribal leaders from both Afghanistan and Pakistan on Sunday was reportedly the result of telephone calls from the U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

He signed a six-point declaration with his Afghan counterpart Hamid Karzai to continue the “war on terrorism” launched by U.S. President George W. Bush.

“There is a contradiction in the jirga’s declaration. On the one hand, it has pledged to fight the Taliban, and on the other it has adopted a conciliatory approach towards them,” comments Ashraf Ali, an expert on the Taliban at the University of Peshawar.

Hundreds of Taliban fighters and their al-Qaeda supporters are said to have fled across the border into Pakistan’s tribal areas after they were ousted from Kabul by U.S.-led troops at the end of 2001. Now, the return of the Islamist militants to Afghanistan’s southern provinces has been blamed on Pakistan.

Since 2006, relations between Kabul and Islamabad have been strained by the Pakistan government’s refusal to take the blame. The so-called peace jirga last week, which was attended by 700 delegates from both countries, was held under pressure from Washington.

Jirga participant retired Brigadier Mahmood Shah, a former secretary of security for the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), a lawless strip along their shared border, says Pakistan and Afghanistan should join hands to fight to defeat terrorism.

Pakistan has been rocked by terrorist violence in recent weeks. Following an army raid on the Lal Masjid, or Red Mosque in the capital city, pro-Taliban militant groups in the tribal region terminated a peace deal with the government reached on Sep. 5 last year to unleash the worst form of terrorist attacks, particularly on its security forces in the North West Frontier Province.

Musharraf frankly admitted before the jirga “these forces (militants) are disrupting peace and harmony, impeding our progress and development.”

“Musharraf’s participation brought some respectability to the jirga. He was candid as well,” Rasool Khan, a tribal elder, said approvingly at Peshawar airport. He was speaking to IPS on his return to Kabul.

The Afghan president described the jirga as “excellent”. “I pray for good relations between Afghanistan and Pakistan,” he said in his concluding address. “The result of the jirga was excellent. I am very happy we had respectful leaders from both sides in this jirga.”

What he did not mention was the absence of the Taliban who were not invited to the mammoth meeting of Pashtuns from both countries. Jirgas are traditionally called to hammer out disagreements without knocking at the doors of the courts.

“A jirga is a Pashtun tradition arranged between rivals by a third party. In this case, the Taliban as the main partner weren’t among the invitees, which is against the spirit of the jirga,” says Mastan Ali Shah, an Afghan professor.

“Without the Taliban’s participation, there is no way that the jirga could deliver on peace,” comments Ali from the University of Peshawar. He is adamant that the Islamist fighters who are fighting the Afghan government and U.S-led foreign troops should have been invited to the jirga.

Consequently, 40 participants from the FATA, where pro-Taliban groups are very active, pulled out of the Kabul jirga claiming that they could not attempt to resolve the problems of war-ravaged Afghanistan when their own house was not in order.

Malik Alamzeb Dawar, an invitee from the FATA’s North Waziristan agency who boycotted the meeting, told IPS: “Our first priority is to put our own house in order.”

Afrasiab Khattak, provincial chief of the nationalist Awami National Party that sent a six-member delegation to Kabul, describes the peace jirga as a “futile exercise”. “The Taliban, the main actors in the lingering crisis aren’t invited. There should have been efforts to persuade some of the enlightened Taliban to attend the jirga,” he said.

According to Khattak, Pakistan’s secretive Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) included serving and retired bureaucrats and handpicked tribal elders for the jirga. “There was a total lack of sincerity on the part of Islamabad, because the Pakistani delegation proceeded to Kabul without homework,” he said.

Even independent opinion in Pakistan is sceptical of the outcome. There are many other stakeholders in Afghanistan, say observers.

“There is no precedent of a jirga resolving complex issues like disputes between two countries,” comments Sher Zaman Taizai, an Afghan expert. “It could have (helped) developed understanding between Pakistan and Afghanistan, but to handle complicated issues of peace is beyond its capacity.”