Jirgas and jirgas; Reconciliation without the victims?

June 3, 2010 in NRC Handelsblad

Aunohita Mojumdar in Kabul



No one wants to play the role of the Talib. The group of women gathered in a dusty courtyard in the poor neighbourhood of Dasht-e-Barchi in Kabul city, are all victims of the years of unrelenting violence in Afghanistan. Successive regimes saw murders, torture, looting and rapes as opposing factions fought their way into power. Most of the women had lost family members- fathers, mothers, brothers, husbands and children. Many had themselves suffered vicious violence. Now, through participatory theatre, (adapted from the pioneering work by Augusto Boal in Brazil), the women are coming to terms with their past. Enacting short skits recreating scenes from their own lives, the women intervene by adopting one of the roles in the skit and play it differently in order to transform the scene, a symbolic gesture that allows them to take control of their lives and change it.

NGOs working with the poorest and most vulnerable sections of the population and local human rights groups are using community-based initiatives to address the trauma of years of violence in an effort to empower victims and help them transform their own lives. The success of this initiative stands in stark contrast to the inability of such groups to impact on the political and decision-making processes of the Afghan government and the donor community.

When the three-day consultative peace jirga to opens in Kabul on May 29 to hold inclusive discussions on reconciliation with the Taliban, missing from the table will be representatives of the victims groups who have firmly opposed some of the first steps in reconciliation taken by the Afghan government, including the amnesty law and the quiet burial of the Transitional Justice Action Plan.

Najibullah Amin, the Deputy Director of the Peace jirga is unfazed by the criticism. “We are all victims of war. The 1600 people who will participate in the jirga are all victims. The whole nation is a victim.”

At this moment the peace jirga has 13 categories of representatives including members of parliament, religious leaders, provincial council members, traders, civil society, Kuchis, governors, women and community elders amongst others. While there is no ‘ban’ on the participation of the ‘opposition’ – members of armed insurgent groups- Amin says it appears to be a hypothetical scenario. The jirga has not evolved any mechanism that would guarantee them safe passage for that participation. The jirga, he says will focus on consulting the nation on how to reach peace; the mechanism by which this can be achieved; identify those who are reconcilable and those who are not, and direct the government to take certain steps.

While Amin’s contention of every Afghan being a victim is acknowledged by civil society groups which have come together under the banner of the Transitional Justice Coordination Group(TJCG), they argue that political decisions are being taken by the powerful elite in their own interests, ignoring the larger interests of the powerless majority. An example, they say, is the Amnesty law. The law provides amnesty not just to “all political factions and hostile parties who were involved in a way or another in hostilities before the establishing of the Interim administration” (Hamid Karzai’s government of 2001), but it also provides amnesty to those “still in opposition” to the Afghan government. The Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission(AIHRC) has criticized the law as has the International Centre for Transitional Justice(ICTJ). In a joint paper both argued that the law was bad because: it violated the Afghan government’s obligation to pursue prosecution of war crimes as a signatory to international human rights treaties; it provided a form of self-amnesty being passed and adopted by those who would benefit from it without wider consultation of the population; it also provided amnesty in perpetuity since there was no cut-off date, thus encouraging a culture of continuing violence and impunity.

Adopted quietly in December 2008, the law only ‘appeared’ in the official gazette in December 2009, a most propitious time for its acceptance, with the donor community having identified ‘reconciliation and reintegration’ as the way out of the conflict, a decision that was officially endorsed at the London Conference in January 2010.

Predictably, any international criticism was muted and confined largely to NGOs and non-state actors. Responding to a question on the law, the new European Union Special Representative Vyguadas Usackas says the international community “did not see what we wanted to see” in terms of the Amnesty Law and Transitional Justice. He however argued that it was up to “Afghan people to use their democratic processes in influencing and developing a participatory democratic culture.” That is easier said than done. It is the Peace Jirga, reconciliation process and the Afghan government which is getting the bulk of funding and political backing of the international donor community rather than civil society initiatives relating to this process.

Those arguing for the implementation of the transitional justice plan argue that they are not opposed to reconciliation initiatives, but rather, in support of a reconciliation which is sustainable. “Reconciliation must include the victims” says Nader Nadery, a Commissioner in the AIHRC. “It should not be a reconciliation behind the curtains. It should not be just a political reconciliation.”

Amin refutes the suggestion that the current form of reconciliation is only a means of sharing power. “All Afghans have the right to political power” The peace jirga, he says, is going to address the issues that block peace.

Women’s groups for one are enthused that they have been admitted in large numbers to the jirga. Their advocacy has helped push their numbers up from 30 to over 300, a number that they hope will enable them to voice their concerns, even if they cannot influence the proceedings.

There is widespread skepticism on whether the hardcore insurgents groups can be reconciled at all. Asked why no one took on the role of the ‘Talib’ character in the participatory theatre, women gathered there said it was futile, because “a Talib is unchangeable.”

While women’s rights groups fear that their hard-won rights might be reversed in compromises with an intolerant conservative ideology, victims groups fear the jirga is a means to silence their voices. To prevent this, a ‘victims’ jirga held on May 9, brought together victims from different parts of the country to share harrowing stories of their pain and suffering. One of those who suffered brutal violence and lost most members of his family is Ali Faizi who acknowledged the common past of the victims cutting across ethnic and geographical divides. “We have a common suffering. But if we do not treat this wound now, it will afflict future generations.”