The jirga: the Pashtun council of elders

What a jirga is

A jirga (جرګه) is an assembly of adult men who meet, usually sitting in a circle, to settle conflicts and discuss problems facing a Pashtun community, whether settled or nomadic, in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The anthropologist M. Jamil Hanifi, in the Encyclopaedia Iranica, describes it as a body called together when needed and dissolved when not, and as a symbol of the political and legal independence of a Pashtun man and his tribe. It is closely tied to Pashtunwali, the wider code of custom and honour. [1]

The Library of Congress country study of Pakistan describes the council as made up of lineage elders who deal with matters ranging from quarrels between sections of a lineage to relations with other tribes and with the national government. It stresses that, although the council can make and enforce binding decisions, all its members count as equals. [2]

Who takes part and how it meets

In principle, landowning men of the tribe take part, and any adult man may ask for a jirga to be called. In practice, the participants are the mashran or spin giri ("white beards"), the elders of the lineages. The country study notes that a man who loses his land may also lose his place and voice in the council. At least one participant should know the customary rules (narkh) and the procedure of the jirga, and a mullah may attend to pray for its success and bless its decision. No one formally presides, and every member may speak. [1] [2]

Hanifi notes that open ground near a shrine, a cemetery or a mosque courtyard is traditionally preferred to a roofed building, and that members sit on bare ground or mats of the same quality to show their equality. A local jirga seldom has more than twenty-five members. [1]

Decisions and enforcement

Decisions come out of discussion, debate and mediation, and rest on consensus or, where no one openly objects, on the majority view. Once reached, a decision is final and binding on the tribe. Hanifi describes how some tribes mark agreement with an oath sworn over a Qur'an on which salt and a sword are placed, and how a group of men, sometimes called the tsalwekhtai ("one of the forty"), may be appointed to carry out the decision. Someone who refuses to comply risks expulsion from the community. [1]

A 2024 report for the Austrian asylum authority, based on interviews in Afghanistan, lists murder, feuds, honour, family quarrels, inheritance and land among the matters jirgas hear, and notes that a case can take weeks or months. [3]

The maraka and the larger jirga

Smaller matters are often handled by a maraka (مرکه), a gathering of village or lineage elders. Hanifi describes two forms: in one, the elders decide which side argued more persuasively; in the other, they weigh the evidence and impose a compromise. The jirga proper deals with major disputes within or between tribes, and may bring together representatives of several tribes. The 2024 report adds that marakas are often held in the large guest houses kept by tribal elders. [1] [3]

The Loya Jirga

The Loya Jirga (لويه جرګه, "grand assembly") is a national gathering in Afghanistan. Some Afghan writers have traced it to assemblies said to have been held in 1708 and in 1747, when Ahmad Shah Abdali became ruler, though Hanifi argues that neither claim is supported by the historical record. He dates the modern practice to 1921, after which Afghan governments convened around twelve such assemblies, mostly at times of crisis and to approve constitutions, treaties and major policies. He is critical of these assemblies, noting that a large share of delegates were officials or government-picked members of parliament, and arguing that the meetings gave "rubber-stamped" approval to government policies. The name also passed into the state: between 1964 and 1978, and again under the post-2001 constitution, the two houses of the Afghan parliament were called the Wolesi Jirga and the Meshrano Jirga. [1]

After the fall of the Taliban government in 2001, an emergency Loya Jirga met in Kabul in June 2002 to form a transitional government. According to The Christian Science Monitor, Human Rights Watch reported that warlords who had not been invited were admitted and intimidated many delegates, and at the end of the meeting Hamid Karzai was sworn in as president alongside fourteen ministers. [4]

Jirgas and the state

In Pakistan, the Supreme Court ruled in January 2019, on a petition by the National Commission on the Status of Women, that jirgas and panchayats have no legal standing when they try to decide civil or criminal cases, and that the way they operate breaches several articles of the Constitution and Pakistan's international commitments. The court allowed them to continue as forums for arbitration, mediation and reconciliation in civil disputes where both parties freely consent, and it gave the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government time to extend ordinary courts to the former tribal areas. [5]

In Afghanistan, the 2024 report describes the Taliban authorities as using jirgas to settle long-running feuds while seeking to bring them under government control and beneath their own interpretation of Islamic law. Hanifi observed earlier that the role of the jirga tends to shrink wherever the state, hereditary khans or village headmen gain power. [3] [1]

Debates

The jirga keeps popular support: Dawn's I.A. Rehman noted in 2019 that Prime Minister Imran Khan had promised to continue the jirga system because people favoured it. Critics point to who is left out. Jirgas are assemblies of men, and the Supreme Court objected to women's interests being represented only by men, ruling that women should be allowed to speak for themselves. Rehman also argued that jirgas are often dominated by landlords and other influential men. [5] [1]

The sharpest criticism concerns settlements that use women and girls. The 2024 Austrian report calls the giving of girls in marriage to settle a dispute one of the most controversial customary remedies, and notes that the Taliban leader issued a decree forbidding it, although it says the practice continues in some provinces. In Pakistan, federal and provincial law officers told the Supreme Court in 2019 that they would help curb honour killings and the practices known as wani and swara. [5] [3]