In the feeding frenzy of deadline journalism, the first-ever Afghanistan-Pakistan 'peace jirga' quickly turned into a snack for the mass media. Insta-pundits and participants were asked to offer snap assessments of the four-day jamboree. Demanding instantaneous declarations on whether the jirga, held 9-12 August in Kabul, had been a failure or a success, media organisations sought to simplify the phenomenon, variously terming it a 'tribal assembly' or reducing it to the pronouncements by Hamid Karzai and Pervez Musharraf. But the jirga itself was much more than that.
Though termed a jirga because it was modelled on the tribal assemblies of the past, the 'peace jirga', like the Emergency Loya Jirga of 2002 and the Constitutional Loya Jirga of 2003, included not just tribal leaders, but also politicians, warlords and refugees recently returned to their homeland. The previous jirgas had seen the proactive, behind-the-scenes presence of the international community. During the peace jirga, however, there was a concerted effort to minimise international presence, and to emphasise the indigenous nature of the event. But the fact was that the idea of the peace jirga itself was first mooted in Washington, DC last year, following the separate meetings of presidents Musharraf and Karzai with George W Bush.
Backed by the US, and held at the initiative of the Kabul and Islamabad governments, the jirga departed from the traditional script by handing over some of the lead to non-government representatives. Parliamentarians, provincial-council members, tribal leaders, elders, civil-society activists as well as representatives of Islamabad and Kabul were brought together in the marathon four-day gathering. While a high degree of government involvement ensured that the jirga did not throw up completely unpleasant surprises, the format allowed the participants to debate issues without the pressures of government agendas, diplomatic niceties and the need to produce rhetorical results.
Perhaps the most important aspect of the meeting was that it was held at all, and allowed some 700 Afghans and Pakistanis to come together and openly exchange views. In the tense and fraught relationship between the two countries (and certainly between their capitals), such exchanges are exceptional. Of late, most of the traffic between the neighbours has been one way, with Afghans travelling to Pakistan – for refuge, for employment, for trade and even, Kabul would allege, for militant training. Here was a rare opportunity for opinion-makers from the two countries to discuss outstanding crossborder issues.