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Nirupama Subramanian
ISLAMABAD: Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz will head a 300-strong delegation from Pakistan to a three-day joint jirga in Kabul aimed at ending Taliban and Al-Qaeda terrorism in Afghanistan and the border areas of Pakistan that is to beg in on Thursday. But with tribal leaders in North and South Waziristan declining to attend, predictions are that the joint Pak-Afghan peace jirga could turn out to be “an exercise in futility”. The two tribal agencies on the Afghan border are most sympathetic to the Taliban, and an American intelligence report said last month that the Al-Qaeda had found safe haven there. The Taliban have already expressed its opposition to the jirga. Maulana Fazlur Rehman, leader of the Jamiat-e-Ulema Islami, the party that rules the North West Frontier Province, too has refused to attend. “This in effect means that the decision taken in Kabul will be difficult to enforce in the sensitive areas where the action is taking place. This may well defeat the very purpose of the jirga,” said Dawn in an editorial. The newspaper said while some who had refused to attend were scared of reprisal by Taliban, some were sympathetic to them, while still others did not want to participate in an American-sponsored meet to rally support against extremists. The idea of a cross-border peace jirga first came up during the September 2006 tripartite meeting between U.S. President George Bush, Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf and Afghan President Hamid Karzai, amid allegations by Kabul t hat Islamabad was fuelling the Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan. Express regret
On Tuesday, a spokesperson of the Interior Ministry expressed regret that some leaders from Pakistan had refused to participate in the jirga. Brigadier Javed Iqbal Cheema said the time had come for “all of us, individually and collectively, to rise above our political interests to bring peace and stability to the region.” Gen. Musharraf was to have inaugurated the jirga jointly with President Karzai, but on Wednesday, he deputed Mr. Aziz in his place. A Foreign Ministry release said he called Mr. Karzai and expressed his inability to attend due to engagements in Islamabad. Mr. Aziz, who will go in his place, is to also address the inaugural session of the jirga, that will be attended by 300 representatives from Pakistan including several Federal Ministers.
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