Local Afghans turn to Taliban for resolutions of local land disputes

Just Foreign Policy produces a list of articles from various sources, with headlines and short summaries of some and excerpts from others. The source for Just Foreign Policy is http://www.justforeignpolicy.org/node/639.

Among the July 7, 2010 offerings, Just Foreign Policy provides extended excerpts on an article found originally at http://csmonitor.com/World/Asia-South-Central/2010/0706/Dent-in-Afghanistan-war-strategy-Why-Kandahar-locals-turn-to-Taliban.

The article provides further evidence that the Afghan government remains incapable of providing adequate social and legal order in much of the country. The article also emphasizes that long-standing traditions are important in dispute resolution to local Afghans. Although the "Taliban" are not a welcome option to many Afghans, they appear to be a better option than what the US-led occupation can offer. They have an understanding of local cultures and offer speedy resolution to disputes, with less or no corruption involved.


Kandahar, Afghanistan - As he took command of the Afghanistan war this weekend, Gen. David Petraeus wrote to NATO troops of building "a brighter future for a new country in an ancient land."But around Kandahar, the Taliban's heartland and what Sen. John McCain (R) of Arizona called Monday the "key to success or failure" in the war, growing numbers of citizens are turning away from the new Afghanistan's corruption-plagued justice system to an ancient means of resolving disputes that is overseen by the Taliban.

Some go because they're Taliban partisans, most others because the Taliban have something to offer that the government of Afghanistan so far does not: Fast, generally impartial justice from a court that doesn't demand bribes for its services.

The phenomenon is part tradition - local mullahs have been adjudicating disputes between farmers and small businessmen for centuries.But it's also evidence of a government that has so far failed to deliver the governance that is crucial to success of America's strategy in Afghanistan, according to its advocates. They are well aware that it was the predatory behavior and corruption of local warlords in the early 1990s that drove many Afghans, seeking honesty and an end to anarchy, into the arms of the Taliban.

Kandahar - and Afghanistan more generally - is far from the state of collapse that prevailed then. But the fact that citizens are turning voluntarily to the Taliban's parallel government in a city and province that is now the focus of a massive US and Afghan military buildup is a reminder of the limits of arms alone in defeating the insurgency."I don't like our current government at all, and I don't really like the Taliban, either. But I can either spend months in the government court and pay bribes, or I can go to the Taliban and have the matter settled in one day," says Rahmatullah, who helps manage a construction site on the plains outside Kandahar where Al Qaeda once maintained training camps. "It's an easy choice to make."

He says he returned home in 2004, after almost 20 years in Pakistan, with optimism about the government of President Hamid Karzai. But he says he's lost faith. "In the government areas, there are warlords everywhere and all the police have their hands out."

[...]

Rahmatullah, who asked that his full name not be used, contrasts his recent experience with the government court in Kandahar city with that of a property dispute that he took to the Taliban three months ago. Disputes over land in deeply rural Afghanistan are as common as summer sunshine after more than 30 years of war that have destroyed documents and encouraged land grabs from owners that fled the fighting.

The disputed land near the village of Marwais had led to fistfights among family members. The disagreement was threatening to turn even more violent, and the Taliban reached out to Rahmatullah and his cousin, the main parties, promising an impartial hearing.

He and his cousin agreed, and were invited to an ad hoc Taliban court in a ruined farmhouse, where a panel of five mullahs guarded by two gunmen reviewed their documents, consulted the stacks of books on Islamic jurisprudence at their elbows, and after about an hour found in Rahmatullah's favor. "My cousin wasn't happy about it at first," he says. "But the Taliban mullahs convinced him that to take my land was a sin, and that he'd go to hell for it. They eventually satisfied him."

There is an element of coercion for some participants in the Taliban court process. The Islamist group has sent threatening letters to men who have refused to participate. Locals say that most people comply since the group still carries out assassinations inside the city, particularly in its crowded bazaar. Still, Rahmatullah says, in most cases it's a matter of being practical. As evidence, he brings up an inheritance dispute over another piece of land with his brother that's currently before the Kandahar district court.

He says he has paid about $1,400 in bribes so far to a clerk in the court that he suspects is also extracting cash from his brother, playing the two sides off one another."It's been months and we still don't have a result. It's disgusting," he says. "I've told all my friends and relatives to use the Taliban courts."

[...]