The 45-member tribal jirga that negotiated the September 5 North Waziristan peace accord will visit Miranshah to discuss “some serious issues” with pro-Taliban militant leaders, sources told Daily Times. "What kind of issues?"
"Serious issues!"
The decision was made as Governor Ali Jan Orakzai chaired a meeting to review the three-month-old peace deal in North Waziristan. “The governor directed the jirga members to visit North Waziristan and carry out a detailed review of the state of affairs and remove bottlenecks, if any, for ensuring complete success in this regard,” a handout quoted Orakzai as saying to the jirga members at Governor’s House.
The meeting took place a day after an attack on an official vehicle near Miranshah in which a tribal cop was killed. It also comes amidst growing criticism of the accord in the western media.
A tribal who participated in the meeting told Daily Times that the governor invited the jirga members’ views on another jirga that President Pervez Musharraf and his Afghan counterpart Hamid Karzai agreed upon in Washington in late September. “We were of the opinion that the proposed jirga would be useless if it does not talk to the Taliban,” he said, requesting anonymity.
The governor was told that without talking to the Taliban and negotiating a ceasefire before the jirga, all efforts would “go to waste” because “a jirga means talking to both sides in the presence of a ceasefire,” the jirga member said.
Official sources said that the government was concerned at a number of incidents and told the jirga members to take up “these violations” of the accord with the militant leaders.
Shah Zaman, spokesman for the FATA Civil Secretariat, said that the jirga would leave for North Waziristan on Sunday (today) to “review and assess the situation” with other parties to the accord. “This jirga facilitates both sides and its job is to take one side’s complaints to the other party and vice versa,” he told Daily Times. He stopped short of saying that the government had complaints against the militants in connection with the implementation of the peace deal.