Augmenting the Conflict in Swat: Loopholes in Legal Governance

Abstract

A quick, efficient, and cost-effective provision of justice is considered to be the integral part of good governance. Absence of such an efficient judicial mechanism lead to conflicts which is more significant in conflict societies and tribal structures. For ordinary man in dis-equilibrium societies, lack of good governance means rampant corruption, police brutality, dearth of education and health infrastructure, high costly and less accessed justice, criminalized politics and absence of social justice. The absence of justice and security constitutes a good reason for adoption of alternatives to the current legal and judicial governance structures. Structured violence against the state in lineage societies is a good manifestation of this perspective. The Swat conflict presents a complex picture where loopholes in legal governance structure contributed to the augmentation of the conflict. Costly and delayed justice system made ground for opting the presented alternative swift decision making system by the Taliban. Empirical data suggests that average instituted cases in Malakand’s seven districts was almost half of the cases instituted in the whole province. This shows that communities here are comparatively more litigant. To address the cases district courts are understaffed and lack case management and delay reduction techniques. The average disposal of cases was less than the other districts in the province. Per court disposal is comparatively high, however, average court pendency is higher and average number of judges was lower comparatively. Such delayed, inefficient and costly judicial governance produced catalytic effect on the conflict. This study is aimed at examining how the gaps in the justice sector of governance led to augmenting the violence against the state and what sort of intervention at government level is needed to strengthen rule of law in the Swat valley