Enmired as we (NATO) now are in Afghanistan, with very little real idea of the land, people or especially the culture, an awareness is developing that knowledge and understanding of the various mountain codes is now becoming something more than a matter of pure academic interest. Most foreigners have heard of the Kanun Lek Dukagjini, the old law of the mountains. Many will have read about the journey of Gjerg to his encounter with death in ‘Broken April’ – the most atmospheric of all Kadare’s works. Opinion is divided as to the age of the Kanun. Some say, and I would agree, that it is a relic of archaic, very ancient rules of honor and hospitality reflected most famously in the Iliad, where honour is all. Others believe it is of more recent origin. What is not disputable is that it bears highly significant parallels with other mountain codes, notably in the Caucasus. More importantly there are very significant parallels with the borderlands of Pakistan and Afghanistan where the ‘Pashtunwali’ which may be losely translated as ‘way of the Pashtun’ – the dominant tribal group, retains its deep, deep, influence.
In Albania the influence of the Kanun is going the way of similar Bosnian and Montenegrin arrangements. But the Pashtunwali is as strong as ever. So what? I’ll tell you so what. If we ever want to try and understand the Pashtun people of Afghanistan, as opposed to dictating to them, we could do worse than understanding our own European traditions. For the Kanun and the ‘Pashtunwalli’ have at their heart some rather fundamental ideas very different from traditional notions of crime and punishment. In modern parlance the dominant idea is that of restorative justice. There the emphasis is not, in fact, on punishment of the offender; rather the stress is on ensuring satisfaction, whether by way of financial or other compensation, revenge or apology. In turn this implies a strong awareness of the responsibility of society to ensure that offences are kept to a minimum. And society here is emphatically not the state.
In some ways the US/UK/NATO authorities find themselves in a similar position to the Turks when the Ottoman forces initially found themselves in occupation of the Northern Highlands of Albania. As they so often did, the Ottomans took a pragmatic approach to these matters. Several of their military columns had been slaughtered as they tried to establish some form of control in the Northern hills. As a result they took the view that directs rule in those areas had a limited future. They simply agreed that, save for matters of what we might now call national security; the tribes would take care of their own legal affairs. This approach was uncannily similar to that eventually taken by highly experienced and knowledgeable British administrators of the North West Frontier Province of Pakistan.
But that was then and this is now. These days tribes, particularly in Afghanistan do not get to decide how to rule themselves. We know best, we latter day imperialists. They must have courts and thousands of pages of written laws. Let there be corrupt judges, and lawyers. They must have Rule of Law. As if they have never had it before. The results speak for themselves, and were they here to advise us now, those wily old Ottoman and British imperial pragmatists would shake their heads in despair.
