Awami National Party’s veteran leader and former federal minister Afzal Khan Lala on Thursday proposed holding a Pakhtun qaumi jirga to deliberate on how to minimise hardships facing the Pakhtuns across the region.
Besides Pakhtun religious and political parties, Lala also invited the US, Afghanistan and Pakistan to join the jirga for a durable solution to the problems confronting the Pakhtuns living in Pakistan and Afghanistan.
“The Pakhtun nation has a golden history of holding jirgas in which all parties confronting any dispute or even coming across a war-like situation can amicably reach a durable solution,” he said while talking to reporters at the Peshawar Press Club. He said all stakeholders, who believed in peace should think about the dilemma of the nation and reach a consensus on all issues
Lala said a series of jirgas should be held in Peshawar, Kabul, Qandhar, Jalalabad and Quetta to think about the solution to bring peace and prosperity to the region. He urged all the Pakhtuns and heads of religious and political parties to ensure their participation to make the jirgas successful. To a query about a jirga held in Afghanistan, Lala said it was a Pakhtun Qaumi Jirga but due to the deteriorating law and order it was held in the auspices of the Afghan government, adding that the jirga should only include Pakhtuns.
He said the war waged in Afghanistan was actually the war of two superpowers but on the land of the Afghans. About the Taliban participation in the jirga, he said they could but only if they stopped fighting the way they did. He vowed that the qaumi jirga would prove to be a milestone in resolving the long-awaited dispute and establishing durable peace in the region.
