PESHAWAR: Tribesmen in Janikhel, northwestern Pakistan, said on Sunday they had agreed to end their four-week-long sit-in and bury the tribal leader whose murder prompted the protest.
Residents of Janikhel in Bannu district, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, started the protest after tribal elder Malik Naseeb Khan was murdered on May 30. They refused to bury his remains and planned to march on Islamabad until his killers were caught.
On Sunday, the tribesmen met with the local administration.
"We agreed to end our nearly one-month sit-in and now we’re heading to the graveyard to bury our slain elder," tribal elder Latif Wazir told Arab News.
He added that the government has also released some Janikhel residents who were in government custody for months and a grand jirga, a traditional assembly of Pashtun tribal leaders, will be held on Thursday to set in motion the process of dropping police cases against Janikhel protesters, "assess damages suffered by the tribe" and resolve its grievances.
"As a trust building measure soon after today’s meeting, the government has released four out 55 to 60 persons who were in government custody for months," Wazir said.
In March, Janikhel residents were also holding long protests over the killing of four teenage boys who had gone out bird hunting and went missing. Their bodies were found three weeks later buried in a field.
Tribesmen agreed to stop their March protest demanding that authorities hold accountable officials in whose jurisdiction the murders took place, compensate the bereaved families of the slain boys, and crack down on illicit weapon possession in the area.
Sajjid Khan, the spokesperson Malik Shah Muhammad Wazir, the provincial transportation minister who belongs to the protesting clan and was negotiating an agreement on behalf of the local administration, told Arab News that the upcoming jirga will try to have the demands satisfied.
"Members of the grand jirga will now work to remove obstacles in the implementation of earlier accords," he said.
Adnan Bhittani, a senior journalist in the northwestern region, told Arab News the protests of the tribesmen who refused to bury their dead showed how law enforcement still did not function in the northwestern tribal areas that in 2018 were merged with Khyber Pakhtunkhwa to bring them into the country's political and legal mainstream.
"Civil administration and police system aren't fully functional in newly merged areas. The government’s lukewarm response forces tribesmen to take extreme steps such as not burying their dead to get rid of target killings and lawlessness,” Bhittani said.
"People of Janikhel face uncertainty and target killings and their simple demand is peace, which should be restored by the state."
The town of Janikhel is part of the former semi-autonomous tribal areas, a region along the Afghanistan border that served as a base for the Taliban, Al-Qaeda, and other militant groups until a series of Pakistani military offensives drove them out.