KHYBER: The scheduled meeting of the Pakistan and Afghanistan jirga members was postponed on Wednesday owing to ‘miscommunication’ by a member of the Khyber Chamber of Commerce, which also caused some dismay among the Afghan delegates.

The 57-member Pakistani jirga, comprising tribal elders, traders and some religious figures, was destined to go across the Torkham border for their second meeting with the Afghan jirga members as was decided during Tuesday’s telephonic contacts and later approved by security officials.

Sources told Dawn that both sides were scheduled to meet on the Afghan side of Torkham border at 3pm on Wednesday as was decided during a meeting between the Pakistani jirga members and security officials in Landi Kotal late on Tuesday evening.

They said that the Afghan side too had made all the necessary preparations for the important jirga meeting with both the Afghan border officials and representatives of the Afghan Chamber of Commerce and Industry gathered at their side of the border to welcome their Pakistani counterparts.

But to the surprise of the Pakistani jirga members, they were told by their sources that the Afghan delegation had gone back to either Kabul or Jalalabad as according to some jirga members of Pakistan side, a disgruntled member of Khyber Chamber of Commerce and Industry Jawad Hussain Kazmi had conveyed to the Afghan side on his own that the Wednesday’s meeting had been postponed.

The sudden and unexpected news of the postponement of meeting caused a panic among the jirga members on Pakistan side with many asking about the credentials of the person, who had conveyed the message of jirga postponement to the Afghan side.

In a hurriedly called press briefing at Torkham after the unfortunate incident of jirga postponement, Shah Khalid Shinwari, a spokesperson for the Pakistani jirga, told journalists that nobody from Pakistan side authorised Jawad Hussain Kazmi to speak on behalf of the jirga.

He alleged that the said person earned a bad name for the country and also created confusion and mistrust between the jirga members of the two countries. “He acted on his own which resulted in causing huge damage to the ongoing process of negotiations that were aimed at both removing mistrust between the two neighbouring countries and finding a mutually agreed solution to the border issues,” he regretted.

He, however, insisted that his colleagues were in constant touch with their Afghan counterparts to control the damage caused by the wrong message conveyed to them and hopefully a date for their next meeting would soon be decided.

Mr Shinwari also sent a collective apology to the Afghan jirga members for the misunderstanding created by a non-representative member and appealed to them to get ready for the second round of talks at their earliest.

Sources told this scribe that a group among the Khyber chamber was not happy with exclusion of some of their members from the list of jirga members with Jawad Hussain Kazmi being one of them as he was considered a non-resident of Khyber.

They said that the security officials too expressed their displeasure about the behaviour of the chamber members, particularly Mr Kazi, as he acted against the well and advice of both the jirga members and the security officials.

Published in Dawn, March 13th, 2025