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
Key words: Swat, leg
Zahid Anwar, Waqar Ahmed. (2017) Augmenting the Conflict in Swat: Loopholes in Legal Governance, Journal of Political Studies, Volume 24, Issue 2.
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