The Culture Gap: Paradigmatic Issues Related to Working With Informal Justice Mechanism
In addition to some of the obvious problems with trying to develop programs to engage the informal justice sector in Afghanistan, there are more nuanced paradigmatic issues related to attempts by diplomats, development workers, and academics in the sector that raise some questions about justice and international interventions more broadly. A number of conferences have attempted to discuss issues such as cultural understandings of justice and international interactions with local justice systems across cases. In general, justice initiatives tend to be studied on a country-by-country basis, meaning that both academics and practitioners do not stop often enough to consider the broader issues that this work raises.116 Based on USIP's work (which can only address some of these broader issues), there are several themes, particularly revolving around cultural understandings of justice and the ways in which different political issues shape international rule-of-law work, that are worth future consideration in discussions about international engagement with informal justice systems more widely.
One of the least discussed but most pressing issues with the way that international programming has targeted rule-of-law issues in non-Western countries is the sharp contrast in how terms like justice are understood in different settings. Western understandings of justice have a clear impact on programming priorities but, more importantly, shape the assumptions of international diplomats and development workers when they discuss rule-of-law issues. Attempts to import Western terms, values, and definitions into settings with very different political and juridical histories can be counterproductive and, at times, damaging. Many of these recurring issues are highlighted by the Afghan case but have broader relevance to international rule-of-law and justice reform interventions.
Reconciliation versus Retribution
In the Afghan case, it is clear that when justice is discussed in most communities there is much more emphasis on reconciliation and community harmony than on retribution.117 In most informal justice systems, the goal of restoring community harmony is prioritized more than the desire to punish offenders, as it may be in Western legal systems (see, for example, box 14). Early attempts by the international community to support justice in Afghanistan favored those aspects of the judicial system that had the most resonance in the Western world-for example, the prosecution of criminals for major offenses such as involvement in the narcotics industry. At the same time, in these early years, very little was done to target land or water disputes or the usurpation of power by local commanders, yet these issues were much more pertinent to the daily lives of the majority of Afghans. he result was that early justice sector work did not help meet the demands of many Afghan communities for more reconciliatory justice. More recent work on informal justice has shifted the focus