UK helps set up sharia courts in Afghanistan

London: British officials are helping to establish informal sharia courts in southern Afghanistan to discourage Afghans from turning to the Taliban for justice.

State-sanctioned Islamic and tribal justice in remote regions of Helmand province has led to councils of village and tribal elders adjudicating disputes over land and water rights.

Verdicts based on Islamic law and Pashtun tribal code allow Afghans to bypass the notoriously slow and corrupt government courts and are aimed at preventing the Taliban from exploiting festering disputes.

"Informal justice is almost what the Taliban started by offering - it is what they continue to focus on," said Hugh Powell, a British official leading the effort.

Access to justice is a source of frustration for Afghans and a powerful recruitment tool for the Taliban, which gained power in the mid-1990s by promising order after years of chaotic civil war and rule by predatory warlords.

Its courts mete out swift justice and are a popular alternative to the official system. British civil servants helping the Afghan government set up the justice councils acknowledge that the new bodies compromise international plans to deliver a modern, largely secular, legal system.

"What we want to understand and establish is a system of governance and justice which enjoys broad legitimacy in the community," said one official.

"That may well need some compromises in terms of best practice for the international community in Afghanistan, but the point about it is it will work."

- The Telegraph Group Limited, London 2009