As the world focused on geopolitics and events in Afghanistan post-9/11, less visible but nevertheless significant changes were taking place in northwestern Pakistan. Cross-border movements that were historically common in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Merged Districts (KPMD) [1] began to increasingly influence adjoining areas in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) [2]. The Swat Valley is one of these affected areas. From around 2006, militants [3] began to move into the area, introducing a comparatively conservative religious agenda through local religious leaders such as Sufi Mohammad and Fazal Ullah, and appealing to those parts of the population who were already frustrated with an ineffective government, a particularly slow and expensive judicial process, and marked class differences [4]. Claiming a moral high ground, as well as consensus of the local population, the militants demanded quick justice systems (Nizam-e-Adl) and Sharia [5] to be imposed in Swat, and the government eventually conceded. The period between 2007-2009 was one of increasing violence in the valley, where police, local leaders, moderate religious leaders, political figures and elite were targeted, and women’s mobility was severely restricted. While some attempts were made by both the government and local community leaders to negotiate with the militants, the situation in Swat was considered so serious that the government undertook several operations to rid the valley of militants. The decisive military operation (Rah-e-Rast) took place in the late spring of 2009, where approximately 2.5 million people from Swat were displaced to camps and private homes in the Mardan and Peshawar area while the army and militants fought for control of the valley. Within three months, Swat was ‘cleared’ of militants, and the internally displaced persons (IDPs) began their return to Swat.

The army took control [6], and was therefore able to contribute to rescue, relief and reconstruction activities in resettlements of IDPs in the aftermath of the devastating floods of July 2010 as well. As the crisis normalized, the army reduced its presence, and responsibility for general security was gradually handed over to the civil police. There have since been a number of donor initiatives to assist the government in strengthening rule of law, including both the police and the judiciary, which is seen as one important step in preventing future conflicts in the area. The question remains, however, whether these new initiatives are designed with adequate attention to the local institutional, cultural and political context, and local experiences of security and insecurity.

This paper looks closely at how security and insecurity in the area has been experienced and has led local police and community members in terms of the creation and evolution of civil and government institutions. It begins by describing the situation in Swat in terms of civil security before, during and after the conflict, with a focus on the changing role of the police, the Army, traditional institutions, judiciary, local administration, and police-community relations. The paper goes on to discuss security and insecurities in the communities related to the conflict, including the changing perceptions of the police and attempts to reform police and strengthen the rule of law in the area at district and provincial levels. Finally, it looks at police reform processes in Swat in light of larger processes of police and judiciary reform in Pakistan, including ideas around policing and the judiciary in MDKP. The paper highlights institutional bricolage as a best strategy in conflict and post-conflict situations, particularly in traditional societies, for better engagement of the local community and dispute resolution. It concludes with a discussion of what we can learn from the Swat case in terms of understanding local perspectives and institutions in finding innovative ways of dealing with human security issues in post–conflict contexts. The paper is based mainly on qualitative data collected in Pakistan through individual interviews and focus group discussions with national, provincial and district authorities, development organizations, local and national police, and community women and men in and from Swat between 2010-2019. In addition, policy documents and print media sources have been consulted [7].

The study of civil security in relation to police-judiciary and community relations in post-conflict contexts involves the use of concepts that are often unclear and contested not only in the literature, but in practice. There are three bodies of theory that are central to the arguments presented in this paper. The first is the literature dealing with security and conflict. While conventional ideas of security in security studies are concerned mainly with national security or the security of the state [8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13], this research is grounded in literature from critical security studies and development studies where security is both broader and people-centered. Furthermore, the focus is not merely on whether people are secure or insecure, but on how security is constituted in society [14, 15, 16]. Within this perspective, we find human security useful as a concept. According to Alkierie [17], ‘the objective of human security is to safeguard the vital core of all human lives from critical pervasive threats, in a way that is consistent with long-term human fulfillment’ [18]. This expands ideas of insecurity beyond direct violence and war to include the multiple sources and interrelatedness of insecurities faced by different women and men in post-conflict contexts. Insecurity thus becomes a broad concept that encourages interdisciplinary thinking [19] about issues ranging from food and livelihood insecurity to personal, health, environmental and political insecurity. Along these lines, conflict in this study takes on a broader meaning than merely war and can range from armed conflict at a macro level to inter-personal conflicts at a very micro level. This allows for an analysis of conflict resolution and management at multiple levels, and can include conflict over borders, resources, or interpretations of cultural and religious norms and practices. This is a particularly useful approach in Swat, as conflicts are an integrated part of peoples’ everyday lives, are often multiple and overlapping, and include elements of both political and personal interests at several levels [4, 20, 21, 22].

The second body of literature central to this research deals with policing, and more specifically community-oriented policing (COP) and the Rule of Law (ROL). Most countries in the world today subscribe to some form of community-oriented policing in their work, comprising activities which are designed to bring the police in closer contact with communities, in the belief that this will contribute to more trusting relations and reduced crime [21]. These activities can take many forms, but are characteristically preventative, proactive, problem-solving, and partnership-forming [23]. Taking a critical view of COP, Brogden [24] describes how the community-oriented policing agenda, which has its roots primarily in Western ideas of law and justice, has become a central part of reform processes in developing and transitional societies in the global South. He argues that despite good intentions of addressing issues such as stability and human rights, models of COP have been transferred rather uncritically into these societies without adequately considering local culture, norms or institutions, rendering them seldom if ever appropriate. Brogden explains this as a continuation of an earlier ‘law and development’ paradigm from the 1960s and 70s that was based on ‘the general assumption…that law was central to the development process. Social change could not occur in a desired direction without appropriate legal provisions’ [24]. This was understood in terms of Western legal traditions and did not take into account the vast differences in traditional laws, customary codes, and local, indigenous, legal structures in so-called developing countries. Since then, there has been a growing understanding of legal pluralism and plural legal orders [25, 26, 27, 28, 29], and the challenges and opportunities this brings not only in the justice sector, but the policing sector as well. In fact, development assistance projects which focus on Rule of Law address the linkages between these sectors, but usually with a focus on state institutions. Golub [30] criticizes what he terms the ‘Rule of Law Orthodoxy’ so common in development assistance, which he claims is top-down and confined to reform of the formal justice sector, giving ‘insufficient attention to the needs of the disadvantaged’. As an alternative, he introduces the concept of Legal Empowerment, which more directly addresses the need to support civil society efforts to build the legal capacities of the poor. In this approach: ‘(1) attorneys support the poor as partners, instead of dominating them as proprietors of expertise; (2) the disadvantaged play a role in setting priorities, rather than government officials and donor personnel dictating the agenda; (3) addressing these priorities frequently involves non-judicial strategies that transcend narrow notions of legal systems, justice sectors, and institution building; (4) even more broadly, the use of law is often just part of integrated strategies that include other development activities’.

The concept of Legal Empowerment thus represents a broadening of the approach to ROL to include local institutions and local contexts of power relations. This resonates well with Brogden’s [24] conclusions about how COP might succeed if it abandons its top-down, fixed form and takes note of local context: ‘…the key requirement must be that the initiative is local in character. It must draw on local experiences and practice in terms of what works…they must only be implemented when they are constructed through the benefit of local knowledge and sensitivity to local conditions and legitimation’.

Despite his support of local perspectives, Brogden [24] does recognize the challenges in bringing local institutions into policing. Issues of accountability for local policing-like groups and their lack of legal status, the politicization of local groups and issues of impunity cause concern for reformers.

This leads us into the third body of literature, which is related to the conceptualization of institutions and their evolution. For this aspect we find discussions of resource management institutions in the fields of anthropology, development studies and political ecology particularly insightful in understanding how local institutions are formed and re-formed in the face of social, economic and political changes. Contemporary understandings of resource management institutions have been influenced by the rise of legal pluralism mentioned earlier, particularly in studies of customary land rights. A plethora of studies of the complex user rights regimes governing land, water, forest and mineral resources have shown that local communities manage common resources in ways that can only be understood through the lens of the local social, economic and moral context in which they are practiced. But while some scholars and policymakers claim that these rules can translate into principles for resource management which are universal and can be applied in the construction of new and sustainable institutions [31], others disagree. Cleaver [32], a critical institutionalist, argues that traditional institutions are rarely designed for single purposes or address specific sectors exclusively—they are more often multi-purpose and are an integral part of social life such as wedding, funerals, savings groups, kin or belief-based networks—important arenas ‘in which authority is asserted or challenged, joint identities are formed and consolidated, norms reproduced or negotiated’ [33]. It is this embeddedness that contributes to the sustainability of local institutions and makes the imposition of new institutions by governments or the international community rarely successful. In her work on water management in Zimbabwe, Cleaver uses the concept of institutional bricolage to better understand ‘the ways that interfaces between communities and governments work’. Bricolage, according to Cleaver: ‘consists of the adaptive processes by which people imbue configurations of rules, traditions, norms and relationships with meaning and authority’ [32]. They are always evolving, ‘formed from and reproduced through the interactions of daily life. This fact ensures both continuity and change in institutional form [32].

While Cleaver focuses on resource management, her analysis is just as relevant for all local institutions—and particularly interesting to use in the analysis of police, judiciary and community interfaces. In our study of local institutions such as the jirga in Swat, we find it useful to describe the wider array of relationships in which the jirga engages, and how as an institution it has been influenced by and adapted to changes including extreme conflict, natural disasters, and changing social norms of gender and social equity. This also allows us to look more closely at how these local institutions interact with more formal government institutions, including those that have emerged in connection with reform processes such as those discussed in this paper. in particlular, it also allows us to distinguish between institutions that are designed within the formal sector, those that have evolved outside the formal sector, and those that we here term as integrated or hybrid, that move somewhere in the fuzzy areas between the formal and informal or indigenous. Globally, there is an increasing trend towards what is often referred to as alternative dispute resolution processes of mediation and arbitration that is attached to the formal justice system to, for example, reduce the burden on the courts in corporate disputes [34] or in peace negotiations, such as those undertaken by Nelson Mandela which moved between formal and behind the scenes dialog and communication [35]. There are also extensive examples of indigenous conflict resolution institutions which have been around for centuries, such as the Cantons of Guatemala [36], which are richly described in the literature [37]. There is less documentation, however, of processes of reform which describe processes of bricolage which lead to the development of institutions that lie somewhere in between the formal and informal. This paper examines the case of how police reform in KP, Pakistan moves precisely in this fuzzy area and results in the formation of integrated or hybrid institutions which are legitimate in the eyes of both the government and local communities.

This research is based on a decade of field work in the Swat Valley, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa [38]. During this period more than 10 villages were selected from upper, middle and lower Swat including urban, rural, conflict-ridden and flood-affected communities. The total number of respondents is over 300, which has generated a comprehensive set of data upon which this paper is grounded. Data was collected using qualitative methods, including open-ended and semi-structured interviews, focus group discussions and participant observation. Interviews were the main tool for collecting data from majority of the respondents, as the information was often sensitive and required confidentiality. Wherever it was appropriate and possible, FGDs were used with both women and men in the selected areas. Participant observation as tool was used during all interviews and FDGs, and when researchers were attending and observing meetings and other gatherings. Purposive sampling was used to select relevant respondents, villages, government offices and civil society organizations. Socio-economic, ethnic and gender diversity were considered while selecting the respondents, with particular focus on the representation of women (60), men (200), youth (40), minorities (20), landowners (80), and the landless (120). Other key informants interviewed included community leaders (30), lawyers (15), teachers(20), health workers(16), civil society organization staff (35), and government officials (40) including police and other security officers at local (20), district (10), provicial (7) and national (3) levels. Particularly central to this paper is the data from respondents who were either members of jirga (12) or village committees (30), or were affected by conflict (250), militancy and police and who approached jirga (45), Dispute Resolution Councils (DRCs) (12), village committees or police as a party to disputes or conflict [39]. A detailed question guide was developed for each group of respondents to explore, for example, how different actors perceive formal (police, courts) and informal institutions for dispute resolution and justice, how they experience security and insecurity, how they view community-police relations in terms of trust-building and accountability, and how they view recent police reforms such as the new KP Police Act of 2017 and the establishment of DRCs. Both authors conducted the fieldwork. Questions guides were developed in English but whenever needed it was communicated to respondents in Urdu and Pashto with the help of the second author and other research staff. All the data was organized and coded and analyzed according to key themes in the question guide and those that emerged in the interviews.

Despite a focus on both civil security and conflict resolution in post-conflict contexts, conventional reform processes tend to see these roles as rather separate, with different institutions (such as the police, the courts) dealing with security and conflict resolution respectively, often in spite of informal institutions. In contexts where institutional bricolage is at work, however, we can see how these functions can be closely linked, and performed either within the same institution, or by several different institutions in collaboration, depending on the context and the type of conflict. This section looks more closely at how government and local institutions in Swat have been involved with security and dispute resolution, and how both formal and informal institutions evolved through a process of institutional bricolage to meet the demand of the new security situation in conflict and post conflict Swat.

As mentioned above, there has been a gradual transition from military to civil security in the years following the military operation in Swat. Evidence of this shift includes increases in the numbers of police and police stations, reduction of military check posts on the roads and replacement of military with police at the remaining check posts. The army is still in Swat but mostly stay in their barracks, except for assisting at a few checkpoints together with police. However, the army still shows its presence in convoys during any time of day and night as well as targeted operations on intelligence information. Most of the operations are now jointly conducted by the police and army. The presence of the army and strong intelligence network of both police and army make the re-entry of militants into Swat difficult.

In general, when reflecting on this changing context, both women and men stated that the security situation went from good to very bad, and then again to better: ‘Our mobility was really easy before the militancy but during militancy we were confined inside our homes in fear. Now things are little bit better, but I still feel fear in going out but despite fear I have to go out to take care of different things since I am the head of the house.’ (Widow, female household head).

Most respondents also explained that crime in the village was almost non-existent before the conflict. During the conflict, however, there was stealing, looting, robberies, kidnapping and murder. With the army and the police in place, the situation has again improved, with the exception of the drug trade. The crime rate related to drugs sale was said to be increasing in the villages, and many feel that there has been no action taken by the police or any committee or Jirga against it. One female key informant stated, for example, that the poorer class people who were involved in drugs sale, are now very well off. They also say that there are still militants in the village.

According to a police official in Swat, the overall rate of crime has decreased after the conflict. He referred to two types of crimes:

‘In our point of view, one type of crime is the use of drugs like opium, churs etc. and smuggling of weapons. When the rate of such crime increases, it is a kind of positive sign for us. This is positive in the sense that these crimes are not that dangerous - unlike the substantive crimes. The second type of crime is murder cases, robbery, car snatching etc.- also called substantive crimes. When the rate of substantive crimes increases, it is bad and a negative sign for us. Now these substantive crimes are less than before while Swat was on top in these crimes before the crisis’.

This indicates that views on crime and experiences of insecurity may not be related in the way one might think. While the police view substantive crime as high before the conflict, and better now, communities can talk of low insecurity before the conflict and a higher degree of uncertainty now. The relationship between crime and insecurity in Swat is complex, and experienced quite differently depending on one’s gender, social status, and whether they are part of the police or military.

The communities often have mixed feelings about the role of the military, particularly in the period immediately following the conflict. Despite their role in ridding the area of the militants, and the positive role that they played in assisting after the flood, the army is considered powerful and is looked upon with trepidation. Community members feel that members of the army often overstep their boundaries in terms of how they perform their duties:

‘The police used to address crimes before the conflict, but now everything is under the control of army. During the conflict even police were afraid, and they could not do anything as they themselves were slaughtered by the militants and many policemen even left their jobs in fear. Though the army has done well to us it also has done bad too. They helped us in getting rid of militants but killed many innocent people and without any proof arrested many people. They have usurped properties of innocent people. They have broken their trust. Now we don’t trust anybody’ (Female key informant).

Community members are reluctant to criticize the army, but express frustration in the degree to which villagers were forced to take part in the defense committees, and how the army had involved themselves in conflict resolution. Particularly in the period immediately following the conflict, all complaints and village conflicts were decided by the army, rather than the local jirga. As one elder villager put it, ‘the army can make decisions as they like, but the conflicts do not disappear, and as soon as the army leaves, they will again surface, we are just waiting’. There were also many conflicts that were not addressed due to the heavy presence of the army—aggrieved parties preferred to wait until a more opportune time when the army was gone.

As community women and men emerged from the conflict to rebuild their lives and livelihoods, they faced many additional challenges. The mega flood of 2010 destroyed crops and infrastructure at a time when people still hadn’t recovered from the conflict, setting recovery back an estimated 10 years. They were faced with multiple insecurities—not only personal or political insecurity, but food, livelihood, health and environmental insecurities, which required assistance from the government and the international community far beyond what a conventional army or police could provide. Despite the government operations, communities lacked trust in the government. There was also a high degree of mistrust within communities, as people could be reported to the authorities for having supported the militants, when they may in fact only been in personal conflict with their accuser. The influence of local jirga and moderate religious scholars had already been weakened during the conflict as conservative religious leaders were given relatively more power by the militants [46]. When the army took control after the conflict, they constituted defense committees who reported directly to the army, and later to the police. As these were not answerable to the village leadership, the power of the local jirga again weakened.

Despite this shift in power relations away from local institutions, as the situation stabilized, the army left many of the villages, and these defense committees began to disappear. The government, police, judiciary and communities began to renegotiate their relationships to ensure that conflict would not return to the region. Jirga leaders, such as those in Kanju, reconnected directly with the government through the re-establishment of relations between the jirga, police and courts. The jirga once again became an important local institution, and one which the government acknowledged as a potential partner in keeping peace in the area.

Historically, the KP Police worked under the Police Act 1861 and KP police rules of 1975. Formal courts decide criminal, civil, rights-based and other cases under the domain of the 1973 Constitution of Pakistan, which comprises elaborate provisions on the composition, jurisdiction, powers and functions of the Court. Formal police and court institutions, however, were neither designed nor able to address broader but nevertheless highly relevant diverse needs of the community in a post (or ongoing)-conflict situation, which involve many different and more complex issues than merely insurgencies. Government policy reflected a renewed interest in finding innovative ways of addressing these challenges, and better ways for the police to link with communities, particularly in conflict situations. New initiatives from the government emerged after the conflict, supported by new policy, such as the Strategic Framework for KP police (2014), and the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Police Act of 2017, where, for example, community policing is highlighted [21]. This was complemented by efforts in civil society to promote better relations between the police and community. Linking institutions vastly different in character, however, is not an easy task, especially in post-conflict Swat where trust is in deficit. While some institutions are designed for specific purposes of addressing certain kinds of crime or conflict, others may be more diffuse in their purpose, but at the same time more dynamic and potentially more sustainable. In Pakistan, constructing new institutions with the right mix of function and membership to be effective, preventative and sustainable has proven a challenge. The next section will present and discuss some of the newer initiatives by the KP government and civil society intended to improve relations between the police and communities, manage conflict and promote peace.

Formal judiciaries and alternate dispute resolutions institutions are constantly debated in Pakistan. The formal judicial system is weak, expensive, complicated, and time-consuming, and decisions often do not remove the enmity of the parties. Informal institutions such as the jirga thus remain relevant and accessible for local women and men, and as described above, maneuver somewhere in between where the state ends and local communities begin. As a local institution which deals with, among other things, conflict resolution, its functions often overlap with those of the formal justice system. It hears cases between parties and hands down judgments, but also refers some cases to the courts and vice versa, as discussed in the above mentioned case study. As a local institution it is both appreciated for its authority in achieving restorative justice and preventing the escalation of conflict between adversaries, but is also criticized for its exclusively male elitist composition and a lack of accountability to social and gender equity and human rights. This has led to heated debates on whether jirga should be formalized and transformed to ensure oversight by the government, acknowledged in their own right as informal institutions with formal authority, or left as they are [47, 48]. And while the jirga is the community level institution with which government departments such as the judiciary, police and line ministries as well as development organizations take contact to discuss collaboration, they are only one aspect of a civil society with which government can collaborate [49, 50]. The ways in which this collaboration is envisioned will partly reflect how one understands and interacts with local institutions. Recognizing the important role of local institutions in dispute resolution and public acceptability of its decisions, the KP government (including, police, army and courts) has established a number of bodies which are in some ways hybrid institutions, but in others new constellations integrating formal and informal aspects in innovative ways. This section looks at the design and evolution of several of these institutions in terms of their role in ROL and dispute resolution (see Table 2).

The evolution of security and justice institutions in Swat and KP has not occurred in a bubble. National and international politics, history and reform processes have influenced the ways in which government and community relations are evolving. The historical and contemporary geo-politics of the region, continuous shifts between civil and military governments, and the colonial basis of the police and judicial system have contributed both to Pakistan’s focus on state security, and to weakened civil institutions. Government and community relations in Swat have undergone significant changes since its incorporation into KP in 1969. Since incorporation, communities in Swat have berated the Pakistan government for its weak institutions and inability to address their broader set of insecurities. Rather than engage with poorly trained and violent police, and expensive and slow court processes, communities have preferred to avoid government institutions altogether and instead rely on local institutions such as the jirga to address their needs. This dissatisfaction with government services was one important factor in the complexity of the conflict in the late 2000s.

The serious toll the conflict took on communities and government institutions, and particularly the police, prompted the government and civil society to explore, together, alternative ways to interact to promote peace and trust-building. The institutions that have evolved since the conflict represent a move away from single-purpose, formal, rule of law institutions toward a legal empowerment approach, where communities participate in defining the tenets of their own security issues. This has opened for multipurpose, dynamic and integrated institutions, that are legitimate in the eyes of the police, justice system and communities. It also supports a move towards community-oriented policing by institutionalizing joint problem identification and preventative activities in Public Liaison Councils (PLCs).

The integrated or ‘hybrid’ institutions that have evolved from this complex set of influences are not without problems of power and inclusion, and they may sometimes fall somewhere between cracks of government and community accountability. Nevertheless, institutional bricolage is a dynamic process, which allows for a continued renegotiation of relations. Allowing such a process to take place provides a possibility for formal, legal systems to continue to influence and inform these institutions, and communities, including the marginalized, as well as to influence how the government understands their plight. Pakistan has taken notice of these developments at the national level, and the experiences of KP are being considered in other provinces as well. It is important, however, that it is the process of institutional bricolage that is the lesson, rather than reproducing institutions that have evolved specifically in Swat and KP.

The findings likely have relevance for post-conflict police reform processes in other contexts as well. Single purpose institutions imposed from outside/above are seldom able to address the complexity of human security that locally evolved institutions have the potential to do. They may be able to address certain issues, but they will not ensure human security, trusting government/police relations with communities, nor will they be sustainable. The case of Swat and KP shows that reforms in police can indeed be both creative and effective in terms of building more relevant government institutions that are built upon indigenous principles of negotiation and dialog, while simultaneously promoting peace and addressing human security in inclusive partnership with communities. More attention to the study of these fuzzy areas in between the government and indigenous systems in other areas could uncover more examples of how bricolage might result in more accountable and appropriate security institutions.