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THE Fata tribal region and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa will be in the spotlight in the wake of the Nato drawdown from Afghanistan at the end of this year.
In spite of several well-researched studies on Fata over the past decade, one is dismayed by the perceptions in the national and international mainstream media and academia of the Pakhtuns in general and Fata in particular.
Fata’s residents have seen hundreds of their socio-political leaders being killed. They have sacrificed their hearths and homes while resisting local and international obscurant forces. And yet many a political leader as well as a section of the academia in Pakistan and elsewhere have accused them of harbouring a soft corner for the militant network. Fata’s people have been perceived as expressing their ‘nationalist’ and ‘tribal’ grievances through militancy and terrorism.
Many of those seen claiming to be experts or patrons of Fata present half-cooked arguments while articulating a reductionist view of the people of Fata and of the rest of the Pakhtun belt. First, they think that local and international militant organisations found space in Fata because of critical support among the people of the hinterland.
They disregard the context of how an economy of war had been developed and how state and non-state actors helped radicalise almost a whole population over the past decades. They also conveniently forget about the state and non-state origins of the discourse of religious militancy in Pakistan.
Second, these ‘experts’ and ‘patrons’ claim that the people of Fata have all along resisted political, economic and administrative mainstreaming. They conclude that the people in Fata and the Pakhtun belt yearn for a system beyond the Constitution and dub them an aberration of genetic make-ups — the ‘ungovernable’, ‘uncivilised’ and ‘unruly’.
Third, a large section of the academia and political leadership in mainstream Pakistan and elsewhere believe that the people of Fata and the Pakhtun belt are prepared to fight for religious domination until eternity. This perception, which seems to have been constructed to avoid delving deep into the real challenges facing the area, is as erroneous for the Pakhtuns as for any other ethnicity or race.
Pakistan, the regional states and the international community need to have a realistic approach towards the situation in Fata and the rest of the Pakhtun belt. The matter has gained urgency keeping in view the increasing momentum by the militant network in KP and Fata over the past few months.
The issues that perturb the common people of the area in the wake of the drawdown can be listed on the basis of widespread perceptions prevalent in the hinterlands.
First, the common people perceive that space for the international jihadist network and local militant organisations in Fata and the Pakhtun belt has been provided by the state of Pakistan, and by regional and international establishments. This perception seems to be dangerously entrenched and has all the potential to bring ominous results for Pakistan and states in the region at the end of this year.
Second, the people of Fata have a collective feeling of uncertainty and anxiety with respect to their collective future. They perceive that the hinterlands of Fata and KP are consciously and intentionally kept destabilised through political and security measures.
They point to the Nato blockade in KP, sloganeering by the mainland’s politicians on Kalabagh dam, unscrupulous artillery shelling by security forces, blockades of highways by the security forces, targeted killing by the militant network, unabated kidnapping for ransom, forced disappearances and inability of the internally displaced to return to their native towns as factors that prove their marginalisation.
Third, lack of will by the state towards bringing Fata into the socio-political and socio-economic mainstream is another factor that keeps the people of the area anxious about their social, economic and political future.
Fourth, issues of social governance like education, health, infrastructure, agriculture, youth and women development in Fata continue to be ignored by the state. With the increase in economic hardships for the people of Fata, these grievances grow with each passing day.
The national and international establishments, mainstream academia and the mainland’s political class in Pakistan need to rise up and help deconstruct the discourse of the ‘Fatafication’ of the Pakhtun belt.
The local and international militant network needs to be neutralised with the support of local population. The state and security establishment needs to be sensitive to the culture, socio-political governance and economic woes of the common masses of Fata while carrying out surgical, targeted, accountable and time-bound operations in both Fata and KP.
The writer is a political analyst based in Peshawar.
