WHAT could be a starker acknowledgement of our floundering Fata policy than the fact that in less than three years, the NWFP has seen the exit of three governors?

From Lt-Gen (retd) Syed Iftikhar Hussain Shah to Commander Khalilur Rehman to Lt-Gen (retd) Ali Mohammad Jan Aurakzai, all three governors of the NWFP had to bow out of office, all trying to grapple with an increasingly difficult and complicated situation in Fata.

And it wasn’t just the governors; political agents and several other senior civil officials, were all tried and tested and then shown the door in what has now become a predictably unceremonial manner.

All these changes, indicating a faltering policy if there ever was one to rein in a growing militancy in tribal borderlands, ironically, had similar causes. All tried to reinvent the wheel and few, if any, actually tried to learn the lessons from past failures. As a result, all left behind a much bigger mess for the successors to clean up.

In May 2003, when the government formally began deploying its forces in the tribal region, militancy was confined to parts of South Waziristan. Almost five years on, it has spread to almost the whole of the seven tribal regions and some parts of the NWFP.

A part of the problem, say some analysts, has been the difficult and at times uneasy relationship between the Governor’s House and the Corps Headquarters.

Those supporting the military’s view say that with thousands of forces fighting in the lawless tribal regions, the stakes are already very high and it is but natural for the army to intervene, or at least be part of the decision-making process.

But the civil bureaucracy, although mindful of the high stakes, points out to an increasingly assertive military often reacting in a knee-jerk manner and bypassing the political process, creating more confusion.

President Pervez Musharraf probably had this in mind when he chose to appoint Lt- Gen (retd) Ali Mohammad Jan Aurakzai as the governor of the NWFP in May 2006 and made him the focal person with full authority and mandate to take decisions, overruling even the military.

The cookie crumbled on Sept 5, 2006, when Gen Aurakzai, some say post-haste, struck a deal with militants in North Waziristan. As part of the deal, Mr Aurakzai ordered the release of 221 people, the withdrawal of troops from check posts, return of their weapons, vehicles and millions of rupees in cash to the militants. In return, the military got just eight of its G-3 rifles and an empty pledge by militants to cease cross-border infiltration and stop harbouring militants.

That affected the troops’ morale, maintains a military analyst.

Instead of combining stick with carrot, there was an impression that perhaps governor Aurakzai offered only carrots.

Mr Aurakzai however, was convinced that the Sept 5 agreement with militants was in Pakistan’s interests and the best under those difficult circumstances.

Analysts agree that finding a better equation and understanding with the military to better strategise and coordinate efforts to overcome rising militancy and restore a semblance of normality to the volatile tribal regions should be Owais Ahmad Ghani’s top priority.

Finding the right people for the right job in Fata who are capable of doing out-of-the-box thinking and to prepare a better and viable strategy incorporating social, political and economic elements, will be an uphill task, given the fact that few officials are now willing to serve in the tribal regions.

This was partly also due to the fact that the Fata bureaucracy was kept in the dark, surprisingly and apparently, due to a lack of trust. The result: it could not function as a team.

It is not clear whether the newly-appointed governor will have the same mandate and authority enjoyed by his predecessor.

The fact that President Musharraf chose to pull Mr Ghani out of Balochistan and send him to his native NWFP, speaks for the level of the presidency’s confidence in him to put things right.

But governing an increasingly ungovernable tribal region will require a Herculean effort. And if reports emerging from Washington and Kabul are any indicators, the days ahead are likely to become more difficult and complicated.

In July 2007, the US National Intelligence Estimate reported that the Al Qaeda “has protected or regenerated ….including: a safe haven in the Pakistan Federally Administered Tribal Areas (Fata), operational lieutenants, and its top leadership,” has already set the tone for a possible US action in Pakistan.

A statement by President Bush’s former homeland security adviser, Fran Townsend, who stepped down in November, seemed to have reinforced the view at a press conference in July 2007 that “nothing is off the table”.

And it appears that the Afghans are now finding more listeners in Washington. Amrullah Saleh, the head of Afghan Intelligence, told a private Afghan news channel late last month that “the failure to root out terrorism lies in part with the international community’s decision to limit the war on terror to inside Afghanistan, and not tackle Pakistan properly despite it being obvious that the insurgents’ commanders and the masterminds of terrorist activities live in their safe havens there”.

Mr Saleh insisted that to fully defeat terrorism, Afghanistan had either to be strong enough to seal and properly protect its borders or the strategy of the coalition forces towards Pakistan needed to change.

A report in the New York Times this week that the US is considering expanding the authority of the Central Intelligence Agency and the military to conduct far more aggressive covert operations within Pakistan’s tribal regions should worry policy-makers in Islamabad.

It is in these difficult and trying circumstances that Mr Owais Ahmad Ghani, a mechanical engineer by profession, would find himself in an unenviable position to placate and pacify Pakistan’s restive tribal region. It is easier said than done.

Analysts say that the situation could still be redeemed if the military and civil bureaucracy learns to trust each other and find a via media to coordinate their efforts in extinguishing the raging fire in Fata that is threatening to consume the whole country. Security agencies could play a crucial role only, say a senior security official, if those put at the helm, learn to take them on board and not choose to despise them.