Minister of States and Frontier Regions (SAFFRON) Abdul Qadir Baloch’s announcement that the draconian Frontier Crimes Regulation (FCR) in Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) would be repealed in a week’s time is certainly a positive development. The FCR violates fundamental human rights and the state of Pakistan should have done away with it long ago. After a prolonged delay, the government is about to implement one of the major portions of the FATA Reforms Package and a time frame for abolition of the FCR has been given for the first time. However, the problem is still half resolved because the minister refrained from doing the same when it comes to FATA’s merger with Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP). The ruling party’s allies — including Maulana Fazlur Rehman of Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam (JUI-F) and Pakhtunkhwa Milli Awami Party (PKMAP) chief Mehmood Khan Achakzai — have been strongly opposing the region’s merger with KP, and the PML-N government appears to have failed to convince them otherwise. Given the ongoing troubles plaguing the ruling party, it could not afford to anger its allies which is apparently the reason why the FATA reforms issue has been lingering for quite some time now. The parties opposing this do not have any substantive argument to back their position and it is said that their opposition is based on the fact that they are beneficiaries of the discriminatory system currently in place. The SAFFRON minister’s failure to give a clear answer about when the KP-FATA merger will take place shows that the deadlock is still very much alive. Indeed, the latter kept trying to reiterate that the government plans to ‘mainstream’ FATA on an urgent basis. Yet the question of so-called mainstreaming has long been used to justify the delay in FATA’s integration into Pakistan’s administrative, legal and judicial system. This is why the possibility of the government stalling this process further cannot be entirely ruled out. It is about time the Centre accepted the long-standing demand of the people of FATA. * Published in Daily Times, December 10th 2017.