Daily Times

The administration in tribal districts of the erstwhile Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), now merged with Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) province, still resorts to the colonial era Frontier Crimes Regulation (FCR), alongside laws applicable in the rest of the country, creating problems, says a former Senator from the region.

“Because of the non-implementation of laws of the country in the erstwhile FATA, the local administrations is in disarray. We will decide our future line of action on the issue in a grand public gathering in Tank tomorrow [Saturday],” former Senator Saleh Shah told Daily Times.

Shah said that tribal elders in tribal areas in general and South Waziristan in particular, who used to play the role of a bridge between the government and tribal society, were not active anymore. “They prefer to stay home because of the absence of the writ of the law applicable in other parts of the country.”

“With the exception of Jamiat Ulama-e-Islam-F (JUI-F) and Pakhtunkhwa Milli Awami Party (PkMAP), all political parties in general and those sitting in the government in particular are responsible for advocating the merger of FATA with KP. It is strange that tribal people were not consulted on the issue,” he observed.

Back in 2015, the PML-N government had tasked a committee to suggest reforms for the tribal region, which eventually led to the merger with KP province, but the constitution of Pakistan is yet to be fully implemented and the governance system is still being run under the FATA Interim Governance Regulation.

The Ministry of SAFRON states that the population of FATA is 3.18 million, but as per the last year’s census conducted by Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS), the population has surged to over five million. According to the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP), the voters registered in the tribal districts are 2,510,154 (with 1,507,902 male voters and 1,002,252 female).

Until a few years ago, the entire region was in the grip of bloody insurgency in which hundreds of tribal elders were killed systematically, prompting the military to launch an offensive to tackle terrorism.

According to statistics provided by the Ministry of SAFRON, the military operations led to the displacement of 337,915 families from the region. The government has now completed the repatriation process of displaced families.

Shah said that even development projects were at a standstill because of the new system, causing billions of rupees losses to the national exchequer.

“The offices of the political administrations are hub of corruption where projects are being sold from one contractor to another with a lion’s share being given to the officials of local administration,” he noted. He said that he, along with other tribal people, would chalk out future strategy to launch a series of protests to streamline the state of affairs and to establish rule of law in the region.

Published in Daily Times, September 14^th 2018.