Hurdles to reform in FATA

The blight that has covered the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (Fata) virtually since Independence is not going away any time soon. For the first time in decades there are serious attempts to reform the area with the primary proposal being to merge Fata with Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, a gargantuan task that is fraught with difficulty and will cost several fortunes. It is the latter that is cause for concern, as there is a yawning trust deficit between the federal and provincial governments. Around Rs100 billion are earmarked for the Fata reforms package that was approved by the federal cabinet on 2^nd March 2017. The K-P government has written twice to the federal government asking for the release of funds, thus far with little effect.

The FG has the overall responsibility for delivery of the package but is uneasy about transferring funding because not only is it a trough of gold for thousands of corrupt officials and administrators, but the federal government does not trust the K-P government to distribute the funding in pursuit of Fata reforms and not into other unconnected budgetary areas. This has to be recognised as a distinct possibility.

The merger of Fata with K-P may be a done deal in theory or on paper, but it is far from being an accepted reality on the ground. Figures bandied about are almost meaningless — it is not possible, for instance, to say that Fata is ‘10 times backward that K-P’ unless the parameters allowing such a conclusion are clear. They are not. That the area as a whole is grossly undeveloped is undeniable despite there having been an annual development budget of Rs20 billion that has been allocated for who knows how many years or where it has disappeared to. That fact alone doubtless gives caution to the federal government. This is a considerable sum in any single year, never mind a span of years, and uncertainty about where such a large sum from the federal coffers has gone is bound to fuel mistrust.

Then there are the people that live there. Theirs is a diverse, complex and highly conservative society that is very slow to change and highly resistant to external interventions. Tribal elders have challenged the legality of the proposed merger in the high court and the K-P government itself is uneasy about aspects of the legislation. Nothing is going to move forward until all are reading from the same page in the same book and the transition is going to be the task of a generation, possibly more. The gap in expectations between the federal and provincial governments — one expecting a lot of money, the other expecting the prompt disappearance of the said money if handed over — is but one of innumerable impediments great and not-so-great. Beneath this quagmire is a planning blight that reads across federal and provincial structures and their failure to mesh, leading to the unwieldy clumsy beast of today. Allied to that is the ever-playable card of party politics — and who-knows-what party will be in power a generation hence in K-P, but probably not the PTI.

On balance we support the federal government in its reluctance to throw billions into a void, good money after bad. If the various stakeholders can be persuaded to own common interests, and commit not to siphoning off more than a probably-agreed sum in ‘local taxes’ then release the money, but only with robust protocols regarding transparency and accountability in place. Is it possible to reform Fata? It is, and it must be done for myriad interlacing reasons, but reform in the structures that will reform Fata is essential before the main task is tackled. That is almost the greater problem as those structures and institutions are no less resistant to change than are the peoples of Fata themselves. Layer upon layer of vested interest and corruption must be stripped away before the blight on Fata begins to be lifted.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 11^th, 2017.

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