Getting it wrong in FATA

The government has scored a spectacular and potentially damaging own goal with the shelving of the long-sought reforms in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (Fata). The reforms had been generally welcomed across a range of Fata stakeholders but were torpedoed by a conversation between Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and Maulana Fazlur Rehman who has been opposed to the Fata reforms, and particularly the merger with Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (K-P), from the outset. This is increasingly emblematic of a government that can build massive infrastructure projects seemingly in record time — yet blanches and quavers at the prospect of making the reforms that are a necessary adjunct if all the new roads are to be worth more than a hill of beans.

Unsurprisingly some of the legislators from Fata are distinctly peeved to find the much-trumpeted reforms back-burnered and they are now considering a range of options to persuade the government to put the reform package back on track — but these things are easier said than done; and the process was not sufficiently far advanced to have developed sufficient traction to sustain forwards movement independently. There is talk of a march on Islamabad, and of Fata lawmakers having the support of a range of opposition parties.

Whether any of this will be sufficient to move the government is doubtful and yet again the Fata has been denied a chance to move forward into the 21^st century, a chance to access the developmental options that the rest of the country is open to, a chance to make the social and cultural changes that are necessary if the people of Fata are ever to join the mainstream of Pakistan’s economic and socio-cultural life. With the reforms seemingly shelved ‘indefinitely’ the retrograde hand of Maulana Fazlur Rehman is firmly on the tiller, and giving the steer to the government. There has been unrest in the tribal agencies for decades, and they have become seedbeds of extremism. An opportunity has now been lost to create and sustain a counter-narrative. Sources suggest that the military was in favour of the reforms, but in this instance a craven and backwards civilian establishment has the upper hand.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 30^th, 2017.

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