T he fight for FATA grinds on

The government is at pains to point out that the formation of yet another committee to further the cause of the merger of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (Fata) and Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa is not an attempt to kick the issue into the long grass. Again. Having tried and failed — though just how seriously tried is something of an open question — to table a Fata bill twice in the last month the cabinet has granted “ex-post facto approval to the formation of National Implementation Committee on Fata Reforms.” There is to be another attempt to table the Fata bill in the parliamentary session that starts on 8^th January 2018.

It is being argued in some quarters that the man with his hand on the start button is Fazlur Rehman, leader of the JUI-F, the reason being that he would rather preserve the status quo which is in his and his party’s interests than move towards unification. There have been at least two attempts to persuade him to climb aboard, one including the Chief of Army Staff and both failed, he remains obdurate. Politically the JUI-F is closely allied to the PML-N and might have been expected to toe the party line, but not so. He is now demanding a referendum on the ‘will of the people’ despite there having been extensive consultation, including with his own party, which at one point signed off on the bill.



The National Implementation Committee will ‘take all stakeholders on board’ — a much overused phrase and often completely meaningless — before preparing a final draft that will be incorporated in the Fata reforms bill that will go before the lower house. Prime Minister Abbasi says “days and weeks” before that point is reached, but a skeptical observer would say weeks and months. Peripheral as it may be the social media is much exercised, and with Malala putting her shoulder behind the reforms on 25^th December and quickly picking up traction on Twitter it cannot be ignored. The Fata merger cannot be endlessly kicked around and prevaricated over. Make 2018 the year when a colonial relic is finally expunged.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 28^th, 2017.

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