Another failure in FATA

Postponement of Fata reforms has nothing to do with rights of people; everything to do with vested interests

Those with foresight were reading the writing on the wall as a year ago. The much-delayed and much-trumpeted merger of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (Fata) and Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa has been deferred and left for the next government to implement. The decision has nothing to do with the rights of the people that live in Fata or their future, but everything to do with political expediency and plain old bad management. Thus it is that the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam-F (JUI-F) and the Pakhtunkhwa Milli Awami Party (PkMAP) have prevailed in their opposition to the merger plans — at least for the time being. Their reasoning is that the proposal was against the will of the people of Fata, but in reality it was more to do with vested interests and the challenge the merger presented to them.

With the matter of the Frontier Crimes Regulations (FCR) also unresolved this decision essentially places the entire issue of the future of Fata back where it was decades ago. It also freezes any move towards the unification of judicial processes and the boundary delimitations — essential and long overdue — are not going to be completed before the elections either. With 14 days before the dissolution of the government, it was simply impossible to make the changes and Fata goes forward to the next dispensation in a position as ambivalent and uncertain as it was when the PML-N came to power.

To say that this government has failed the people of Fata is a monumental understatement. It has pulled the rug from beneath their feet and everything will be reset to a default ‘‘start’’ position post to the general election. The work of years will go in the bin, there will be new people in posts that will reflect the electoral outcome and the opposition parties will continue to peddle the fiction that the Fata merger is part of a ‘‘foreign agenda.’’ No wonder the people of Fata are restive — they have every right to be.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 18^th, 2018.

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