Where is the writ of the state?

Instead of denying it, authorities should probe into the matter and find a solution before the militants grow stronger

Despite repeated assurances from the state of its established writ in conflict-stricken areas, the claim is challenged repeatedly in very similar ways. The latest, being a Taliban-style court established in the Frontier Region (FR) Peshawar, a short distance from the provincial capital. An area that has been cleared of militants more than half a dozen times.

The problem is multi-pronged; the reemergence of such courts is an indication of not just a flawed policy of countering terrorism locally but carries markers of a failure of a decade-long war in the region. Tribal elders of Hassankhel who have been publicly executed, kidnapped and humiliated by the militants have had not many options but to either leave or face their wrath, in the years following 9/11. Geographically, the area is located on the confluence of the Khyber Agency and FR Kohat’s Darra Adamkhel; an area that has been aching the government’s controls for as long as the conflict.



A tribal elders’ revelation that the courts are specifically dealing with cases of extortion, not to resolve the problem but to negotiate the amount is astonishing on many levels. It does not only highlight the failure of the government and its security agencies, who have made little progress to trace phone calls made by extortionists but a more darker side of the problem, where locals are forced to accept the power of non-state actors: a state within the state. The lack of effort on the part of the government to end the ‘special status’ of the seven Federally Administered Tribal Areas and the adjoining six buffer zones called Frontier Regions, is also a major reason that the endless cycle of militancy never ends.

The denial on behalf of the government that such courts do not exist is also not new. We have heard this before. It’s an open secret that people from many areas of K-P travel to these courts to pay extortionists. Instead of denying it the authorities should probe into the matter and find a solution before the militants grow stronger and those that believe in the state’s writ also sink into the scepticism of its claims.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 29^th, 2014.

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