FATA: where the streets have no name

Area was referred to by various names up till 1973, including special areas, Centrally Administered Tribal Areas.

PESHAWAR:

Post-colonial relations are complicated to state the obvious. Local historians find it hard to weave a narrative that’s completely devoid of the impression of the coloniser even more than sixty-five years after independence.

The harder you try, the more obvious the relations become.

When it comes to the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (Fata), Pierre Bourdeiu’s theoretical framework of Habitus perhaps fills the gap of explanation – it’s the embodied history, internalised as second nature and so forgotten as ‘history’.

It seems as though the seven tribal agencies and six frontier regions were perpetually defined entities and existed independently forever. There is much to discover, or say, rediscover about the fault lines of engineered histories which are now considered truisms of our time.

The scope of the subject is such that it’s impossible, or rather unfair, to explain in a single article. However, the diminishing of a people under an acronym can be simply understood by the chronological development of the acronym itself.



The areas were referred to as “special areas” in the constitution of 1956, Centrally Administered Tribal Areas (Cata) in 1964 and ultimately Fata in 1973. The extent of the effect of the acronyms was such there would have been little resistance from anyone who matters had the area been given a painfully obvious satirical name.

The indexations of identities that are in a constant flux within a social order have seldom made sense to the world.  Their narratives have been marginalised to say the least and it’s impossible for their point of view to find its way into the mainstream.

In other words, the discourse that framed a history that locks up a populace within a premise is still as strong as it was in the colonial era. The addition is that now it’s the only premise sans an alternative.

The “boomerang effect”, as described by Michel Foucault, is the phenomenon where colonisers took the same oppressive techniques back to the West that they applied to their subjects under the empire. The irony in Pakistan’s case is the boomerang is still being put to use by the state itself. The ache of the dichotomy is more than evident.

Recently, a committee was constituted after lengthy debates between politicians to look into the future course that needs to be taken for the tribal areas.  There’s no surprise there is nobody from the tribal area on the committee. There can be no real empowerment till alternative histories are heard if not accepted.

It’s ironic the 16th and 18th centuries are considered in world history as the chronological frontiers of modernity; the same timeframe in which colonisation started and the Frontier Crimes Regulation (FCR) was imposed. Freedom would be a subversion of history, but if only those in the corridors of power can understand that the region needs it now more than ever.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 11^th, 2015.