Is FATA a forbidden word?

The Frontier Post
In the ongoing dinning discourse on new provinces, what is stunningly missing is the name Federally-Administered Tribal Areas. What? Is it a forbidden word? Why is this word not being spoken up loudly and resoundingly when the region merits a provincial status by every canon, unquestioningly? Bring up any criterion and the region emphatically makes for a compact province area-wise, population-wise, resources-wise, administration-wise, as well as ethnically and linguistically. Indeed, its credentials to become a fully-fledged province are so clear-cut, strong and decisive that it needs not even a national commission to decide the issue. Various demands presently being voiced for new provinces may be suffering from some debility. But the FATA’s case is very sound and incontrovertible. And if in spite of that the name FATA is not figuring up in the debate on creating new provinces, that makes a damning statement on the political partisans and the intellectual elites alike. It contemptibly bespeaks of their puritanical aversion of sucking the crucially-strategically-located region into the mainstream and keeping it out of their thoughts in the country’s political configurations. The political class is haggling over creation or non-creation of new provinces clearly with their political considerations dominating their minds. Those campaigning for new provinces obviously feel that that would stand in good stead politically. Those resisting or dithering think that this would hurt them politically one way or the other. But since FATA doesn’t occur at all in their discourse, that culpably states that this crucial region has astoundingly doesn’t exist even in their political calculuses. Indeed, the inanities they mumble out off and on about the region are a mere footling that would stand not for a minute in the broader picture of the region functioning as a province. Had it been a province, the contentious Frontier Crimes Regulations (FCR) definitely would been long buried in some ancient graveyard as its provincial legislature would have enacted the laws to govern the region in keeping with the wishes of its residents and in consonance with the codes, norms, customs and traditions of their collective lives. And there would have been no need at all for the extension of any enactments to enable the political parties to function there. The tribal people would have either floated the regional chapters of the mainstream parties; or they would have formed up their own political parties, which indeed appears a far potent possibility. But since the political class has throughout treated the region as an unworthy outcaste, such niceties cannot come any feelingly to it and it thus nonchalantly keeps blurting out such meaningless and inconsequential utterances about the region unthinkingly. True, the Quaid-e-Azam had pledged to the tribal people full respect to their tribal codes, customs, traditions and norms. But he had not decreed that they would be kept at bay from the national mainstream and away from modernity, development and advancement. His successors in fact latched on to what he had actually not envisioned about them at all. Had indeed they read into his pledge correctly, they would have made the region a province long time ago, where its legislators would have enacted laws in conformity with their social lives and fully responsive to their needs for economic development and advancement. That would have given not just an alleviating shape to the region but helped enormously in tapping its hugely untapped natural wealth for its people’s economic good. And that in turn would have given impetus to the social uplift of the region, as economic advancement admittedly works as a marvellous catalyst for social emancipation. The overall impact would have been the spawning of a polity wholly immune from alien influences and completely at peace with itself. Resultantly, it would have been a secure, calm and tranquil part of the country. Still, that is quite possible even now; not all is yet lost; only the region and its residents are to be given what is their due in every manner. FATA should become a fully-fledged province, at once. It is too precious a region to be thrown out like an unwanted burden to become part of the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, as some charlatans suggest.