FATA be made a province

Addressing a seminar on Conflict in the FATA and Governance organized by the Institute of Policy Studies, the participants demanded provincial status for Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA). Political experts and security analysts say like the AJK and Gilgit Baltistan, people of FATA should also be given right to govern their own areas, living well with resources and personal traditions and likings. The year 1947 saw the demise of the draconian British rule, but its legacy of colonial laws is still in place and the residents of the FATA region, despite being administered by civil and military Presidents of Pakistan, are still not under the judicial jurisdiction of the Pakistani courts and the laws--though no law restricts the federal government from making such decision. Like virtual kings, the political agents protected under the Frontier Crimes Regulation (FCR) are ruthlessly ruling the masses at their will, eluding the basic rights of the common citizen. Since the inception of Pakistan, the people of the FATA put up brave faces to wither all storms including heavy use of force; pounding of fighter jets, gunship helicopters, long range artillery shelling and even the US drone attacks but they remained loyal to Pakistan. After the US attack in Afghanistan and subsequent Pakistan’s military action in the FATA, the region has become deadliest flash-point engulfed in insurgency, that vast majority agrees, is not directed against the state of Pakistan rather the militancy is a fight for the religious ideology. Civil set up in the FATA has become irrelevant rather the fact is that amidst insurgency, now-a-days all powerful political agents cannot visit their respective agencies what to talk of having administrative control on the area. To curb insurgency, the state machinery—including the political administration and the security agencies up against insurgents-- warrants the participation of the general masses in its pursuit. For their motivation, the residents of the region, who arguably pay exorbitant taxes in the form of cruel levies clamped by the political agents, be empowered to govern their soil like the sons-of-soil do. The FATA region, having rich natural resources and vast agriculture land, has every potential to become economically viable in a shortest possible time. Since the Constitution of Pakistan does not prohibit any such proclamation hence the federal government, after taking all the stakeholders on board, must declare the FATA as new province. Secondly, to put the insurgency at rest, Pakistan needs to revisit its foreign policy particularly its alignment with the America in war on terror that has caused insurgency in Pakistan. At the fag-end of his rule, the Afghan president is making needless public oratory regarding Durand Line that must not be taken into serious consideration. The USA and Afghan Taliban had made headway for direct talks in Qatar. Thus, Pakistan too must not waste time or hesitate in engaging itself with the TTP to restore normalcy in the region.