Frustration, disapproval and disappointment was the name of Fata people’s reaction to the provisional results of the national census as they outrightly rejected the same, knowing little about the remedy to press for a revision of the head count.
Stakeholders including tribal elders, political parties’ representatives and activists of civil society with whom Dawn interacted on the subject, invariably presented their own figures about the total population of Fata but they failed to substantiate as to what methodology they had adopted or applied to gather such figures.
“We had been hearing from our childhood that seven million tribesmen will defend the geographical frontiers of Pakistan when India attacked Pakistan in 1971 but it is strange that the population of tribal areas is now shown as five million, a reduction of almost two million during the last 36 years”, MNA from Bara Muhammad Nasir Khan, who is also parliamentary leader of independent tribal MNAs in the National Assembly, sarcastically remarked while reacting to the recently announced census report.
He however hastened to add that he will raise the issue at the floor of National Assembly on September 11 or 12 when the house will meet after Eidul Azha. Muhammad Nasir Khan is heading a group of only five Fata MNAs out of the total 11. He was not quite sure about the support and cooperation of his other colleagues. A Kukikhel tribal elder, Malak Faizullah Jan, from Jamrud also expressed his displeasure over the results of census commission and said that he along with other tribal elders from Khyber will convene a grand jirga of elders of all the seven tribal regions to evolve a joint strategy in support of their demand for the revision of census in Fata.
He was however at loss to answer Dawn’s query about the grand tribal jirga powers and legal status to ask about the revision of census report. “This is the most we could do as our decisions on such matters are not binding on any government institution”, he acknowledged with a feeling of regret but insisting that the population of Fata was not less than 15 million.
Except Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf representatives rest of the political parties operating in Fata were found to be in a state of quandary as none of them had so far issued a clear-cut reaction to the head count. PTI have threatened to hold a sit-in at the Governor House in Peshawar if their demand for a revision of Fata head count was not accepted by the federal government.
Imran Afridi, provincial senior vice president of Awami National Party and a resident of Bara, Khyber Agency, said that his party would convene a meeting of its representatives in tribal areas after getting a go-ahead signal from their party’s top leadership.
Recording his own experience with the census exercise, Imran Afridi said not a single person of his family, numbering about 200 were enrolled in the census. He acknowledged that his family has long migrated to Peshawar from his native area in Bar Qambar Khel in Bara.
The Pakistan People’s Party and Pakistan Muslim League-N are yet to give their reaction to population census in tribal areas while two mainstream religious parties Jamaat-i-Islami and Jamiat Ulama-i-Islam-F were busy organising anti-America demonstrations to condemn US President Donald Trump for his anti-Pakistan rhetoric.
A former tribal MNA, Hameedullah Jan Afridi, termed the population census report as a total ‘fraud’ and said that he will raise the issue on every available forum. “How can we accept these results when tribesmen living in settled districts of the country were forced by the census staff to register themselves in settled areas rather than Fata”, he remarked.
“This is a mockery of the entire census exercise and we will not accept it, come what may”, Mr Afridi said but he failed to substantiate what methods the people of Fata shall adopt to compel the federal government for a revision of the entire process.
Abdur Raziq, director of a private school in Landi Kotal, urged all the mainstream political parties and tribal elders to start protest demonstrations across Fata against what he termed “flawed head count” of Fata people.
He was critical of the local leadership of political parties for their failure to pinpoint anomalies in the census exercise when the head count was in progress and said that thousands of families displaced from different parts of Fata due to insecurity were not counted as local population. “This will have a huge drain on our legitimate share in national resources”, he regretted.
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