Stop blaming Fata

Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas have been in global limelight since the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979. The subsequent invasion of that country by the US once again focused the world’s attention on Fata, but for all the wrong reasons this time. The Americans made Fata a scapegoat in the war against terror. Its people are presumed offenders of the worst sort, without the Americans taking the trouble to understand the people and the problems faced by them.
They never differentiated between militants and the ordinary tribesmen. They simply put all the blame on the people of Fata, accusing them of sheltering militants, without acknowledging that Fata’s problem is not of the creation of its inhabitants. Earlier they had washed their hands of any responsibility for the situation in Fata after the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan, and returned there only after their pride was dashed to the ground in New York.
In their haste to exact revenge the US pressured the military dictator in Pakistan to deploy the Pakistani army in the tribal area to stop militants from crossing the Afghan border. The orders were obeyed blindly. However, there are no signs yet of the war coming to an end. Whenever a terrorist incident takes place anywhere in the world the US and Nato never miss the opportunity to point accusing fingers at Fata, particularly the two Waziristans. The Pakistani media is not permitted by the government to operate independently in Fata, and therefore it is not possible for it to investigate the veracity of US/Nato allegations.
The tribesmen have no way of countering claims against them. And if someone does dare to do so, he disappears and later his disfigured body bearing marks of torture is found on the roadside. So whatever is said by the media in the West or even in our own country becomes the lead story within no time all over the world and is accepted as the universal truth.
Having failed to defeat insurgency in Afghanistan the US invariably resorts to the blame game to cover its own weaknesses. Whenever an untoward incident happens in that country they immediately accuse Fata of having a connection with it. The recent attacks in Kabul and Afghanistan’s Logar, Paktia and Nangarhar provinces are a case in point. Instead of accepting responsibility for its own security lapses, the United States put the blame on Waziristan, because it allegedly gave shelter to the Haqqani network which allegedly masterminded the attack.
What stops the Americans from pursuing and apprehending Haqqani and members of his network, which is so dangerous that the embassies it targets in Kabul include that of the US? The Taliban’s success in breaking those high security parameters in Kabul speaks volumes of the lapses on the part of the US security forces.
Meanwhile, the government in Islamabad does not miss an opportunity of blaming Fata for any unpleasant incident taking place anywhere in the country. Be it an attack on important personalities or installations, the blame comes straight to the tribal area and Waziristan becomes an easy excuse for the hiding the government’s own shortcomings. Our interior minister has conducted many inquiries and collected the heads of many suicide bombers. But the findings, if any, are yet to be shared with the nation. What is he doing with all those inquiries and the heads he collected?
When will our government learn to be more realistic in handling the affairs in Fata? When will it learn to stop blaming people there instead of accepting its own mishandling of the situation? By simply adopting resolutions in parliament it cannot absolve itself of the responsibility of saving its people from the devastation wreaked on them by continuing to follow the ill-conceived policies of a long-gone dictator. This is what the government has to look at seriously if it wants to bring peace to Fata and take the nation out of the gloomy situation that it has been in for so many years.
Ryan Crocker, the US ambassador in Afghanistan, did not lose time blaming Waziristan for what happened in Kabul recently. Similarly, our media also tried to shift the onus of responsibility for the jailbreak in Bannu to North Waziristan nearby. Instead of those responsible being dismissed or the government resigning, it is Fata which receives the blame. Neither has the US admitted its security failure for the attack on Kabul nor has Pakistan owned up to lapses which led to the jailbreak in Bannu.
The people of Fata are as loyal to the country as people anywhere else in Pakistan. They have rendered tremendous sacrifices for the sake of the country. Their sacrifices on the eastern border gave us Azad Kashmir. They defended the western border for a very long time, a job which is now being done at a huge cost by the regular troops deployed there.
Not a single day passes without some trouble in the area. The people there have rendered once again the sacrifice of vacating their houses and becoming IDPs, with no assistance from the government, to enable the army to clear the area of militants. It is another matter that the operations have not yielded positive results but in the process the people suffered the utmost with their houses destroyed, businesses crippled and children deprived of education, a field in which they were already far behind compared to children of all other areas in the country. The militancy and military operations have sent them back to the Stone Age, something our valiant commando general was afraid of when the agreed to make Pakistan an ally of the Americans in their war against terror.
Despite the ill treatment meted out to them the tribesmen have raised no voice against the country or revolted against the state. The injustices committed against them are numerous but they are still loyal to the country. Instead of developing the area the government has made its inhabitants’ lives even more miserable by imposing on them “Regulations in Aid of Civil Power.” These regulations give sweeping powers to the army to take drastic action, without any accountability, even it merely suspects someone of being involved in activity against army personnel or the government.
Whatever little hesitation the army had in resorting to punitive action, while it worked in the area under the FCR, has now gone after the introduction of this Regulation. The norms that were followed over centuries by successive governments for resolution of disputes are now ignored and force is used, which only adds to problems, rather than resolving them.
We do not seem to have learnt lessons from what we did in East Pakistan. We are treating FATA like a colony and using uncalled for harsh measures by adopting wrong policies of administering that area. The problems that led to the use of brutal force could have been resolved with the help and involvement of the locals, but that was not done and punitive was action taken on one pretext or another.
The treatment meted to the people there is still fresh in their minds. Their silence does not mean that they do not what happened to their lives and properties. They are waiting for the government to come forward and redress their grievances. They should be treated as a part of the solution and not part of the problem otherwise Fata will remain restive and the country will continue to suffer as a result.
The writer is a former ambassador hailing from FATA. Email: waziruk@hotmail.com