The Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) and its people are the most misunderstood phenomenon in Pakistan. One can therefore not blame the international community for considering these areas to be the strongholds of ultimate villains, the likes of which the world has not seen in quite some time. On the local level the tribal population has been historically used as cannon fodder for the country’s crazed quest for gaining strategic depth in the neighbouring country of Afghanistan, be it a small unit of the Afridi tribe fighting in Kashmir right after the inception of Pakistan or the mujahideen crossing over to Afghanistan to carve out a fifth province during the 1980s.

The region soon became a huge dumping ground for arms and ammunition and the follies committed by policy makers in Pakistan in the name of national security has allowed the FATA region to slip into a conundrum which has been a source of constant itching between the shoulder blades, both for the country and the rest of the world. The FATA has been lingering on the periphery of the country’s socioeconomic and political developments while the pariah (Elaqa-e-Ghair) status it has sadly gained in its own backyard remains the reason why the rest of the country thinks less of this region which otherwise needs the most attention.

The ongoing military offensive against militants in the loosely regulated tribal regions has added considerably to the woes of the tribal population and their plight has so far remained unnoticed and unaddressed. Press handouts and pictures coming out of FATA show destroyed market places, homes, huge cache of arms and ammunitions being seized from somewhere and triumphant soldiers punching thin air with jubilant fists. While the rest of the country sees these pictures as being part of establishing the writ of the government in the ‘lawless’ tribal regions, a large majority among the tribal population are seething with discontent, not because of the government launching an operation in their territories but due to the fact that their role has been unwittingly reduced by the officials concerned in deciding the fate of their own areas.

Earlier this year the law enforcing agencies asked the people of Kurram Agency to surrender their arms. Later in February, paramilitary forces raided a small rural community in Bughdy and seized firearms from the residents. Bughdy is a small settlement near the border and lies adjacent to the Paktia province of Afghanistan.

According to the disarmed locals, the above mentioned area has seen Taliban intrusions into Pakistan through the porous Pakistan-Afghanistan border and the seized weapons were their only line of defence against the militants.

Hussain Turi, a resident of Bughdy, said, "It was with these weapons that we defended the border post of Frontier Corps when they were attacked by Taliban infiltrators last year. How can the security forces forget that incident so soon?"

After the raid a similar warning was issued to the people of lower Kurram to surrender heavy weapons or else face similar raids on their houses from the security forces in an effort to disarm the entire population of the tribal region. The issue was taken up with the political agent of Kurram Agency, Amjad Ali Khan, who assured the elders of the Turi tribe that the seized weapons would be returned to them once the law and order situation improved in the area. Two months into the incident and the political agent has yet to honour his end of the bargain.

According to eminent journalist Rahimullah Yousafzai, the situation in Kurram is different and should be treated differently from the rest of the tribal belt. "Both the Shia and the Sunni tribes in Kurram are heavily armed and have used this weaponry against each other in the past. There is no need for private militia except that of the security forces, given that the security force ensures safety of the people."

But in the past both the government and the military in one way or the other have helped form tribal lashkars which assisted the security forces in chasing off militants. These tribal lashkars, also known as Qabaeli Lashkar or Da Masharano Lashkar, are the true sons of the soil and their assessments regarding the volatile tribal region have never been based on theory and hearsay alone, and instead accumulated through centuries of experience.

According to Sartaj Khan, a researcher based in Karachi, "Such tribal lashkars are symbolic of the tribesmen traditional desire to run their own affairs on their home ground and to keep the Pakistan armed forces at bay. They believe that when the army launches an offensive in their areas a lot of damage is done in the shape of collateral damage while little is achieved." From the year 2000 onwards, the tribal lashkars became a crucial tool for the military operations in the tribal regions and the early efforts of the lashkar against fighting militancy showed that a good counter-terrorism strategy was at play.

During Pakistan army’s operation Rah-e-Rast in Swat valley, the military opted to create Aman Lashkars in Bandag Bera and Mattani to dissuade the Taliban from entering Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and ultimately overrunning Peshawar city. But soon after the above mentioned operation concluded, the Aman Lashkars were left high and dry and at the mercy of Taliban insurgents who were now well positioned to take revenge on the tribal population for picking up arms against them in the first place. Since support from the government gradually dried up, the lashkars across the FATA got chewed up almost instantly.

Now, the move to disarm the people of FATA upon their return home from the Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) camps is being received with mix emotions. Many tribesmen bring back the 1948 agreement into discussion when these areas were made part of the country and it was left up to the individual tribes and councils to regulate weapons ownerships in their respective areas of control. "Our long-term housekeeping needs are for us to determine, and should not be shaped by short term imperatives," says Sayed Ali Wazir, who hails from North Waziristan Agency and is living in Bannu as an IDP. "There should be reforms in our region and we will happily hand over our arms then, but at least reforms should not be rushed without the concurrence of those affected by the long war on terrorism," he further added.

Many analysts believe that expecting immediate results from the military operations in the tribal region is like asking for the moon and stars. This has left the tribal population sceptical about the entire issue and more unlikely to disarm any time soon when adversity is yet again staring them straight in the eye. "These are long term issues and I don’t see an immediate solution to it," says Rahimullah Yousafzai. According to him, the state would have to work very hard to bring about a positive change in the region and it won’t be possible overnight.

In an interview with a local newspaper, FATA Law and Order Secretary Shakil Qadir said that the government had standing orders that no one would be allowed to keep heavy weapons at their homes. Qadir was of the view that fuelling such anxieties that the insurgents would return and pick out the people as sitting ducks are mostly hypothetical conjectures.

Similar steps were taken in 2005, when political officials in the tribal areas banned the possession of heavy weapons. Officials also launched a weapons buyback programme that year, but it was quickly halted because of a lack of interest among the residents.

Therefore, the story so far is that the ones who need to address these issues have opted to keep mum over issue related to life and death for Pakistan. One sometimes wonder if this silence is spawned by ignorance of facts or sired by too much knowledge regarding the great strategic game being played in and around this country. One can only take a wild guess.