Pakistan’s 10 main political parties unanimously came up with 11 recommendations for reforms in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (Fata) in December 2013.

Since then, the parties have held meetings with various stakeholders all over the country to seek consensus on the issue and lobby the government to implement the recommendations.

The recommendations were finalised by the Political Parties Joint Committee on Fata Reforms, also known as the Fata Committee, following long deliberations that started in 2010.

The political parties represented in the Fata Committee were: Awami National Party (ANP), Jamaat-i-Islami (JI), Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam-Fazal (JUI-F), Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM), National Party (NP), Pakistan Muslim League (PML-N), Pakistan Muslim League-Quaid-i-Azam (PML-Q), Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), and Qaumi Watan Party (QWP).

The Fata Committee had 34 members, including 12 from Fata. Only the PTI had all its three members from Fata while the PML-Q had one from the tribal areas. The other parties had members from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and other provinces. It was observed that the MQM and PTI members of the committee didn’t take much interest in the Fata Committee proceedings as they attended only a few of its meetings.

The Fata Committee reviewed the Citizens’ Declaration for Fata Reforms (also known as the Fata Declaration), which was unanimously approved earlier by the Fata Grand Assembly tribal Jirga. It also took into consideration the recommendations of the Sahibzada Imtiaz Committee named after the retired chief secretary of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa who headed it.

The work of the Fata Committee was funded by the National Democratic Institute (NDI) from the US and the British High Commission. A couple of Americans and a British High Commission official used to attend the Fata Committee meetings, but they didn’t interfere with its work.

Long after the Fata Committee had finalised its recommendations, the Governor Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Sardar Mahtab Ahmad Khan, constituted another Fata Reforms Committee under the chairmanship of Ejaz Qureshi, who had also served as chief secretary of the province. Its other four members included Lt Gen (Retd) Sabahat Hussain, retired bureaucrat Mir Laiq Shah, civil society activist Musarrat Qadeem, and additional secretary at the Governor’s House Mudassir Riaz Malik. The only tribesman from Fata in the committee was Mir Laiq Shah, who had served as political agent in some of the tribal agencies.

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Musarrat Qadeem, who was appointed a caretaker minister earlier, was the lone female member of the committee. This committee, too, has now come up with its recommendations, but critics have pointed out that it has generally advocated maintaining the status quo in Fata.

The Fata Committee continued its work in 2015 even though it was overtaken by events and new initiatives were made to bring reforms in Fata.

The Fata Committee’s 11 recommendations are as follows:

1. Peace in Fata should be guaranteed.

2. Article 247 of the Constitution should be amended to guarantee fundamental rights for all tribal citizens and shift legislative power from the President of Pakistan to the Parliament.

3. Local government elections should be held in Fata.

4. A comprehensive package should be developed for Fata and infrastructure development initiated, with special focus on health, education, and employment.

5. The future status of Fata should be decided by its people.

6. Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority (PEMRA) jurisdiction should be extended and media should be provided greater access to Fata to provide tribal citizens with opportunities for media interaction and participation.

7. The Jirga system should be made more democratic and independent.

8. Actions in Aid of Civil Power Regulation should be abolished.

9. Executive and judicial powers should be separated in Fata.

10. Citizens should not be deprived of property; inheritance law should be extended.

11. Civil armed forces (Khassadar and Levies) should be strengthened and professionalised.

If one were to analyse the recommendations, there can be no disagreement on the need for restoration of peace in Fata. There is also a strong urge among the tribal people that peace in Fata should be guaranteed as recommended by the Fata Committee. However, the committee members couldn’t reach a consensus on how to restore and guarantee peace -- through peaceful means or the use of force.

They settled for the words guaranteeing of peace in Fata by the government without specifying how this could be done. On its part, the government of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif went all out to undertake military operations against the militants in Fata after the failure of its brief initiative to hold peace talks with the Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP).

As for the second recommendation, seeking constitutional amendment to shift legislative power from the President of Pakistan to the Parliament, it cannot happen without the support of the ruling PML-N and other major parties. The military, too, would have to be taken on board as it has been fighting in Fata against the local and foreign militants for more than a decade and has become an important stakeholder in the context of decision-making in the tribal areas.

The recent move by the 19 tribal parliamentarians is a follow-up of this recommendation as they strongly feel that time has come to decide the fate of Fata and give its people an identity and their rights.

The move by PPP Senator, Farhatullah Babar, to empower the Parliament instead of the President of Pakistan by amending Article 247 of the Constitution also flows from the initiative to democratically empower the long-deprived people of Fata. He had moved the private member’s bill in the Senate, where the PPP-led opposition parties had a comfortable majority, to push through Fata reforms.

Farhatullah Babar, who belongs to Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, had thus shown the way to the normally docile Fata MNAs and Senators that they could highlight the problems and demands of the tribal people through private member’s bills.

The third recommendation advocating local government elections in Fata enjoys wide support. The government, too, won’t oppose it as it has been considering holding local government polls in Fata after arriving at a decision on the make-up and powers of the elected local councils. However, it isn’t clear when these polls in Fata would be held due to indecision on the part of important stakeholders and the insecurity prevailing in the tribal areas.

A case in point is the fact that all political parties had promised to hold local government polls while campaigning for the May 2013 general elections, but the promise was forgotten upon coming into power because assembly members have always been reluctant to share power and resources with the elected local councilors. Two years after the 2013 polls, the respective provincial governments in the four provinces were finally able to hold the local government elections in 2015.

The fourth recommendation is something that is the need of the hour as Fata is under-developed and requires special development initiatives to come at a par with the rest of the country. The recommendation calls for developing a comprehensive package for Fata and initiating an infrastructure development plan with special focus on health, education and employment.

The annual development programme 2014-2015 for Fata was Rs19 billion, which was 2.7 per cent higher than the previous year’s Rs18.7 billion. However, one has to ask if the federal government has been able to provide all these funds and also in a timely manner and whether insecurity and lack of capacity would continue to pose hurdles in spending the money properly and transparently? For example, the ADP for Fata in 2012 was Rs15 billion, but was curtailed to Rs10 billion and in the end Rs7 billion could be spent only.

The fifth recommendation is simple and justified as it wants the people to decide the future status of Fata. It hasn’t explained how to go about it because various proposals have been floated for seeking the views of the tribal people. One method is holding a referendum on the issue in Fata and another is deciding it in the light of the opinion of the Fata parliamentarians as they are elected representatives of the tribal people. Ascertaining the views of the tribal people through jirgas has also been mentioned.

Some of the options regarding Fata’s future status include making it a separate province, merging it into Khyber Pakhtunkhwa or maintaining the status quo. Another proposal is to run Fata’s affairs through an elected legislative council, which also entails diluting the powers of the governor and the political agents and scrapping the Frontier Crimes Regulation.

Recommendation number six is extending the Pakistan Media Regulatory Authority (Pemra) to Fata and providing greater access to the media to create opportunities for the tribal citizens to interact with media-persons and highlight their problems and aspirations. However, the general insecurity in Fata, threats by the militants and curbs placed by the military are formidable hurdles blocking access to the media. Moreover, Pemra has until now been a weak organisation unable to do its job even in the settled districts of Pakistan, what to speak of the tribal areas.

The seventh recommendation by the Fata Committee is to make the Jirga system more democratic and independent. There have been complaints that the Jirga system is losing its credibility as it can be easily manipulated by the political administration in Fata and resourceful people to obtain the verdict of their choice. It won’t be easy making the Jirgas more democratic and independent as reaching a consensus on the issue would require tact and patience so that the traditional Pakhtun values underlying the Jirga system aren’t compromised.

The eighth recommendation is fairly drastic. It calls for abolishing the Actions in Aid of Civil Power Regulation, or to be precise the Actions (in Aid of Civil Power) Regulation, 2011 for Fata and Provincially Administered Tribal Areas (Pata). These two regulations were introduced to provide legal cover and immunity to the soldiers operating in both Fata and Pata. When asked as to why the Fata Committee made this demand and failed to recommend scrapping the FCR, some of its members argued that they were demanding bigger and higher as the FCR was lesser of the evil compared to the Actions (in aid of Civil Power Regulation) that gave vast powers to the military authorities, took away civil liberties from citizens, and increased chances of violation of rights.

This recommendation would be supplemented if earlier reforms, such as FCR amendments and extension of Political Parties Act to Fata are properly implemented. In the process, the previous reforms would be consolidated and the way paved for introducing new ones in Fata.

The ninth, tenth and eleventh recommendations made by the Fata Committee were straightforward and needed. The ninth recommendation calls for separation of the executive and judicial powers in Fata. The tenth seeks extension of the inheritance law to Fata and ensuring that citizens aren’t deprived of property. And finally, the last recommendation is to strengthen the civil armed forces, including the Khassadar and Levies, so that they become a professional force able to maintain law and order in Fata. Work on the last recommendation is ongoing even though it is slow.