Pakistan Rethinks Its Tribal Areas

On March 2, 2017, Pakistan’s federal cabinet, led by the government of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif of the Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz), or PML(N), approved the merger of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) into the neighboring province of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (KP). FATA’s irregular status has been a source of much of the lawlessness and instability radiating throughout Pakistan’s northwestern region along its border with Afghanistan.

In theory, FATA’s merger with KP would help “mainstream” the region by allowing it access to the national court system and normal representation in the federal parliament, the National Assembly, through mainstream political parties. Additionally, its residents would gain access to representation in a provincial assembly in KP. Such a proposal is widely backed by all of Pakistan’s main parties and the majority of people in FATA itself, which is so cut off from the mainstream of Pakistani politics and society that in some areas only 7 percent of women are literate. Nevertheless, to nobody’s surprise, the tribal chiefs of FATA are resistant to the idea of a merger, as it would dilute their power.

FATA’s irregular status dates back to when the region became a part of the British Raj in the 19th century. The region shares a demographic profile with neighboring KP: both are majority ethnic Pashtun regions in rugged mountainous terrain with close ties to ethnic Pashtuns in neighboring Afghanistan. However, while KP is home to some other ethnicities and is generally somewhat more cosmopolitan, FATA is overwhelmingly tribal and traditional. Much of what is today KP was conquered and administered by the Sikh Empire of Ranjit Singh from Afghanistan after 1818, before passing to the British when they annexed the Sikhs in 1849. By contrast, most of FATA was, and is, an ungoverned frontier space that was left to its own devices by its Sikh and British overlords. The Durand Line, drawn in 1893 between the British and Afghanistan, definitively placed the region in British India and eventually its successor state, Pakistan. The border, however, remained unacknowledged in Afghanistan, which became mired in a territorial dispute with Pakistan.

The British largely left what is today FATA to its own devices, and instead of incorporating it into the North-West Frontier Agency (the predecessor to KP) allowed it to remain autonomous and run by tribal chiefs. Perhaps it was too costly to directly control, or such autonomy was a small price to pay for the loyalty and military services of the tribes in the region. The region never really allowed itself to be governed externally until recently, when the Pakistan Army entered the region with 80,000 troops in 2004 after militants began to congregate in the area due to the ongoing war in neighboring Afghanistan. For several years thereafter, militants used remote regions in FATA such as Waziristan to launch attacks in the rest of Pakistan, although recent operations by the Pakistan Army have been successful in stemming the threat. This history underscores the need to incorporate the region into the Pakistani mainstream by uniting it with the somewhat more stable KP.

A particularly welcome step would be the proposed abolition of the Frontier Crimes Regulation (FCR) Act. The FCR, which is applicable to the FATA, was codified into law under British rule in 1901, and is still in force. It provided for the creation of a parallel judicial system carried out by traditional jirgas, or councils of elders, among the tribes of the region. As a result, the constitutional rights guaranteed to other citizens of Pakistan do not apply in FATA. Adding FATA to KP would allow its people to access national courts and to come under the jurisdiction of federal law. This is often not enforced well throughout the rest of the country, but at least it still provides some theoretical protections. Additionally, the security situation would improve in the region and become less arbitrary by mainstreaming it into a province. Finally, mainstreaming it will allow FATA to send normal representatives from major political parties to the National Assembly where they would be able to push for infrastructure, education, and other improvements. FATA was granted 12 seats in parliament in 1997, but the region was not allowed to organize political parties.

In addition to improving the economic and legal situation of Pakistan’s northwest, the merger of FATA with KP would have two other important consequences for Pakistan.

First, a successful merger would demonstrate the advantages of “mainstreaming” a region by incorporating it into the provincial system, with all that entails, including participation in national elections, access to the federal court system, and so on. This would strengthen the case for incorporating the region of Gilgit-Baltistan, formerly known as the Northern Areas, into Pakistan as its fifth province. On March 15, 2017, Riaz Hussain Pirzada, Pakistan’s minister for inter-provincial coordination, told the Pakistani television channel Geo TV that a committee headed by Pakistan’s foreign affairs advisor, Sartaj Aziz, had proposed giving provincial status to Gilgit-Baltistan. Further, the proposal said that a constitutional amendment would be made to change the region’s status. The fact that Gilgit-Baltistan is the region through which the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) passes from Xinjiang in China before entering the rest of Pakistan is thought to be a major factor in the movement for adding an additional province to Pakistan.

While the people of Gilgit-Baltistan, for the most part, want to be “mainstreamed” into Pakistan, because they pay taxes without reaping the benefits of representation in the National Assembly and use of the national judicial system, geopolitical reasons have so far prevented this from occurring. Legally speaking, Pakistan’s constitution does not mention the region, nor acknowledge it to be a permanent part of Pakistan pending the resolution of the Kashmir dispute with India. Before the independence of Pakistan and the partition of India, Gilgit-Baltistan was part of the princely state of Jammu and Kashmir. After that erstwhile state was divided between India and Pakistan in 1948, Gilgit-Baltistan was treated as a part of the Pakistani region of Azad Kashmir, which is also not acknowledged in Pakistan’s constitution as an integral part of that country. The current administrative unit was created in 1970. Pakistan fears that mainstreaming Gilgit-Baltistan would be seen as a de facto recognition of the permanent division of Jammu and Kashmir between it and India. Additionally, politicians in both Azad Kashmir and in India oppose any change in the region’s status for similar reasons. However, integrating the region as a province could bind its people more closely to Pakistan, especially now that the region has acquired strategic importance because of the border it shares with China.

Second, the merger of FATA with KP would lead to the consolidation of the influence of the Pashtun ethnic group – Pakistan’s second largest ethnic group after Punjabis. The overall power and influence of Pashtuns at the national level was somewhat diluted by the fact that the overwhelmingly ethnic Pashtun FATA did not have representation in the National Assembly until 1997, is underrepresented, and its representatives are not truly popularly elected, but represent tribal and clerical interests. Moreover, Pakistan is due to complete a census soon, its first since 1998, which will result in the reallocation of resources and seats in the National Assembly on the basis of demographics in the provinces. The Pashtuns are likely to be beneficiaries of this, as their population has grown, swelled by refugees from Afghanistan. KP (combined with FATA) would increase its share of seats in the National Assembly, most of which will be held by ethnic Pashtuns; additionally, in neighboring Balochistan, Pashtuns are close to outnumbering the province’s eponymous Baloch ethnic group. A successful merger of FATA into KP could increase Pashtun clout and lead to demands for the Pashtun-dominated northern parts of Balochistan to also merge into KP.

The merger of FATA into KP could be the first step of a long-needed process of integrating Pakistan more thoroughly as a functioning nation-state with a universal legal and political system. While it could upset some local interests and change the power dynamics between ethnic groups, the overall benefits for Pakistan are worth the cost: increased security, development, and political engagement in one of the least governed spaces in the world.