FATA’S merger with the KPK done in post haste by the previous government has proved to be an exercise in futility as it has done more harm than good to the law and order of the frontier province, particularly, its southern districts.
When the said merger was being contemplated the powers that be had been forewarned by many former civil senior officers that proper homework was needed before upsetting the current applecart of its administrative infrastructure in post haste Incremental rather then any revolutionary change was suggested to the then government but that suggestion fell on deaf ears.
In the first place apparently there wasn’t any need for this merger as the slow incremental change being made in FATA since 1947 had been yielding positive results, the biggest proof of which was that while in 1947,85 percent of its area was off limits for political administration and persons of other provinces of the country. In 1990 it was only 25 percent which was physically and politically inaccessible ,the rest had been opened up with the construction of roads, hospitals, educational institutions so on and so forth all through the combined efforts of graybeard tribal chieftains with negotiations and jirgas of the political agents with them without the use of force and firing a single bullet.
The law and order of FATA was far better than that of the revenue districts before the said merger contrary to the common perception and often misleading propaganda about it. Thanks to the concept of collective tribal territorial responsibility in vogue in the tribal belt, the tribes were themselves responsible for maintenance of law and order in their own land of course with their own khassadars raised up by the government.
After the merger though the government set up police stations there but tribesmen still continue to prefer sorting out their criminal and civil disputes through tribal jirgas which they say suit their genius and through which their cases are decided quickly and they are also spared of hefty consultation fee of lawyers operating in the revenue districts. So what good is the merger in question, it is being asked ?
The erstwhile British colonialists were not nincompoops. The century old experience gained by them governing tribal belt had put them wise and they rightly believed that the tribal territory can best be governed effectively through indirect administration, courtesy tribal elders.
A British brigadier deployed in Bannu wrote as back as in 1902 that any military officer who wants use of force in Waziristan should have his head examined and before committing his force there in any military operation should first of all find out and determine the route for escape as sooner or later one day he will have to extricate his troops from there and their escape would be under volley of fire. The upshot of the above arguments is that instead of the above mentioned merger there was a need to strengthen the institution of malik instead of uprooting them.
Had the old maliki system been operative there today the terrorists would not have mustered courage to operate with rare abandon in the districts of KPK, lying close to FATA. The services of tribal maliks could have been utilised for stamping them out . Let us admit that a mountain out of a molehill was made by interested short sighted so-called reformists and champions of attractive slogan of human rights by declaring the FCR as a black law and propagating against it. The FCR wasn’t a black law. It was in fact, a collection of age old customs and riwaj of the tribesmen in a book form, nothing more nothing less, granted that its section 40 gave draconian powers to the political agent but those powers had been diluted to a considerable extent by super imposing an appellate tribunal against the verdicts of the political agents under FCR after which there wasn’t need to tinker with the age old tribal administrative system which gyrated round the concept of collective tribal territorial responsibility which had stood the test of time.
One wonders whether or not one could put the clock back now as sufficient water has passed under the Attock bridge since FATA was merged with KPK but if the merger document could be revisited for rectifying the loopholes after due consultation with tribal chieftains and those old officers who had served as political agents in FATA it can certainly help in removing the kinks and knots that are hampering efforts to improve law and order situation in FATA. There is a room for improvement always in every field of life.
