Pakistan’s Tribal Areas: Appeasing the Militants

The most specious argument we hear about this region is that for centuries this region could not be tamed. Hence these people need to be left alone to perform terror and mayhem not only in their region but through out the world. Supposedly, the rule of law and modernity cannot enter those hallowed portals.

Stupid, stupid, Stupid.

Then we have the temerity to bleat about other countries threatening the integrity and sovereignty of our country.We seem to have abdicated the pretense of even governing our country. When other countries step up to the plate, we suddenly discover a backbone???For the sake of the people of Pakistan, let there be a rule of law in our lawless lands. For remember, if we do not change, there are others willing to take the decision out of our hands and change things for us.

Contrarian

Pakistan’s Tribal Areas: Appeasing the Militants

Asia Report N°125
11 December 2006

http://www.crisisgroup.org/home/index.cfm?id=4568&l=1

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY AND RECOMMENDATIONS

Taliban and other foreign militants, including al-Qaeda sympathisers, have sheltered since 2001 in Pakistan’s Pashtun-majority Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), seven administrative districts bordering on south eastern Afghanistan. Using the region to regroup, reorganise and rearm, they are launching increasingly severe cross-border attacks on Afghan and international military personnel, with the support and active involvement of Pakistani militants. The Musharraf government’s ambivalent approach and failure to take effective action is destabilising Afghanistan; Kabul’s allies, particularly the U.S. and NATO, which is now responsible for security in the bordering areas, should apply greater pressure on it to clamp down on the pro-Taliban militants. But the international community, too, bears responsibility by failing to support democratic governance in Pakistan, including within its troubled tribal belt.

The military operations Pakistan has launched since 2004 in South and North Waziristan Agencies to deny al-Qaeda and the Taliban safe haven and curb cross-border militancy have failed, largely due to an approach alternating between excessive force and appeasement. When force has resulted in major military losses, the government has amnestied pro-Taliban militants in return for verbal commitments to end attacks on Pakistani security forces and empty pledges to cease cross-border militancy and curb foreign terrorists.

The government reached accords with pro-Taliban militants in April 2004 in South Waziristan and on 5 September 2006 in North Waziristan. These were brokered by the pro-Taliban Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam (JUI-F), the largest component of the Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal (MMA), the ruling six-party religious alliance in Northwest Frontier Province (NWFP) and Musharraf’s coalition partner in the Balochistan provincial government. Following the September accord, the government released militants, returned their weapons, disbanded security check posts and agreed to allow foreign terrorists to stay if they gave up violence. While the army has virtually retreated to barracks, this accommodation facilitates the growth of militancy and attacks in Afghanistan by giving pro-Taliban elements a free hand to recruit, train and arm.

Badly planned, poorly conducted military operations are also responsible for the rise of militancy in the tribal belt, where the loss of lives and property and displacement of thousands of civilians have alienated the population. The state’s failure to extend its control over and provide good governance to its citizens in FATA is equally responsible for empowering the radicals. The only sustainable way of dealing with the challenges of militancy, governance and extremism in FATA is through the rule of law and an extension of civil and political rights. Instead, the government has reinforced administrative and legal structures that undermine the state and spur anarchy.

FATA is tenuously governed because of deliberate policy, not Pashtun tribal traditions or resistance. Since 1947, Pakistan has ruled it by retaining colonial-era administrative and judicial systems unsuited to modern governance. Repressive structures and denial of political representation have generated resentment. To deflect external pressure to curb radicalism, the Musharraf government talks about reforms in FATA but does not follow through. Instead, appeasement has allowed local militants to establish parallel, Taliban-style policing and court systems in the Waziristans, while Talibanisation also spreads into other FATA agencies and even the NWFP’s settled districts.

It is equally important to generate broad-based economic development. Neglected for decades, FATA is one of Pakistan’s poorest regions, with high poverty and unemployment and badly under-developed infrastructure. Located astride the Afghanistan border and a major regional transit route, its economy is dependent on smuggling. Since the outbreak of the Afghan civil war, there has been enormous growth in drugs and weapons trafficking. Militancy and extremism in tribal agencies cannot be tackled without firm action against criminality. But for this, economic grievances must be addressed and the law of the land extended over and enforced in FATA.

RECOMMENDATIONS

To the Government of Pakistan:

1. Integrate the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), following extensive consultations with local stakeholders, into Northwest Frontier Province as a Provincially Administered Tribal Area (PATA), under executive control of the province and jurisdiction of the regular provincial and national court system and with representation in the provincial legislature.

2. Remove restrictions on political parties in FATA and introduce party-based elections for the provincial and national legislatures.

3. Respect and implement Article 8 of the constitution, which voids any customs inconsistent with constitutionally guaranteed fundamental rights.

4. Re-establish the writ of the state and counter militancy in FATA by:

(a) disarming militants, shutting down terrorist training camps and ending the flow of money and weapons to and recruitment and training by Taliban and other foreign or local militants on Pakistani territory;

(b) prosecuting those responsible for killing civilians and government officials; and

(c) preventing militants from establishing parallel administrative structures, demolishing those that exit and prosecuting those who are delivering private justice.

5. Generate employment in FATA by:

(a) creating manufacturing/industrial units and providing technical assistance, subsidies and other incentives for agricultural activities;

(b) developing the area’s natural resources, including minerals and coal; and

(c) developing human resources by investing in education, including vocational training schools and technical colleges.

6. Open FATA to the media and allow independent human rights monitors to investigate possible human rights violations and abuses by the civil administration or law-enforcement agencies.

To the Government of Afghanistan:

7. Work with Pakistan and NATO-ISAF in the military-to-military Tri-Partite Commission to ensure greater coordination in curbing cross-border militancy.

To the United States and the European Union:

8. Press the Pakistan government to take action against pro-Taliban elements in FATA and publish monthly NATO figures of cross-border incursions into Afghanistan to encourage it to do more on its side of the border.

9. Make support for Reconstruction Opportunity Zones in the tribal belt conditional on steps by Pakistan to end Taliban-style parallel administrative and judicial structures and ensure participation of moderate stakeholders in identifying and implementing development projects.

10. Press President Musharraf to allow free, fair and democratic elections in 2007 and give political and economic support for the process.

Islamabad/Brussels, 11 December 2006