- Right intentions?
FATA could well be spelt with an L at the end, if its merger with KP is handled the way the rest of the country is being governed these days. The region has such a tumultuous history and such a violent present that there is little scope for blunders.
FATA has always been viewed as a barrier, a buffer between the region that is now Pakistan and the troubled tribal areas of Aghanistan, a source of arms and ammunition, and of persons skilled in their use. It has never been treated as a place requiring hospitals, schools and above all peace. Which is why all these things are sparsely available there, and FATA is even worse off than the rest of Pakistan. FATA, it seems, has one hospital bed for almost 2,200 persons — the rest of Pakistan has almost double that. It has about one doctor for more than 7,500 persons — Pakistan has about seven times that number of doctors.
Less than half of the people of FATA have access to safe drinking water.
The literacy rate in FATA is 22pc. Only 7.5pc of its women receive an education. Pakistan’s overall rate is 56pc, and 44pc of its women receive an education.
Not surprisingly, the region is crawling with violent, militant groups. It will be extremely hard to govern, and that job falls to the government of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
The government of KP will require tact and employ meticulous planning and tread carefully around the customs of the region, which in this tribal society are more than usually important to the people. Neither planning nor tact have been a strength of any government in this country.
The people of Orangi, a squatter settlement, were motivated to finance their own facilities, to develop them themselves
The merger has a timeline of two years. Until then FATA will continue to be governed by a set of interim rules. If FATA continues under separate rules after that period and if its advancement continues to be ignored, its merger into the mainstream will not be a full and honest one. Yet, if it becomes as free as it needs to be, the border of the country will be more porous than it already is.
If the current government of KP wins the elections, is it the best candidate for this job? Keep in mind some of the people supported by this government, people such as those who advocate the regular beating of women as a means of keeping them happy (That is not fake news. The person may be viewed saying so, quite seriously, on a video freely available online). Persons with this attitude are not likely to give female literacy any importance at all.
FATA’s is a tribal, agrarian economy. Less than 4pc of the population lives in urban areas. Its major crop is opium, and the manufacture of arms its major industry. It has plentiful natural resources, but there is no foreseeable likelihood of those resources being mined, or used in any viable sense, because of the volatile nature of the place.
It is no coincidence that the two most troubled regions in the country, Baluchistan and FATA, are also the most undeveloped and ignored. The army has and is playing a major role in both regions. In FATA it will need to continue doing so for some time, ‘in aid of civilian power’ as the constitution puts it, because the level of unrest in FATA requires a firmer hand than civilian organisations can provide. The army is not new to this role.
You cannot expect a people who have no experience of democracy or peace, however pathetic that democracy and peace, to make the change easily, and unless civil groups are able to move around and work in safety the region cannot be provided with the facilities the region requires.
Unlike the rest of the country, where the military runs counter to the government and conducts its own covert campaigns, operations in FATA will need a concerted effort. There must be an end to the chaotic tug of wars, here as well as in the rest of the country.
The army must ensure safety while schools, health facilities and jobs are being set up. In FATA, a doctor who was trying to vaccinate the children of the area came up against an anti-vaccination campaign waged by a local imam. The doctor’s car was blown up and that was the end of his campaign.
The army’s role in FATA will need to be a different one, geared to different goals, under the guidance of the civilian government. The army must ensure the necessary peace, until education and enlightenment kick in, and bring with them their own, intrinsic peace. Then the army can bow out, if that does not sound like an oxymoron.
The government of KP has examples it can follow in providing facilities to a desperately impoverished region.
There is the Orangi Pilot Project (OPP) In Karachi, pioneered many years ago by the late Akhtar Hameed Khan. The people of Orangi, a squatter settlement, were motivated to finance their own facilities, to develop them themselves. The project was extremely successful and has been copied around the world. But Orangi was much smaller, and less violent.
Following the progress of FATA will be an interesting exercise, but hopefully not a tragic one if the right people approach it with the right intentions.
