ISLAMABAD: Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) Senator Farhatullah Babar has said that peace and development in tribal areas will remain elusive unless proper reforms are introduced at the grass-root level in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA).
Addressing a multi-party conference on FATA’s merger with Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP), organised by the Awami National Party (ANP) on Thursday, Farhatullah Babar said that peace and development in FATA is also linked to peace in Afghanistan. The guidelines formulated by the Senate have proposed an agreed mechanism for verification of cross border allegations. The policy towards Afghanistan must be revisited to resolve issues on a permanent basis, he said.
Stop treating Afghanistan as the 5th province of Pakistan and treat it with respect as a sovereign country, he suggested.
The PPP senator further said: “We must condemn and denounce Trump for blaming Pakistan for US failures in Afghanistan but it should not prevent us from looking inwardly.”
He wondered why the previous decision to extend the jurisdiction of Peshawar High Court (PHC) had been changed and instead the jurisdiction of Islamabad High Court (IHC) extended. It seems that policy makers are not bothered about difficulties faced by litigants of FATA who will have to travel from far off places to IHC, he added.
The provincial assembly of KP has passed unanimous resolutions demanding extension of jurisdiction of PHC to tribal areas and the PHC in a 2014 verdict asked the federal government to make necessary legislation, he said, adding that it reflected Islamabad’s mindset to impose itself on the people of FATA even if symbolically.
About the merger, he said that keeping in view the administrative, social, cultural, linguistic, political and geographical conditions and that all roads from FATA led into KP, the merger of the two was most logical.
The PPP senator said that those political parties which fear that merger will change the drivers of political discourse in FATA were most opposed to the merger.
He deplored that Mahmood Achakzai while referred to independence of India Act, a 1923 tribal jirga and Lord Curzon and Cunningham but ignored to mention that tribal people had themselves joins Pakistan and Article 1 of the constitution clearly stated that FATA was part of Pakistan. Achakzai remarks will make headlines but are far from reality, he said.
