News related to FATA

Society Pakistan & World Affairs
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We dont have any particular thread related to FATA, since now most of the terrorist activities/drone attacks etc are happening there and hopefully posts related to the solution of the crisis brewing there, we can use this thread for that. A few days back ANP held a jirga in FATA, this article is related to that. You will find that slowly some pakhtuns (like the baloch’s) have started to question Pakistan’s policies in the region.

http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2012\01\21\story_21-1-2012_pg3_4

**ANALYSIS: Voices from FATA and the panic — II —Farhat Taj

**

http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/images/2012/01/21/20120121_31.jpg

FATA does not need to be a separate province. It desperately needs Khyber Pakhtunkhwa to stand on its feet. The cure for FATA is its incorporation in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa to be able to overcome its problems

**In the Awami National Party’s (ANP’s) convened grand tribal jirga held in Peshawar on January 1, 2012 the representative from Bajaur, Sheikh Janzada, said this: “Death and destruction have been imposed on people in FATA due to the strategic policy of the state of Pakistan. Pakhtuns on both sides of the Durand Line are devastated by design. The entire Pakhtun culture is under assault through targeted terror attacks, such as the attacks on tribal leaders, jirgas and funeral ceremonies. But still no one in Pakistan seems to bother about the atrocities against the Pakhtun.”
**
**Sheikh Janzada said that the Frontier Crimes Regulation (FCR) by which Pakistan governs FATA, is a dark colonial remnant. No changes in the FCR are acceptable to the people of FATA. The FCR must be abolished altogether immediately. **In the presence of the FCR, with or without reforms in it, political parties of Pakistan cannot freely function in FATA because the political administrations in FATA would continue to interfere with the normal political processes there at the behest of the military establishment.

**Recently, three sitting ANP provincial ministers, including Bashir Bilour and Mian Iftikhar Hussain, came to Bajaur, but they could not freely meet the people there. The ministers were made to meet in the office of the Political Agent Bajaur with only eight local tribal leaders, handpicked by the political agent. Following the meeting, the ministers were led away from Bajaur. **A sustained struggle must be launched to abolish Article 247 from the Constitution of Pakistan. As long as this Article is not removed from the constitution, FATA will remain outside the purview of parliament and the FCR will prevail over the area in one form or the other in order to abuse the area as a strategic space of the state.

The Bajaur representative further said that the people of FATA are thankful to the ANP for renaming the former NWFP Khyber Pakhtunkhwa in line with the Pakhtun identity of this land. But this is an incomplete Pakhtunkhwa and will remain so as long as FATA, Pakhtun territories in Balochistan and the Pakhtun areas of Punjab (Attock, Mianwali and Hazro) are not included in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province of Pakistan. Now the struggle must focus on reuniting all Pakhtun territories in Pakistan. From a historical, cultural, territorial, economic and political point of view, FATA is an integral part of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province and so it must be given representation in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Assembly so that representatives from both areas jointly discuss to find mutual solutions for their problems that are inextricably interwoven.

The representative added that since decades the state-run Radio Pakistan is lying to the people of Pakistan about massive development in FATA that just does not exist on the ground. Going by this state propaganda, FATA today must be competing with Paris in socio-economic development. Over the decades, FATA political administrations, local vested interests linked with the administration and their touts have exploited the people of FATA. There can never be any development whatsoever in FATA under the Political Agent-Malik (tribal/clan chiefs) alliance that must now be relegated to the dustbin of history.

The Bajaur representative also said that the current governor of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, who governs FATA on behalf of the president of Pakistan, is disconnected from the people of FATA and could not care less about the sufferings of the people of FATA. The governor has yet to convene a grand tribal jirga from FATA. Instead of coming to Bajaur to distribute prizes among outstanding students from the area, the governor recently invited the students to Peshawar and became the chief guest within his own house, the Governor’s House, in the prize distribution ceremony arranged for the students. He requested the ANP to arrange an all-FATA tribal leaders’ meeting with President Zardari to convey the grievances of the tribal people to the president. The Bajaur representative ended his address with these two lines of Pashto poetry symbolically directed by the people of FATA at the rulers of Pakistan: “Pa khpala ta munsif sha ze bashar yam-o-ka na yam, Ka ze cherey bashar yam no haquq di zama cherey” (Be a judge and tell me whether I am a human or not, if I am a human, where are my human rights).

Representatives from Kurram and North Waziristan, Nazir Hussain and Fazal Qadeem respectively, demanded complete abolition of the FCR, incorporation of FATA in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province and FATA representation in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Assembly. Questioning the people who demand a separate FATA province, the Kurram representative said that the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Assembly inherently belongs to the people of FATA, who have an absolute right to have their elected representatives seated in this assembly.

Shah Hussain, representative from Khyber, thanked the ANP for holding the jirga amid immense dangers to the party (reference to the repeated terror attacks on ANP leaders and workers due to the party’s stance against the strategic depth policy of the military establishment of Pakistan). He said it is mindboggling to hear some people wanting a separate province in FATA. How could that be? FATA is like a chronic patient who has been paralysed and bed-ridden for several decades since birth. Those demanding a FATA province are like someone trying to arrange a marriage for such a chronic patient. The patient does not need marriage. It needs a cure to be able to stand on its own feet. FATA does not need to be a separate province. It desperately needs Khyber Pakhtunkhwa to stand on its feet. The cure for FATA is its incorporation in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa to be able to overcome its problems. He requested the ANP to increase political activities in FATA. Rejecting any changes in the FCR, he demanded its complete abolition and termed the FCR as the mother of all crimes in FATA.

The representative from Khyber also said that those people who demand a separate FATA province have nothing to do with the people of FATA. Such people are not representatives of FATA (this is a reference to Hameedullah Jan, MNA Khyber Agency who has made the FATA Grand Alliance, which is demanding a separate FATA province). Such people are the representatives of the oppressive political administration in the area (and by extension the representatives of the military establishment). In the past, the political administrations used to speak through the handpicked Maliks and now they make their views known through FATA parliamentarians, who speak as and when directed by the political administration. The whole world is in step with the onwards march of time, but FATA has been frozen in a 100-year-old FCR system. The so-called FATA representatives in the Pakistani parliament have even announced to keep the FCR imposed on FATA for the next 100 years.

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Re: News related to FATA

this is part I of the article I posted above:

http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2012\01\14\story_14-1-2012_pg3_4

**ANALYSIS: Voices from FATA and the panic — I —Farhat Taj

**

http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/images/2012/01/14/20120114_11.jpg

The state has kept FATA away from civilisation and since 9/11 it has also been stripped of dignity in death — a reference to the frequent desecration of dead bodies and attacks on funeral ceremonies

In the first week of January 2012, there was a sudden demand in the national political scene for new provinces cut out of the Pakhtun territory in Pakistan, namely the Hazara and FATA provinces. The Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) has been leading the demand. The MQM has no political presence in the Pakhtun land, including FATA and Hazara. The party has never been known for speaking up for people’s grievances in FATA and Hazara. Instead, it has been constantly accused for years by many families from these two areas for killing their near and dear ones in Karachi as part of ethnic cleansing in the mega city. It seemed difficult to understand the immediate cause behind the MQM leading the demand for the new provinces until I had a chance to listen to the video clips of a tribal jirga (assembly) conveyed under the auspices of the Awami National Party (ANP) on January 1, 2012.

Representatives of the FATA tribes in this jirga rejected any divisions of the Pakhtun nation and its territory.** They made hard-hitting speeches against the Frontier Crimes Regulation (FCR), FATA political administrations, FATA parliamentarians, who they said are nothing more than lackeys of the Pakistani establishment and above all the total lack of moral and political outrage in the wider Pakistani society against the innocent killings and human sufferings in FATA for about a decade since the war on terror began. **

They forcefully demanded incorporation of the FATA territory within the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province; FATA representation in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Assembly on the basis of adult franchise; full inclusion of FATA in the legal system of Pakistan, including full extension of the human rights framework, and thus rejected the partial amendments in the FCR recently introduced by the PPP-led coalition government, including the ANP. They also urged the ANP to represent their demands and grievances at all forums in Pakistan.

**I would like to reproduce in this newspaper some of what the tribal representatives have been saying. It is voices like these in FATA that have been silenced in mysterious targeted killings in the area for about a decade since the post-9/11 US attack on the Taliban positions in Afghanistan and the following escape of the militants to the tribal area where they were provided safe havens not by the tribes but by the intelligence agencies of Pakistan through coordination with their lackeys in FATA, mostly from the religious class nurtured by the establishment, especially since the days of the so-called Afghan jihad. No investigations have been conducted to determine who killed so many people in FATA who were against the strategic depth policy of Pakistan. **

It is very important that voices from the ANP-organised jirga are heard loud and clear across Pakistan, because some of the speakers of this gathering may not remain among us in the coming months and years. They might be target killed just like over 1,500 tribal leaders and other politically active people in the tribal areas have been killed for expressing similar views in order to silence others with fear of target killings for speaking out. Two of the important speeches in the jirga were from Nisar Wazir, popularly known as Nisar Lala in Waziristan, and Latif Afridi, well-known advocate and political leader from the Khyber Agency. In addition to that, important ANP leaders also spoke on the occasion, expressing their political commitments for FATA in line with the jirga members’ aspirations.

A representative from the FR D I Khan said that the outside vested state interests have drawn divisions under various labels among the Pakhtun and so we reject all such divisions. He urged the ANP to keep fighting for the unity of the Pakhtuns. The representative from FR Tank said that all Pakhtuns from Chitral to Bolan (Balochistan) are one and the same and divisions among them are not acceptable. He demanded inclusion of FATA in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province and total abolition of the FCR law that he said treats the people of FATA worse than animals. One punishes only one animal, not the whole herd, for an unwanted act of that single animal but under the FCR the entire tribe is punished for the wrongdoing of one person among them. He said that the British government stopped water that irrigated the land belonging to his tribe, the Bhittani tribe, as punishment for the tribe’s close links with the movement of Khan Ghaffar Khan. He also referred to the visit of Ghaffar Khan and Gandhi ji to his tribe in the past.

Referring to the lack of public protests in Pakistan over the decade-long innocent killings in FATA, the representative from Mohmand Agency said everyone takes serious note of the innocent killings in Karachi but no comparable attention has ever been shown by the wider Pakistani society towards the killings and sufferings of innocent people in FATA. There were so many protests in Pakistan over the US killing of Pakistan Army soldiers on Salala checkpost, but never any protests over the thousands of tribal civilians’ killings in Mohmand or the rest of FATA.

He said the state has kept FATA away from civilisation and since 9/11 it has also been stripped of dignity in death — a reference to the frequent desecration of dead bodies and attacks on funeral ceremonies. He said that as long as the state does not take its hands off Afghanistan (a reference to the strategic depth policy of Pakistan) there will not be peace in Afghanistan and by extension in FATA.

All political parties of Pakistan have compromised on the blood and also on legal exclusion of the people of FATA from the rest of Pakistan. He said that once a national census team came to his house but he saw no reason to enrol his family in the population of Pakistan on this ground:** I live under the British law (FCR); I am forcibly stopped by Pakistan from establishing normal social relations with my co-ethnics in Afghanistan and I am kept legally excluded from the rest of Pakistan. How can I be a Pakistani in this situation?**
**
He also informed that recently a group of students from Mohmand Agency visited a FATA parliamentarian in Islamabad in which the latter urged that students should stop speaking against the FCR and for girls’ education.
**
The parliamentarian’s wife and daughters, added the Mohmand representative, are well-educated women, but nevertheless he wants to see the people of FATA live in ignorance and under the oppressive FCR. The FATA parliamentarians have been exploiting their perks and privileges but have done nothing to alleviate the sufferings of the tribal people and have never raised their voices against the decade-long human rights violations in FATA.

He said the national debate on how to integrate FATA with the rest of Pakistan is merely a lame excuse to prolong the legal isolation of the area for an indefinite time. This is because the state does not want to end the legal isolation of FATA. Swat, Dir, Chitral, Bahawalpur and many other areas were included in the normal legal state system of Pakistan with a simple stroke of the pen without any debate on how to integrate these areas into Pakistan. The state must fully include FATA with one stroke of the pen in the legal framework of Pakistan just like the other areas if it is sincere with the tribal people.

All political parties of Pakistan must fully support this move as well as the incorporation of FATA in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province and the complete abolition of the FCR, if they are also sincere with the people of FATA.](http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2012\01\14\story_14-1-2012_pg3_4)

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Re: News related to FATA

The people of FATA want FCR to be abolished and the tribal areas to be incorporated into the Pakistani main stream, but for the past 60 years no one has tried to do that. FCR is a black law, can you imagine one person kills some one (say an army man) the whole tribe is punished for the crime of that one man. This way I dont know if they are able to punish the cocnerned, but I am pretty sure they antagonize the whole tribe.

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http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/01/22/us-pakistan-drones-idUSTRE80L08G20120122?feedType=RSS&feedName=pakistan&virtualBrandChannel=10165&utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter&dlvrit=59231

Exclusive: How Pakistan helps the U.S. drone campaign

(Reuters) - **The death of a senior al Qaeda leader in a U.S. drone strike in Pakistan’s tribal badlands, the first strike in almost two months, signaled that the U.S.-Pakistan intelligence partnership is still in operation despite political tensions.

****The Jan 10 strike – and its follow-up two days later – were joint operations, a Pakistani security source based in the tribal areas told Reuters.
**

**They made use of Pakistani “spotters” on the ground and demonstrated a level of coordination that both sides have sought to downplay since tensions erupted in January 2011 with the killing of two Pakistanis by a CIA contractor in Lahore.

“Our working relationship is a bit different from our political relationship,” the source told Reuters, requesting anonymity. “It’s more productive.”

**
U.S. and Pakistani sources told Reuters that the target of the Jan 10 attack was Aslam Awan, a Pakistani national from Abbottabad, the town where Osama bin Laden was killed last May by a U.S. commando team.

They said he was targeted in a strike by a U.S.-operated drone directed at what news reports said was a compound near the town of Miranshah in the border province of North Waziristan.

That strike broke an undeclared eight-week hiatus in attacks by the armed, unmanned drones that patrol the tribal areas and are a key weapon in U.S. President Barack Obama’s counter-terrorism strategy.

The sources described Awan, also known by the nom-de-guerre Abdullah Khorasani, as a significant figure in the remaining core leadership of al Qaeda, which U.S. officials say has been sharply reduced by the drone campaign. Most of the drone attacks are conducted as part of a clandestine CIA operation.

The Pakistani source, who helped target Awan, could not confirm that he was killed, but the U.S. official said he was. European officials said Awan had spent time in London and had ties to British extremists before returning to Pakistan.

**The source, who says he runs a network of spotters primarily in North and South Waziristan, described for the first time how U.S.-Pakistani cooperation on strikes works, with his Pakistani agents keeping close tabs on suspected militants and building a pattern of their movements and associations.

“We run a network of human intelligence sources,” he said. "Separately, we monitor their cell and satellite phones.

“Thirdly, we run joint monitoring operations with our U.S. and UK friends,” he added, noting that cooperation with British intelligence was also extensive.

****Pakistani and U.S. intelligence officers, using their own sources, hash out a joint “priority of targets lists” in regular face-to-face meetings, he said.
**

“Al Qaeda is our top priority,” he said.

He declined to say where the meetings take place.

**Once a target is identified and “marked,” his network coordinates with drone operators on the U.S. side. He said the United States bases drones outside Kabul, likely at Bagram airfield about 25 miles north of the capital.

****From spotting to firing a missile “hardly takes about two to three hours,” he said.
**

DRONE STRIKES A SORE POINT WITH PAKISTAN

**It was impossible to verify the source’s claims and American experts, who decline to discuss the drone program, say the Pakistanis’ cooperation has been less helpful in the past.

**U.S. officials have complained that when information on drone strikes was shared with the Pakistanis beforehand, the targets were often tipped off, allowing them to escape.

Drone strikes have been a sore point with the public and Pakistani politicians, who describe them as violations of sovereignty that produce unacceptable civilian casualties.

The last strike before January had been on Nov 16, 10 days before 24 Pakistani soldiers were killed in what NATO says was an inadvertent cross-border attack on a Pakistani border post.

That incident sent U.S.-Pakistan relations into the deepest crisis since Islamabad joined the U.S.-led war on militancy following the Sept 11, 2001 attacks. On Thursday, Pakistani foreign minister Hina Rabbani Khar said ties were “on hold” while Pakistan completes a review of the alliance.

The United States sees Pakistan as critical to its efforts to wind down the war in Afghanistan, where U.S.-led NATO forces are battling a Taliban insurgency.

Some U.S. and Pakistani officials say that both sides are trying to improve ties. As part of this process, a U.S. official said, it is possible that some permanent changes could be made in the drone program which could slow the pace of attacks.

The security source said very few innocent people had been killed in the strikes. When a militant takes shelter in a house or compound which is then bombed, “the ones who are harboring him, they are equally responsible,” he said.

“When they stay at a host house, they (the hosts) obviously have sympathies for these guys.”

He denied that Pakistan helped target civilians.

“If … others say innocents have been targeted, it’s not true,” he said. “We never target civilians or innocents.”

**The New America Foundation policy institute says that of 283 reported strikes from 2004 to Nov 16, 2011, between 1,717 and 2,680 people were killed. Between 293 and 471 were thought to be civilians – approximately 17 percent of those killed.

The Brookings Institution, however, says civilian deaths are high, reporting in 2009 that “for every militant killed, 10 or more civilians also died.” Pakistan’s interior minister, Rehman Malik, also said in April 2011 that “the majority of victims are innocent civilians.”

**Still, despite its public stance, Pakistan has quietly supported the drone program since Obama ramped up air strikes when he took office in 2009 and even asked for more flights.

According to a U.S. State Department cable published by anti-secrecy organization WikiLeaks, Pakistan’s chief of army staff General Ashfaq Kayani in February 2008 asked Admiral William J. Fallon, then-commander of U.S. Central Command, for increased surveillance and round-the-clock drone coverage over North and South Waziristan.

**The security source said Pakistan’s powerful spy agency, the Directorate of Inter-Services Intelligence, also was supportive of the strikes, albeit privately.
**
(Additional reporting by Mark Hosenball in Washington; Editing by Ron Popeski)

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Re: News related to FATA

Didn’t Gillani abolish FCR or was it all hype like usual? :konfused:

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I don't think it was abolished as this jirga took place a couple of weeks ago.

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http://www.dawn.com/2012/01/23/us-drone-attack-in-north-waziristan.html

Four killed in US drone attacks in North Waziristan

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[FONT=Georgia, ‘Times New Roman’, Times, serif]When will Fata’s grievances be addressed?

**The most neglected, most devastated and most backward area in Pakistan today is the Federally Administered Tribal Areas. Fata has been ignored intentionally and continuously by successive governments since the creation of Pakistan. Whatever little progress Fata has made to become liveable is because of the untiring efforts and devotion of its people, the government not having contributed anything worth mentioning.

Fata has seen no development for centuries as the region remained mostly in a state of war or was used for military purposes. With our joining the war on terror, the area experienced a new wave of destruction. The army was moved into it and the inhabitants moved out to enable military operations to clear the area of militants. This made people, by the millions, internally displaced in that region and the government failed to provide any help or assistance, like it did for IDPs from other areas in the country. After years of operations the poor tribesmen are still lingering in camps in Peshawar and Dera Ismail Khan, suffering all kinds of deprivations and now, with the onset of winter, they are braving the cold. **

**These internally displaced people needed attention more than anyone else for quick return and rehabilitation in their villages. They needed far more assistance for reconstruction of their destroyed homes and properties. They needed help and assistance more than anybody else for healing the wounds caused by bombardment by their own country’s jet fighters and helicopter-gunships. Although it is difficult to completely eradicate these scars a beginning could have been made by addressing at least some of the pressing problems without further loss of time. **

Instead of doing that, the government resorted to political gimmickry by slightly amending the Frontier Crimes Regulation (FCR) and extending the Political Parties Act to Fata. But even there it was not honest and sincere. Before the amendment it imposed a Regulation on Fata giving more powers to the army than it took away from the political agent. These sweeping powers have no parallel in history except in undivided India where the British Raj imposed the Rowlet Act in 1919 to crush local uprisings. (The Jalianwala Bagh massacre was a product of that Act.)

**This is the gift of the elected government to the people of Fata, where the barrister-turned-political-governor does not tire of defending the policies of his masters in Islamabad. The cosmetic changes that were made in the FCR were overshadowed by the imposition of the Regulation.
**
According to a well place source special rules are being framed for governing the conduct of political parties in Fata. What purpose will the extension of Political Parties Act serve if political parties are not allowed to operate in the tribal areas as they do elsewhere in the country?

The civil government says one thing and does another in running the country. This norm seems to have been followed by its governor in Fata also. He said in a seminar in Islamabad that he was aware of the fact that officers having no houses of their own used to run around to find ‘sifarish’ for being posted as political agents in Fata in order to make money there (which is referred to in my article of April 7, 2011, in The News, titled “Fata doesn’t need wishes”).

He gave the impression of having the guts to stop this corruption and to recommend measures to the president, whom he represents in Fata, for quick changes for bringing that area at par with the rest of the country. He did nothing of the sort and resorted to the same old practices of his predecessors. Rumours are rampant that deals for award of contracts for schools and hospitals in the tribal areas were made in Dubai by officials who were supposed to have steered Fata out of the darkness it is in. But there is no sign of change in the system of governance in Fata.

The toll that the war on terror exacted from the people and the area itself could have been redressed had attention been paid to the grievances of the people. Instead, the government resorts to corrupt practices, making Fata still poorer than before and treats the people as third-rate citizens, giving them no rights whatsoever in running their own area. They are ruled by government servants coming from cities far away from Fata who, having no stakes in the area, use their lucrative positions for personal gains.

The fault also lies, to some extent, with the tribesmen and their elected representatives. They have not done what they were supposed to do. Those in the know of things and empowered to exert public pressure do not raise their voices against the corrupt practices and injustices being done to the tribesmen.

They neither speak nor write about problems of the area, particularly the war on terror and the militancy which have drastically affected Fata in every sense. It is only when they bring these problems to the fore will the people in power listen to them. Nobody else is going to give solutions to them on a silver platter. They themselves have to act. Those who have not solved their problems in the past will not do so in the future.

This indifference has surfaced even more prominently in the ongoing war on terror.** When tribesmen are killed it is either brushed off as “collateral damage.” Or the victims are conveniently labelled “militants” whereas when people from other areas are killed they are called martyrs. When tribesmen serving in the civil armed forces (the Frontier Corps) are killed they are neither properly mourned nor honoured (the killing of FC personnel in North Waziristan and Makran in Balochistan is a case in point. But when army personnel, particularly from Punjab are killed then Pakistan’s relations with other countries are put at stake. This discrimination has to end if we are to save the country and treat the tribesmen as respectable citizens of Pakistan whose blood is as precious as that of anybody else.**

The tribesmen cannot and should not absolve themselves of shouldering their responsibilities; they also have to struggle for their rights like others in the country. At the same time, the government should consider empowering the tribesmen to mainstream Fata through development. There are no short cuts and no alternatives. But it remains to be seen when this will happen and the grievances of the tribesmen addressed.

The writer is a former ambassador who hails from Fata. Email: waziruk@hotmail. com

](The News International: Latest News Breaking, World, Entertainment, Royal News)

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http://www.dawn.com/2012/01/23/fear-of-militants-haunts-khyber-idps.html

Fear of militants haunts Khyber IDPs

The college student said that the villagers were facing problems not only because of militants. FC, too, was equally responsible, he alleged. The paramilitary force recently conducted an intense search operation in Qamberabad, taking away a large number of tribesmen for questioning, including two of his uncles, he added.

All of the men, he said, were taken to a nearby military fort and were set free after the interrogation.%between%

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sharam tum ko magar nahin aati… :frowning:

US drone attacks unacceptable, says Foreign Secretary

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US has dropped the prerequisites for talks (laying down their arms) with Afghan taleban, the same has been offered to TTP by ANP.

ANP to militants: ‘Accept govt’s writ if not surrendering arms’
****PESHAWAR: **Even if the militants do not lay their weapons, they should accept the writ of the government, said Awami National Party (ANP) president Asfandyar Wali Khan during a party address on Thursday.

**
“It is considered humiliating in the Pashtun culture to ask someone to surrender their arms,” Asfandyar added while speaking on the occasion of the death anniversary of his father Wali Khan and grandfather Bacha Khan.

Asfandyar also remarked that the people of FATA will choose out of their own will whether they want to join Khyber Pakhtunkhwa or form a separate province.

He added: “We want peace in Afghanistan and both the countries [Pakistan and Afghanistan] should sit down for talks to ensure that the end of violence in the Pashtun belt… The ANP has won the battle for the rights of Pashtuns and is now fighting for their survival.”

No institution should be allowed to supersede the limits set by the Constitution, only the parliament is supreme and no undemocratic step will be endorsed by the ANP, the party chief added.

ANP Provincial President Afrasiyab Khattak, addressing the rally, said that the ANP is the biggest party in the province as more than 2.3 million people joined the party recently. He added that almost 500 ANP workers have been killed in violence in the province.

KP Chief Minister Ameer Haider Hoti added that the provincial government has increased the development in the province and took to record heights. “ADP (Annual Development Program) increased to 80%, which is the highest in any government’s record.”%between%

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Impact of Milliatry operation in FATA/ Mohmand Agency on children
Impact of Milliatry operation in FATA/ Mohmand Agency on children
The ongoing uncertain peace situation/conflicts in Mohmand have had a drastic and negative impact on the economic and livelihood status of the affected population. Communities struggle to meet the needs of their members, including children. Such families are unable to neither meet the basic needs of their children nor provide their children with love and care they require as well.

The prevailing conditions have forced many children to look for a means of survival on the streets by engaging themselves in harmful activities such as involvement with drugs and crime. Many of the targeted children are sold at an early age by their parents and caretakers into forced labor as a means to generate income for the survival of their family. Often, the types of activities children are engaged in are reported to be incompatible with their age and physical strength and as having severe consequences on their well- being.

The issue of child marriage has also arisen, especially with young girls, as parents believe that in marrying their daughters to older men, they will ensure the survival of their child as well as reduce the number of their own dependents.

Children, in the post-conflict scenario, have been at particular risk and in need of special child protection attention. The affected and displaced population in Mohmand faces specific challenges and barriers with regard to access to protection. It is also subjected to heightened levels of anxiety and trauma, induced by factors associated with displacement. For children in particular, this further increases their vulnerability to abuse, exploitation, self-harm, and above all, psychosocial trauma and other damaging effects.

Children, having witnessed death and destruction have limited access to assistance. The specific protection needs of the most vulnerable children in the most conflict- affected regions of Mohmand must be addressed, allowing humanitarian service providers greater access and contact with the population.
The provision of safe hygiene awareness is essential for a healthy learning environment. Unfortunately, having access to safe water and sanitation facilities is not enough and proper hygiene behavior of all, including children, parents and teachers/school staff is essential to getting full health benefits from the facilities.%between%

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http://www.thefridaytimes.com/beta2/tft/article.php?issue=20120127&page=8.2Taliban and the Pashtun tradition of resistance[TABLE=“width: 646”]

“Any given society is represented by various schools of thoughts that take the form of ideologies. They represent the mechanisms through which individuals, ethnicities or nations attempt to adapt or respond to the constantly changing environment,” says Arif Ansar, a security expert associated with Politact, a Washington based think tank. “But the important thing to consider is what is perceived as causing the change. Because that has an influence on the type of response that is formulated.”

In the last two or three centuries, he says, changes in the Pashtun environment have come from external sources. They were considered intrusions and fiercely resisted. “Some of these responses include the resistance of Afghan Taliban against the US, the Mujahideen against the Russains, and before that, the resistance against the British.”

Although references are often made to events of Pashtun resistance from the past, especially the Faqir of Ipi, Mullah Powindah and Pir Roshan, says Raees Ahmed, a Pashtun university professor from Quetta, those historical figures had a strong Pashtun nationalistic bias and they were not known for targeting their own people.

**“Foreign militants, especially Arabs, Uzbeks and Punjabis have introduced such inhumane and unIslamic trends as beheadings, suicide bombings, attacking mosques or hujras (guest houses) and flogging women,” said Idress Kamal, a leader of Aman Tehrik, a civil society alliance in Khyber Pakhtunkwa.

“Ethnically, the Taliban are not a Pashtun homogeneous group,” Kamal said. "They are an amalgamation of different jiahdi groups hailing from various ethnicities and nations, and prominent among them are more ideological Punjab-based jihadi outfits. **

After 9/11, religious groups such as the Difa-e-Afghanistan Council, an alliance that included key religious parties, were urging people to join hands with the Afghan Taliban because they were Pashtuns. “Thousands of people from Malakand division and Bajaur agency went to Afghanistan under the leadership of Sufi Muhammad, head of Tehreek-e-Nifaz-e-Shariat-e-Muhammadi, and were either killed, arrested or are still missing. But Sufi Muhammad and a dozen of his men came back safely to Pakistam,” said an elder of the Salarzai tribe of Bajaur.

“Pashtuns of Pakistan have always rejected religious extremism,” said an ANP provincial leader. “The last elections show that they are liberal, progressive people and their leadership is predominately anti-Taliban.”

“At least 360 elders and fighters of the Salarzai clan have been killed while battling the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan in Bajaur,” the tribal leader said. “We are peaceful people and our elders have rendered sacrifices to save our motherland and the Pashtun society from these dark forces,” he said. He denied reports int he media that Al Qaeda and other terrorist leaders were given refuse in the tribal areas in line with the Pashtunwali code.

**Aqeel Yousafzai, a Peshawar-based political analyst, says it is a fact that an overwhelming majority of Afghan Taliban are Pashtuns, and “the excesses of the militants belonging to Northern Alliance, an alliance of non-Pashtun jihadi groups in Afghanistan, is the main reason behind it”.

Former leaders of Khalaq and Parcham factions of the People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan had tried to influence the Taliban into thinking about Pashtun nationalism and had succeeded in convincing them to make Pashto the country’s official language, he said. “But the Egyptian leadership of Al Qaeda wanted to turn the Taliban into an international Wahabi movement rather than a local Pashtun resistance movement.”**

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http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2012\01\28\story_28-1-2012_pg3_6

ANALYSIS: Voices from FATA and the panic — III —Farhat Taj

http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/images/2012/01/28/20120128_20.jpg

The strangest thing is that no one seems interested to speak to the people of FATA about this issue. This is despite the fact that the people of FATA are the biggest victims of terrorism in the region in terms of death and destruction

An important speaker in the ANP’s convened tribal jirga on January 1, 2012 in Peshawar was Nisar Khan, a widely respected tribal leader from South Waziristan. Politically, Nisar Khan is close to those 200 or so tribal leaders from South Waziristan who have been target killed since 2003 due to their opposition to the Afghan policy of the military establishment of Pakistan. These tribal leaders were opposed to the arrival and activities of the militants in South Waziristan following their escape from the post-9/11 US bombing of the Taliban and al Qaeda positions in Afghanistan. Their targeted killings are closely linked with the gradual slipping of Waziristan into the militants’ control. The media in Pakistan and around the world have either ignored those killings or have been uncritically attributing them to the Taliban and al Qaeda terrorists.

**Families of the target killed leaders hold officers of the Pakistan Army and the ISI stationed in Waziristan at the time responsible for the killings. The government of Pakistan never had any impartial investigations to verify the claims of the families. But it is pertinent to note that the so-called ‘free’ media of Pakistan usually follows the military establishment’s line on matters related to the Afghan policy, including an uncritical dissemination and promotion of the distorted information about the events on both sides of the Durand Line. This context of the media-military alliance of Pakistan seems to explain why the perspective of the family members of the target killed tribal leaders has never been accommodated by the media. **Large sections of the international media, which has no independent access to FATA, have also breached professional standards by uncritically projecting the information and narratives picked up from the Pakistani media.

The families of the target killed leaders do not view the militants based in Waziristan, including foreign militants, as anything more than an ‘irregular’ army of the state who were and still to this date are ordered by the regular army commanders based in Waziristan to carry out the killings in order to silence the tribal opposition to the state’s Afghan policy through terror. Moreover, the militants are also directed for cross-border attacks inside Afghanistan. Secondly, the establishment, the family members argue, needs this kind of irregular army for the ‘necessary’ acts of terrorism to plausibly deny any state involvement in them and thus continue their double-dealing in the war on terror.

**In terms of state control, several people draw a parallel between the Taliban fighters and the soldiers of the FC, a paramilitary force of Pakistan. The FC soldiers are abused in all kinds of brutal ways by the military establishment and these poor men from the poorest Pashtun families continue to suffer in silence. **The Taliban are, in the words of some of the affected family members, like the ‘irregular’ FC soldiers of the military establishment and they just execute the orders given by their handlers from the Pakistan Army. **The Taliban fighters are also eliminated by the state’s agents when they are no more useful for the state in its double-dealing in the war on terror whereby the Pakistan Army ostensibly fights the Taliban but tacitly recruits, trains and arms them in order to beat the US in Afghanistan and to create a reign of terror in the Pashtun areas of Pakistan to assure the world that the Pakistani Pashtun are enraged by the US attack on Afghanistan. **

Nisar Khan has so far survived the spree of target killings of those in Waziristan who disagree with the state’s Afghan policy. Perhaps this is because he had distanced himself from public life in Waziristan in the form of a self-imposed socio-political isolation as he saw popular tribal leaders, including his close friends, being brutally killed one after the other due to their opposition to the Afghan policy of the military establishment. His appearance at the ANP-convened jirga is thus a sign of his coming back to public life. His speech in the jirga was guarded, which is understandable given the threats to his life but still he highlighted some important issues of FATA. This is what he said:

Due to terrorism emanating from FATA, the region has become the centre of global attention whereby people around the world are discussing the area. But the strangest thing is that no one seems interested to speak to the people of FATA about this issue. **This is despite the fact that the people of FATA are the biggest victims of terrorism in the region in terms of death and destruction. It cannot be assumed that the wider Pakistani society or the world at large does not know about the human sufferings in the area. **Every single day the people of FATA bury the mutilated bodies of their relatives who have died violent deaths. Conflict-driven internally displaced people from FATA are spread all over Pakistan in pathetic condition and many of them have been constrained to beg for survival on the streets of the Punjab and Sindh. All this has been reported by the media all over the world. How can the world or Pakistan then claim to have been unaware of the crisis of humanity in FATA caused by the post-9/11 security crisis?

The Pakistani state has never considered the tribal people worthy of equal values and dignity at par with the other people of Pakistan. The state has given them only a Pakistani identity card as a symbol of their connection with Pakistan and in lieu of that has exploited them for foreign policy objectives. There is a debate in Pakistan that offers three incentives to the people of FATA: peace, reforms in the Frontier Crimes Regulations (FCR) and development. But all the three mutually contradict one another in the context of the region abused by the state for strategic objectives. FATA reforms are only a joke to the tribal people. The current death and destruction in FATA are rooted in the FCR-given impunity to the state to exploit the region. The writ of the Pakistani parliament should be extended to FATA. Without this, the party-based elected representatives from FATA would remain irrelevant to FATA as parliament will not be able to legislate for this region. Thus, the recent reform in the FCR whereby the Political Parties Act of Pakistan has recently been extended to FATA is meaningless. He demanded the incorporation of FATA in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. He also requested the military rulers of Pakistan to take pity on Pakistan, if not FATA, because by now the security situation in the whole country has deteriorated to such an extent that the continual state torture of FATA is by implication a state torture of the people of Pakistan.
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http://www.thefrontierpost.com/?p=111154

Future status of FATA in the backdrop of reformsPosted on February 2, 2012

Ihsan Dawar

Future status of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) is a hot issue among the political lords of FATA and the settled areas as well.

**Ironically at the time of Independence, the people of FATA willingly decided to join Pakistan but they were kept under inhuman regulations imposed by the British rulers to perpetuate their rule and to keep under pressure the people of Tribal areas called at that time Yaghistan – A Pashto substitute for a land where there is no law and proper government.

**
**Frontier Crimes Regul*ation (FCR) was imposed and enforced in highly inhuman manner for more than 60 years and when Pakistan came into being, the real injustice started. A big question mark still haunts the minds of those having a bit of common sense why FCR was not nullified after the creation of Pakistan and why tribal areas were not given the status of a regular part of the country. Were the rulers not clear about the loyalty and sincerity of the people who proved their loyalty just a year later during the war of Kashmir in 1948.

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**FCR has been used cruelly by the political agents and the tribesmen had to pay heavy price for the so-called slogan of Azad Qabail.

**
**With the passage of time tribal people improved their life standard and literacy rate which created awareness among them about the inhuman use of FCR and violation of their human rights throughout the last 64 years. Demands started to be raised from different corners of the tribal areas that there should be a change in the status of FATA.

**
Four types of views came to the fore as a result of an unceasing discussion within and outside FATA. A group was of the opinion that FATA should be made part of KPK. This group consisted mostly of those who have affiliations with ANP. They strongly opposed further division of Pakhtuns into more provinces or units.

They also claimed that FATA would be unable to survive without KPK as it had no monetary system and even there was no consensus among the people of FATA where they should have their capital. They argued that the people of FATA had not even agreed upon the establishment of FATA University for the last four years, how they would agree upon the establishment of a province. They were also of the opinion that KPK would grow stronger and the people of FATA would have a good number of seats in the assembly of KPK. But now with the passage of time there has been a change in their stance. While speaking at the death anniversaries of Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan and Abdul Wali Khan, chief of ANP Asfandyar Wali Khan said that the party would support the demand of tribesmen even if it is for separate provincial status for FATA.

Another group is of the opinion that FATA should be given the status of a separate province. They have lot of arguments to support their stance. They say that FATA is full of mineral resources and if it becomes part of KPK, all the resources would be exploited by the powerful KPK and the people of FATA would get nothing in exchange.

A third group mostly consisting of retired bureaucrats and the so-called enlightened Maliks from the tribal areas say that both of the above two sides are inapplicable in practical shape. They claim that there should be FATA council to decide unanimously the fate and future of FATA within the given time frame of five or 10 years. And yet the fourth group strongly opposes any kind of change in FCR and the status of FATA. They have their own arguments to support their stand. They refer to the current situation of FATA and term it as a result of the local councils formed in 2004-5.

They say that as soon as Jirga was ignored and non maliks given the opportunity to speak on behalf of the people, things started worsening day by day. This group consists of the maliks and elders who have been benefiting the political administration for more than 10 decades as these people are like close Darbaris of the political agents in the tribal areas. They have established schools, health centers, get contracts, monthly allowances and many more.

They act like the agents of political agents more than the representatives of their tribes whom they claim to be the heads of their tribes.

The discussion took a new turn when President Zardari announced FATA reforms on 12th of August in 2011. Article 247 of the Constitution empowers the President of Pakistan to promulgate laws for FATA and ensure its enforcement through the governor of KPK who acts like his agent for FATA. Thus at the same time the article has also restricted the parliament and the judiciary from any kind of legislation and enforcement of laws in the tribal areas.

The reforms numbering four are relaxation in the rules of collective responsibility, establishment of FATA tribunal, audit of the monetary powers of the political agent and above all the extension of Party Act to FATA.
With the enforcement of the latter one political parties throughout the country has welcomed it warmly but it is still a question mark whether political parties will survive and work in FATA in the current situation of law and order.

FATA’s problems are not easy to be resolved by issuance of just a few reforms which are basically not of any interest of the common man in FATA. Anyway something is better than nothing, these reforms have woken up a sense in the people about their future status in the country.

All the above mentioned four types of opinions are extended and advocated strongly by their advocates as every one of us sees things in one’s own perspective and thinks that he is the only right thinking man in the whole of FATA. But we miss the most important in this exercise.

That is to know what does the silent majority of the people want. FATA has always suffered because a handful of Maliks or the so-called politicians has enforced their will over the majority who has no access to the media or any other forum to express their will, therefore when something is enforced against their will, the majority starts resisting which, as a result, brings chaos and unrest instead of improvement and the same thing is going to be in the case of the future status of FATA.

Those who have a voice in these matters form a very minor part of the total population of FATA and as far as the parliamentarians are concerned, they also cannot claim to be the real representatives of the people of FATA. According to the constitution, they are not in the parliament to legislate over FATA and they have kept themselves aloof from their constituencies for the last four years which has made them totally strangers to their voters. So the real thing is that whenever a decision about FATA is taken, it must be kept in mind strictly that about 80% of the population of FATA lives in villages and they have no voice in media or in the law making process but they surely have the right to extend their will about the future status of FATA. If this very basic right of the majority is denied or ignored, it is sure that the consequences can prove to be fatal instead of usefulness.

[email protected]

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This Farhat Taj seems to be an avowed supporter of ANP.

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Kurram Agency:

10 soldiers killed on Jan 31, 2012
7 troops killed, 5 kidnapped in Lower Kurram (yesterday)

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A book on FATA, its quite long, and I am sure would be a good read to find out more about FATA. It has been published with support of British High commission.http://www.understandingfata.org/uf-volume-v/Understanding_FATA_Vol-V-11.pdf

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Operation carried out in Bara yesterday, 12 non combatants killed where as the locals believe that the militants left the area the day before, which pretty much sums up the war on terror.A day after operation; 12 non-combatants found dead in Bara | Provinces | DAWN.COM

A day after operation; 12 non-combatants found dead in Bara

From the Newspaper | Peshawar |](http://www.dawn.com/category/today-peshawar)8 hours ago

http://www.dawn.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/army-543.jpg

It is also learnt that security forces on Thursday arrested at least 90 people, mostly in Yousuf Talab, Jansi, Speen Qabar and Mandai Kas areas. — Dawn (File Photo)

LANDI KOTAL/ KHAR: People of Sipah area in Bara tehsil on Thursday found bodies of 12 non-combatants, including factory workers, who were killed during the security forces’ crackdown on militants, while three succumbed to critical wounds, it is learnt.
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Sources told Dawn that most bodies were found in Yousuf Talab area, where security forces imposed curfew on Wednesday before the start of the crackdown.
**
They said some died after being buried alive under the debris of houses damaged by artillery shelling, while others were killed in crossfire while running for safe places.

Sources said Khiyal Mohammad, Riaz’s eight-year-old son and Bashar Khan’s small son, who suffered critical injuries, dies on Thursday, while Hikmat Kamarkhel, Shamim Kamarkhel, Janat Khan, Bashar Khan, Samiullah Kamarkhel, Niaz Bahadar and his wife, Meera Baz’s grandson, boy Sheenai, Khan Gul, Kaki Jan and an unidentified person were among those whose bodies were found in the day.
**
Locals, who spoke to on condition of anonymity, said boy Sheenai was picked up by security forces Wednesday evening before his body was found in Yousuf Talab area next morning.**

When contacted, the relevant officials didn’t reveal how many militants were killed in the crackdown. However, locals put the tally at six.

It is also learnt that security forces on Thursday arrested at least 90 people, mostly in Yousuf Talab, Jansi, Speen Qabar and Mandai Kas areas.
**
Locals said suspected militants were seen moving out of these areas in large numbers towards Spera Dam, Akkakhel and Qambar Khel hours before the start of the Wednesday operation.**

They also said many families left their areas for safer places during operation, while many more followed suit after curfew was relaxed for some hours on Thursday morning to let people shift the injured to hospitals.

In another incident, two suspected militants were killed and four injured, while three of their hideouts were destroyed when gunship helicopters targeted them in Ghaibi Neeka area of Sipab in Tirah Valley on Thursday.

Meanwhile, security force on Thursday arrested six suspected militants during a search operation in Warr Mamond tehsil, according to local political tehsildar Farmosh Khan.

Mr Farmosh told that the operation was begun in the wake of Wednesday’s bomb explosion, which killed five pro-government tribesmen in Warr Mamond.

He said security forces began search operation in various parts of the region and that sniffer dogs were also used for the purpose.

Sources said the arrested men were shifted to an undisclosed location for interrogation.

Local administration imposed curfew in Warr Mamond for the search operation.

Also in the day, security forces seized a large quantity of weapons, missiles and explosives and arrested three suspected militants during a search operation in Loe Mamond tehsil.

Bajaur Scouts commandant Colonel Shakil Janjua told reporters that security forces backed by local peace committees conducted search operation in Lara Banda, Bara Banda, Niag Banda and others areas of the region.

He said the seized weapons included dozens of AK-47 rifles, a dozen Russian missiles, 20 mortar shells, 10 rocket launchers, four 14.5MM guns, explosive devices, suicide vests and thousands of live rounds.