Empower the Fata people

While addressing members of the Kurram Agency at the inauguration of a community development project, the NWFP Governor, Lieutenant General Syed Iftikhar Hussain Shah, observed that the government will empower the local councils "in line with the district councils [in other parts of the country with full powers and authority." He further said that the recently held elections to the Agency's councils will make the people of Federally Administered Tribal Areas (Fata) independent in the real sense as they break the hold of the centuries-old colonial system.
These observations are self-explanatory, and reflective of the fact that the people living in Fata do not have the same political rights as do the country's other citizens.
More than five-and-a-half decades after the country's independence, Fata inhabitants remain deprived of genuine participation in the political process. As the very nomenclature Federally Administered Areas shows, the local people have no control over their affairs. Just like the colonial days, the government at the Centre appoints its officials called political agents to oversee its interests in the tribal areas while the so-called tribal elders have complete authority to run the local affairs as per antiquated traditions.
It is hardly surprising if these traditions often clash with the law of the land. Tribal elders sitting in 'jirgas' pronounce judgements on all sorts of issues, including those that fall directly within the purview of the Criminal Procedures Code.
This medieval system, of course, works to the advantage of the tribal heads. No wonder, they resist all efforts at change, and oppose any measures that might bring in the light of progress to the lives of ordinary denizens of Fata. That gives them the claim not only to preside over the local matters but also to represent the areas in Parliament, without having to win their people's support on the basis of adult franchise.
The situation of women is particularly bad. To quote just one recent example, the tribal elders in Fata's Lower Dir district forcibly prevented the women of the area from participating in the last local bodies elections. Sadly, they succeeded in depriving the women of their constitutional right with the connivance of the Federal authorities as well as the backing of the mainstream political parties.
Women in other parts of Fata were also denied their right to vote in the national election - all in the name of tribal traditions.
There is no good reason why these areas must remain stuck in the ancient tribal system, and their people denied the rights that are enjoyed, at least in theory, by fellow countrymen in other parts of Pakistan. It is surely not out of popular choice that these areas have remained backward in terms of social, economic and political development.
In this day and age, it is naïve to think that the Fata people are unaware of and uninterested in progress. As a matter of fact, when the tribal elders tried to suppress the Dir women's democratic aspirations, many local people lent these women their support and actively tried to defy their exclusion from the elected bodies.
There is also a strong political movement in Fata, which has been demanding equal political rights at par with the country's other federating units. Unfortunately, even though governments in the past, in particular the Benazir government, did make some noises about giving genuine representation to Fata in Parliament, through the granting of one-man one vote right to the areas' people, but then backed off for reasons of political expediency.
The present government, confronted by the problems of militancy in the Fata region adjoining Afghanistan, has introduced some political as well as economic development measures there in a bid to establish the writ of the state. But from the perspective of the Fata population, a lot remains to be done. The local council elections are a welcome step forward, but it is not enough. The people of Fata must be brought into the fold of mainstream political life with complete rights as equal citizens of the state.