Fata uplift

Pakistani and US representatives signed a much anticipated agreement in Islamabad recently under which the US will provide economic assistance worth $750 million for the economic uplift of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA). An amount of $105 million is to be made available during the current year, while the rest of the money will follow over the next four years.
The USAID director explained that the assistance activities would directly support Pakistan government's Sustainable Development Plan for FATA and cover diverse areas such as capacity building, livelihoods, agriculture, micro and small and medium enterprises, health, education and infrastructure development.
The economic aid givers intend to ensure that the money is well spent. Said the AID director, "We have crafted our assistance activities to directly support this plan, and we look forward to working together closely with Fata officials in its implementation."
This programme is part of a bigger plan to make the areas a resource base for the proposed reconstruction opportunity zones (ROZs). Goods and commodities produced in the zones are to be given special access to markets in the US and EU. The motivating force behind this economic upliftment programme, of course, is not an altruistic impulse, but a strong self-interest.
The US hopes that engaging the population of this country's tribal badlands in meaningful economic activity will wean them away from pro-Taliban militancy. But whatever the motivation the assistance programme and ROZs are expected to bring a much welcome change for the tribal people most of whom live in poverty, under an oppressive hold of hereditary chieftains and medieval socio-cultural conditions in the name of tribal customs and traditions.
The worst sufferers of these traditions, needless to say, are women, a vast majority of whom has little say in personal or social matters. Once the proposed economic activity gets going it can be trusted to effect a good change in social relations within the context of class as well as gender issues.
The government must also undertake steps to bring Fata into the mainstream of national life. From time to time noises have been made to change the system of parliamentary representation, which rests on a selection rather than election process, and also to do away with the antiquated Frontier Crimes Regulations, devised by the colonial rulers to try and control the tribal people through unfair and discriminatory laws.
Yet decades after independence, successive governments preferred to maintain the status quo in the name of tribal traditions that, for some inexplicable reason, needed to be preserved. The policy amounted to denying the ordinary Fata people the right to progress and development.
And abdication of responsibility translated into lack of authority, which the government has been wanting so badly to exercise to deal with the Afghan war spillover. It is hoped the new economic assistance programme will be accompanied by socio-political reforms in accord with the prevailing norms in the rest of the country.