ISLAMABAD: There are confirmed reports that the Federal Cabinet will take up the issue of reforms in FATA and consider the report of a high powered committee that made far reaching recommendations in the region restoring constitutional rights of the tribesmen in a big way.

Two eminent personalities of the Government—Lt-Gen ® Abdul Qadir Baloch and Mr. Sartaj Aziz—were also the key members of the high powered committee that worked hard in finalizing the reforms or extending the democratic rights to the tribesmen. Since the annexation of Afghan territories by the British, the supreme military power of the day, the people of the area were denied fundamental democratic and political rights for over a century.

British used the territory as a Buffer Zone between British India and Afghanistan. It was virtually a demilitarized zone between the British India and Afghanistan allowing free movement of local people between the two entities at that time.

After creation of Pakistan as an independent State and also the erstwhile NWFP voted in favour of the new country in a referendum, the FATA people denied full representation in the Provincial Assembly and by design.

However, after the 1973 Constitution, the FATA people were given representation in the Pakistani Parliament—both the National Assembly and the Senate of Pakistan. It was considered as a welcome move by the political parties in providing some representation to the FATA in the Parliament.

The defunct National Awami Party was the second largest party in the Parliament and formed Governments in two trans-Indus provinces of KPK and Balochistan. The party, right from the very outset, demanded merger of FATA with the erstwhile NWFP now KPK. For strategic and security reasons, the demand of the NAP was rejected by the rulers at the behest of the Pakistani establishment.

In the meantime, they were denied representation in the Provincial Assembly and the area was governed under the special draconian laws of the British colonial empire and the people denied any relief or constitutional rights, to say the least.

Now the high powered committee had suggested revolutionary measures proposing constitutional rights to the FATA people by merging the area with the KPK governing the entire FATA area under the normal and unified laws of land.

Some political observers felt that the area is becoming part of Pakistan in the real sense by extending the constitutional rights to the people. At present, the whole area is governed under the Frontier Crimes Regulation (FCR) where the Political Agent had all the powers, arbitrary powers and not challengeable to any court of law.

An incident took place in Northern Waziristan recently and the Political Agent demolished 80 shops of the tribe as a collective punishment to the entire people for a crime committed by an individual or a group of individuals. It was considered as a crime against the humanity by resorting to collective punishment of people, particularly the innocent people who committed no crime.

It is unfortunate that the civil society and political parties did not fight more bitterly for the just political and constitutional rights of the FATA people for the past six decades or more, barring the defunct NAP, and allowed them to languish under the draconian laws of the British colonial rulers and retained and extensively used by the Pakistani rulers.

Hopefully, the Federal Cabinet will approve the recommendations ignoring the tiny and insignificant opposition from the obscurantist elements in KPK politics feeling the threat that the religious party would become a tiny party in provincial politics if the merger is allowed and made smooth. For political reasons, they are trying to oppose the constitutional reforms in FATA as their illegitimate political interests will be undermined.

One of the recommendations in the reforms is to merge all FATA agencies into the KPK providing them representation in the Provincial Assembly and also in the Federal Parliament with extending normal laws of the land to that region.

KPK is surrounded by the FATA agencies and the people in the surrounding settlements are already using the State services and facilities, including schools, colleges, hospitals, civic amenities and basic services, roads, infrastructure and frequent movement to the settled areas. After all such facilities to the FATA people, there is no sense to keep them under a separate political and bureaucratic administration and deny them fundamental rights enjoyed by the people in other parts of Pakistan.

The annexed territories from Afghanistan now parts of Balochistan had lost all logics and reasons by keeping them in a separate entity from FATA and deliberately using it as pawn in ethnic and other controversies or clash of interests.

The British colonial rulers did a great disservice by making it part of Balochistan for administrative or security reasons. The successor Government in Pakistan retained it for ulterior motives and also for unexplained reasons or they never wanted to make Balochistan a homogeneous ethnic province of Baloch people without facing any conflict of interests among the ethnic or linguistic groups.

At the same time, the Baloch people retained very cordial relations with all the cultural minorities for centuries and they had no complaints against the dominating nationality of Baloch people.

When the Provinces were revived after dismembering the notorious One Unit or the Single Province of West Pakistan, the military rulers did a great disservice to Pakistan by keeping the annexed territories from Afghanistan as administrative part of the province of Balochistan disregarding the disharmonious effects of such a short sighted political decision.

Balochs, on their part, had never claimed the annexed territory. It had never been part of the historic Balochistan, thus not claimed by the Baloch people in history. The British colonial rulers heavily punished the Baloch people for one hundred years for not helping them in attacking and conquering Afghanistan or making it a British colony. The Afghans also refused to be a client State of the British colonial empire in this region. Nor the Balochs had ever claimed the resources of those territories.

On the contrary, the Pakistani establishment had imposed all such compulsions on the Baloch people by deliberately retaining and promoting the conflict for its illegitimate security interests. The net result today is that Baloch people had been denied all the benefits the Pakistan Government provided to Balochistan as a unified administrative entity or ignoring the legitimate economic and political interests of Baloch Mainland.

Now the time has come for the Pakistani establishment to win over the hearts and mind of the Baloch people in the current and serious crises and merge the annexed territories of Afghanistan (now parts of Balochistan) to the new bigger and greater Pakhtun Province without any hesitation.

Let the Pakhtuns should have one stronger and unified province within the Pakistani Federation ending their multiple share from different provinces. The illegitimate encroachment on political and economic rights should end immediately.

The FATA reforms should ensure merger of distinctly specified northern parts to rationalize the provincial borders of both the KPK and Balochistan leaving aside the territorial claims and counter claims {if any} with the Sindh and the Punjab.

It will be the right time for the chosen representatives from the Baloch Mainland to raise the issue in the Parliament with full force to rationalize the provincial boundaries between Balochistan and KPK and merge the area or hand over the administrative control to Peshawar instead of Quetta, the Baloch Capital.