As the last phase of Operation Zarb-e-Azb started last week in the Shawal Valley of North Waziristan of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), deadly clashes between the army and Taliban militants ensued, killing at least 34 militants and resulting in the martyrdom of five soldiers.
While the army may soon purge the whole of the NWA, including the Shawal Valley, of militants and insurgents, the federal government is in limbo when it comes to determining the exact constitutional status of FATA.Army Chief General Raheel Sharif ordered the troops to initiate the last phase of Operation Zarb-e-Azb in the remote and thickly-forested Shawal Valley of NWA. It is believed that many of the Taliban and their foreign affiliated militant group fighters, after their expulsion from main NWA, including its headquarters, Miramshah and Mirali towns, took refuge in the Shawal Valley to escape killing and arrest. Whereas, most of the militants and their commanders, have fled to Afghanistan, the army troops would have to face strong resistance from the Taliban militants holed up in Shawal Valley. This was evident from the first of the clashes on February 27 and 28, in the Mantoi areas of Shawal Valley, which were deadly by any count. However, it was heartening to note that the Pakistan army prevailed upon the terrorists and wrested the area from their control. Hopefully, the Pakistan army soldiers would be able to sweep the valley clean of militants with the help of the Pakistan air force. However, the forces would add to their success if they keep their human losses to a minimum. The purging of the whole of the Shawal Valley of the militants would be a historic success and would be written in tall letters in the annals of military history of the region even the world. But Pakistan military success in the NWA would be comprehensive if it gets cooperation from the Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF) across the border.
There are serious capacity issues with the ANSF and the situation is made more complicated by the intention of the Afghan forces and intelligence operatives. The ANSF are currently facing total retreat in Afghan Taliban-infested Helmand province, while they are also losing ground in the northern Badakshan province. Whereas, in eastern Nangarhar province, on the border with Pakistan’s Khyber Agency, it is believed that the ANSF deliberately left several districts open to the Middle East-based terrorist group, Islamic State, the Afghanistan chapter. So if militants are able to flee the military ground offensive in Shawal Valley to Afghanistan due to incapacity and unwillingness of the ANSF to tackle them, the operation could lose its cutting edge. These are the hard realities of international politics; in order to successfully negotiate with non-state militant and terrorist organizations, cooperation between, and among, the neighbouring and regional states, whose territories are used by the non-state militant groups for their activities, is a sine qua non. In this context, cooperation between Pakistan and Afghanistan leaves a lot to be desired.
When the current military leadership of Pakistan has come to firmly believe that non-state militant outfits are a grave threat to national sovereignty and regional peace and stability, it seems the Afghan security establishment fails to understand this. Therefore, cultivating and using Pakistani and global militant groups like IS, against Pakistan is a very strong desire within the security establishment circles in Kabul. It seems that Kabul wants to repeat the mistakes of the Afghan regimes of the 1970s and 1980s. Such strategies, devoid of any logic or potential benefits, have proved more disastrous for Afghanistan than any other country.
Coming back to the offensive in the NWA, whether Pakistan is able to secure military cooperation from Afghanistan, for its own interests it is extremely necessary to purge the whole of the district of militants and terrorists. But more than the issue of military cooperation from Afghanistan, the exact determination of the constitutional and legal status of FATA has become extremely significant in this regard. However, there does not seem to be any urgency felt within the federal government regarding the issue. This is despite the fact that the federal government has formed a committee under the leadership of Advisor to the Prime Minister on Foreign Affairs Sartaz Aziz to come up with recommendations on the future of FATA. The options on the table about FATA’s status include whether to make it a separate province, to merge it in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa or to maintain the status quo. Presently, FATA is under the federal government which runs its affairs through the governor of KPK with bureaucrats from the KPK manning the key positions in the FATA administration. The committee under Aziz has visited many districts of FATA, but it has so far not finalized its recommendations. In the meanwhile, governor KPK, Sardar Mehtab Abbasi, tendered his resignation citing a desire to revive his on-hold political-parliamentary career. However, according to insiders, he left the position due to differences with the government and the military over the future of FATA.
Different people may have different perspectives on the future of FATA, but dispassionate analysis of the situation and history of the tribal region and its people suggest that keeping the status quo would continue to create problems for the country and would keep the region extremely backward, as has been the case for decades. On the other hand, making it part of KPK would prove the last straw on the back of the financially-crippled province. In this situation, the only option left is to make FATA a province, like Gilgit-Baltistan, with strong elected local government councils and a regional assembly. The assembly would legislate the laws in keeping with age-old tribal traditions, which the inhabitants of the region revere the most. This love for their traditions and customs has hitherto been a stumbling block in the integration and mainstreaming of FATA. So having provincial status with its own assembly and local government to frame people-friendly laws would provide an institutional mechanism to integrate and mainstream FATA.
Unless FATA’s status is exactly determined, any number, or magnitude, of military offensives could only purge the areas of militants and terrorist but would not decisively cleanse the region of extremists, whose conservative agenda initially lead to militancy and terrorism in the region. Worse still, no game-changing development, save a few infrastructure projects, have been undertaken in the region.
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