Grand Trunk Road

This column¹ by Ahmed Rashid is almost a month old but it’s really interesting to consider it side-by-side with this one in today’s News by Khalid Aziz.
Rashid argues that the PPP-ANP coalition government of the Frontier has become needlessly bogged down in negotiations with local militants at the expense of formulating an over-arching strategy for the future of the tribal areas. Any successful long-term peace strategy will require the cooperation of the NWFP government, the military and the Afghan government. He prescribes many of the usually recommended reforms for FATA: massive spending on education to gradually replace the madrassah system and assisting in the return of the thousands of people who have been displaced by the army’s military actions in order to allow “a strong anti-Taliban and anti-extremist ethos to emerge among the Pashtun tribes.”

Aziz’s column² takes a much deeper look at the changing nature of civil society in FATA. He argues that the events following the US invasion of Afghanistan have deeply changed tribal society in FATA. For a number of reasons, Pakistan failed to act on its initial goal to integrate the tribal areas into the NWFP through development. Now, he says, it is if not too late, much more difficult:

However, like votaries of an extinct system, tribesmen still speak of protecting their customs and traditions. They still speak of following Pukhtunwali, which they proudly describe as their lar, or path for survival and salvation. However, they fail to see that all that has changed. The British failed to end tribalism in a hundred years, and Pakistan failed to do so in sixty years. However, the militants have succeeded in doing this in only seven.

Any plans to restore peace in the tribal areas will have to understand this change in order to be successful.

¹ Rashid, Ahmed. VIEW: How to succeed and fail in FATA —Ahmed Rashid. Daily Times. May 2, 2008.
² Aziz, Khalid. Impact of 9/11 war on tribal society. The News. June 1, 2008.