When Is A Process Unwarranted?

The comment to this post prompted some thinking. A commenter brought up that last year I was advocating quite passionately for the use of negotiations and traditional dispute resolution means in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan, but they fell apart and a military solution now seems the only way left to carve out a peace. Does that mean my judgment on these issues is fundamentally flawed, that the dissolution of the negotiations is proof I’m out of my element when discussing militancy in the FATA? I obviously don’t agree—I felt (and still feel) it was important to go through that process before resorting to violence (and have argued that going military first, as Musharraf did at President Bush’s insistence in 2002, in fact damaged the prospects for peace later on).

I found it fascinating, then, to find this piece hung on CSIS’ website: “FATA—A Most Dangerous Place,” by Shuja Nawaz (link). Here’s something from page 19/32 of the report:

The Awami National Party-led government’s attempted peace deals in Swat succeeded by failing. Even though the deals in Swat with the Tehreek-e-Nifaz-e-Shariah-e-Mohammedi (TNSM) and the TTP fell apart rather spectacularly, they were both necessary and productive: by demonstrating a good-faith effort, the government won substantial public support for more kinetic operations of the kind that are currently being conducted… Although the militants in FATA and the NWFP have tried to paint their struggle in Islamic terms, at heart the issues that have spawned unrest and violence in the region are economic and political. The extended neglect of the needs of the local population for economic development and political voice has made the FATA an area that is ripe for militancy.”

There is a lot more in there, and it’s really damned interesting. But it’s a mistake to write off negotiations, even if they are futile, for they are a crucial step toward building legitimacy for whatever actions that follow. By going in military first, Musharraf poisoned the well to a large degree; we have no way of knowing if traditional negotiating tactics would have worked, but it was near impossible for them to once he had sent in the troops. But the gist of what Nawaz is writing about (like building a stake for local residents before trying to impose external solutions on them) rings true, at least to this analyst. He is speaking of, in essence, a population-centric policy for the FATA—something I have written about before. In fact, it sounds a lot like a commissioned piece I wrote a few months back; I’ve excerpted a bit below.

According to one of the few surveys that exist of the FATA, one of the most pressing needs they want but have never had is a stake in their own country.11 A large majority of the respondents in Naveed Shinwari’s survey of the FATA wanted a voting stake in Islamabad—basically to have full political rights as the citizens of all other provinces within Pakistan do. The right to vote is brand new: it was only in 2008 that local elders allowed women to vote,12 and the right to full representation in the Parliament dates only to 1997. Even then, it was only voting in a limited sense: secular parties could not participate in elections until 2008 (and when this happened, the FATA soundly rejected Islamist parties).13

Other basic governance structures contribute to the disconnect FATA residents feel toward their government.14 The region is still governed by the Frontier Crimes Regulation, or FCR,15 which stipulates that the FATA exists in a separate, more strongly Shari’a-influenced legal system. It also places so-called Political Agents—a holdover from the days of British Imperial administration—in charge of each of the FATA’s districts. They are executive and judicial agents, and carry an enormous amount of power (which also makes them targets of militants looking to undermine what little government presence there is). Aside from the political disenfranchisement, the FCR also stipulates that entire communities should be punished for the crimes of a single individual—the very definition of a crime against humanity. In such a state, it would be impossible for any development to take place: thus, every developmental indicator—from education to healthcare to unemployment (which stands at about 40%)—the FATA is as backward and impoverished as a region can possibly be. There are no banks, so all transactions are informal and thus untaxed and not tracked. Smuggling is the most common form of income generation, followed closely by arms manufacturing and opium cultivation.

Such disconnect represents an enormous opportunity for the U.S. to play a leading role in connecting the FATA to the rest of Pakistan.

I’m working on getting permission to either post or distribute it further. It is certainly nice to know that months ago I was not out on a limb But I mean, there is a lot to this, and I am of the firm belief that by focusing only on counterterrorism—killing off baddies with Predators, as one example, and not working through local institutions—we are making the problem far worse than it needs to be.

This post was written by...

Joshua Foust – author of 1801 posts on Registan.net.

Joshua Foust is a Fellow at the American Security Project and the author of Afghanistan Journal: Selections from Registan.net. His research focuses primarily on Central and South Asia. Joshua is a correspondent for The Atlantic and a columnist for PBS Need to Know. Joshua appears regularly on the BBC World News, Aljazeera, and international public radio. Joshua is also a regular contributor to Foreign Policy’s AfPak Channel, and his writing has appeared in the New York Times, Reuters, and the Christian Science Monitor. Follow him on twitter: @joshuafoust

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