“Kashmir calls back, its pull stronger than ever, its whispers its fairy magic to the ear and its memory disturbs the mind.”

                                                   -Jawaharlal Nehru 

During Maharaja Ranjit Singh reign, three brothers, Gulab Singh, Suchet Singh and Dhian Singh acquired powerful influence at his court and Dhian Singh became his principal advisor and Sikh Durbar in Lahore rewarded them for their services to the empire. Jammu was given to Gulab Singh in 1920 as a fief (jagir); Dhian Singh was awarded with Poonch and small surrounding hilly states of Bhimber and Mirpur, as Alastair Lamb notes that the areas which fell in the Poonch state, “Coincides very closely with what in late 1947 was to become Azad Kashmir.”  

During the First Anglo-Sikh war of 1845, Gulab Singh remained neutral and later by the Treaty of Amritsar March 16, 1846; British sold Kashmir (areas to the eastward of the river Indus and westward of the river Ravi⁾ to the Maharaja Gulab Singh for around Rs 7.5 million. 

The state at that time was stretched over an area of 84,471 square miles and Gulab Singh bought it at the rate of Rs 155 per square mile while he paid seven and half rupees for every inhabitant of the state. (SHAHB NAMA) 

Gulab Singh was succeeded by his son Ranbir Singh in 1858 and Partap Singh followed him but he had no direct heir to the throne and during his last days his brother Amar Singh was serving as the chief minister while the state was under direct British supervision. 

Maharaja Partap Singh considered Jagatdev Singh, son of his great granduncle Dhian Singh, the Poonch Raja, as ‘Spiritual Heir to Kashmir,’ but his brother Amar Singh, who was his chief minister at that time with the connivance of British nominated his son Hari Singh in 1925 as the new ruler of the state. The British had once rescued Hari Singh from blackmailing when he was in Landon and according to Alastair Lamb, “Partap Singh despite the approval of Chamber of Princes was overruled by the Political Department, which thought that Hari Singh, whose disreputable background might make him easier to manipulate, would prove a more amenable Maharaja.” 

Thus began the most decisive period in the history of Indo-Pak and on October 26, 1947 Hari Singh singed the Instrument of Accession with Indian Union and on October 27, Indian troops entered Kashmir and a war broke out in 1948. The countries also fought two more wars in 1965 and 71 and a constant war posture as in 1990s the Kashmiris launched a guerilla movement to win their independence from India with Pakistan’s active backing and around 100,000 died during the resistance movement.  

The situation radically changed after the 9/11 and Pakistan started to distance her from the Jihadi groups. The Kashmir almost disappeared from the government’s agenda as Jihadis and government lost their good terms under the intense US pressure. 

Pakistan honeymoon with the Kashmiri resistance groups has ended and so the rhetoric of political and moral support for their right to self-determination. President Musharraf’s eagerness to resolve the dispute also played an important role in boosting Indian position while his defensive attitude and internal problems made the Kashmir’s issue a forgotten tragedy.

Dissent has been the most cherished human ideal throughout the course of human history and all the revolutions, religions and invention trace their roots to the same ideal. Like the prophetic dictum of Rousseau that “Man is born free, but in chains everywhere,” however, the tyranny has always been on the march to hush the dissenting voices.

Similarly, Pakistan is also gradually following in the footsteps of China in censorship and it seems that the government thinks it necessary to gag any outlet of free thought and deploy every citizen with thought police.

An editorial published in the leading English daily ‘The News’ on January 17 pointed out to the blocking of weblogs maintained by the students supporting the ongoing struggle for the restoration of judiciary and lawyers movement by the Pakistan Telecommunication Corporation (PTCL) which has been done under a new law introduced recently to control the cyberspace. The editorial says that the government has also banned the websites supporting Sindhi and Baloch nationalists in the past. It had also imposed a blanket ban on millions of blogs using the popular blogging site Blogger on the directives of the Supreme Court during the cartoon episode which continued for a long time.

The regime had adopted an easy way to fight the problems, which are essentially byproducts of its wrong policies by banning the opinion and dissent. The government removed the chief justice of Pakistan in wrongful manner and when he resisted the move-which was rare a occasion in our history so the nation supported him and government mistook this as a fault of the media and banned the live coverage.

On November 3, 2007 after the imposition of the emergency in the country Musharraf under the guidance of his half-witted advisors again ambushed the judiciary, constitution, media and the other remaining institutions and went on complete blackout of the media. The chronicler of press freedom Zamir Niazi has lamented the same situation when he writes that, “Without any kind of credibility whatsoever, with a muzzled press, emasculated judiciary and inefficient legislature, the country has gone through crises, tragedies, turmoil and ultimately the 1997 trauma of dismemberment.”

Clearly the government motives were not to solve the problems it was facing then but it was an Ostrich like behavior and it does not want to let people know what was happening in the country. Now the Geo is banned for more than two and half months and the rest of the channels have to toe the line, any significant drop in the number of terror incidents is in sight?

Albert Camus perhaps said for such occasions that, “Sometimes it is easier to see clearly into a liar than into a man who tells the truth. Truth, like light, blinds. Falsehood, on the contrary, is a beautiful twilight that enhances every object,”

Within forty years of the setting up of Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) in 1967 at Lahore, the Ghari Khuda Bux cemetery has received four members of Bhutto family in succession or one Bhutto in a decade, all killed in mysterious circumstances. The dynasty has a tinge of tragedy, curse and trouble like the Kennedeys in America and Ghandis in India. But many Pakistanis love dead Bhuttos more than when they were alive. 

Zulifkar Ali Bhutto (ZAB), scion of Sindhi feudal origins, for the first time entered the Pakistani politics when he joined Skindar Mirza’s cabinet and there was no looking back and he came to be foreign minister in the cabinet of Ayub Khan, whom he called ‘Daddy.’ During the tumultuous period of 1960s then comes the parting of the ways with Ayub and Bhutto formed his political party in 1967.

The masses were drifted away in the ZAB’s rhetoric of “Roti, Kapra aur Makan,’ and, “My ministers would sweep the streets of Layari.” ZAB added to politics a new dimension, and brought it to the Kukri Ground, Liaquat Bagh and Bhati Chowk and liberated it from the clutches of political ‘elite’.

In 1977, ZAB was overthrown in an army coup and thrown put behind bars and hanged on April 4, 1979 after a sham trial, which is remembered as the ‘Judicial Murder’ in the annals of Pakistan’s judicial history. No one has been sentenced to death, except ZAB, on charges of abetting a murder since the Indian Penal Code was promulgated in the 1860s.

In 1985, the family received its second shock, when ZAB’s younger son Shahnawaz Bhutto, 27, was found dead in a Southern France apartment and his murder still remains a mystery.

Benazir Bhutto became a heir to his father’s political legacy after she returned from exile in 1984. Millions of Pakistanis greeted her when she returned from her exile and traveled across Pakistan and was the first elected female premier of the country after the death of Zia in a plane crash in 1988. In her second stint as a prime minister in 1996, her only brother Murtaza Bhutto was shot dead in mysterious circumstances by police. His murder still remains a mystery.

Benazir Bhutto went on a self-imposed exile in 1999 and remained abroad for around eight years and came back to the country in 2007. Her homecoming rally turned into a mourning procession on October 18 when a suicide bomber targeted her vehicle killing nearly 180 people while she barely escaped the attack. She was again attacked on December 27 while coming out of her public meeting at Liaquat Bagh in Rawalpindi. She died when an unknown assassin fired shots on her and later a suicide bomber blew him up near her vehicle, while mystery is still shrouding her death.

People could be seen queuing up in the in front on fair price shops and utility stores for a bag of flour are the reminiscent of the days before the French Revolution and eye opener for our society and particularly the rulers.

On Friday, I waited before a shop selling subsidized flour for nearly an hour to see what kind of agony these people are passing through for an essential food item and most of the people who were either labourers or low income people. They stood there oblivious of calls for the Friday prayers engrossed in their thoughts and it was visible from their faces that they were thinking that they would be able to took some flour to their houses or not.

While coming back I heard the sermons from the mosques’ loudspeakers and most of the prayer leaders were engaged discussing of importance of sacrifice in Islam.

The ironical situation forced me to laugh, like the proverbial Urdu, “maroon ko mary shah madar,” our Ulema were preaching sacrifice to those poor people who couldn’t meet two ends.

My mind took me back to the food riots which culminated in French Revolution and were also a result of such situation. When the ruling elites continued to press the poor masses to an extreme that they were not able to bear they revolted and destroyed the whole system which was bent on squeezing them beyond their circumstances allowed and in this process also destroyed themselves.

Our land of pure has witnessed several scams during the five years rule of the PMLQ including the sugar scam, stock market scam and the flour scam to name a few.

The flour crisis is hitting the masses twice this year, during the holy month of Ramzan the flour crisis hit the general public and now again this monster has hit back in its ugly shape. The most important aspect of this crisis is that the total disregards of the rulers for the poor people and this is dangerous indicator of the extremes the rulers are taking in this country.

At the one hand the rulers are constructing heavens on earth like the Crescent Bay, Water Front and Diamond Bar Island city projects in the midst of slums and at the same time are denying the opportunity to the people to fill their stomach twice a day.

The sprawling DHAs across the country, high rises residential complexes, shopping malls and a ruthless new bourgeoisie class are acting as a catalyst in the polarization between the haves and have nots in this country.

A crazy Machiavellian junta of bureaucrats, politicians, general and feudal is riding on the necks of the people of this land like the Sind Bad’s ‘pir tasma pa’ for the past sixty years and have encroached on their rights.

 What would be our future direction, this question often puzzles me. South East Asian countries and many others in the world have made tremendous achievements both technologically and as well on the human development level while in our part of the world only improvement has been in discovering new ways of corruption and tightly squeezing the masses.

“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
George Santayana

The Pakistan’s political history is littered with blood and shameful departures of rulers. Our rulers thrive on violence; orchestrate political farces to hoodwink the masses and end up to the same shameful end.
Pakistan first premier Liaqut Ali Khan was gunned down in a Rawalpindi public meeting and his alleged killer also met the same end. The police officer investigating the case also perished in an air crash and with him also the traces that could point that who was the behind the assassination.
After Liaquat assassination, a crippled bureaucrat, Ghulam Mohammad assumed powers and is responsible for the many cancerous traditions in politics. The first dissolution of the Constituent Assembly and notorious “doctrine of necessity” are the parts of his shameful legacy. He was sent abroad during a serious illness but his legacy is still haunting us and will continue to do so in the years to come.
Another bureaucrat Skindar Mirza followed Ghulam Mohammad and brings the army in politics by admitting the Commander in Chief Mohammad Auyb Khan in his cabinet as defence minister. Later, Auyb deposed him and sent him to Britain, where the former president and his wife, when pressed by the circumstances started clerical jobs in a hotel and died and buried in that country.
Field Martial Mohammad Auyb Khan imposed the first martial law in country and abrogated the 1956 constitution in a fit of frenzy. He framed another constitution and changed the form of government to presidential and became president after a sham election. He fooled the masses for eleven years with slogans like ‘Operation Gibraltar’, ‘Basic Democracies’, ‘Green Revolution’ and the ‘Decade of Development.’ He had to step down after students’ protests in the country and to hand over power to Yahya Khan.
Gen. Yahya Khan, “drowned the two-nation theory,” and the East Pakistan in the Bay of Bengal in the Dakkha debacle of 1971 and spent rest of his days under house arrest.

Yahya handed over the reins of the country to the charismatic Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto (ZAB) after the fall of Dakkha and he became the first civil martial law administrator of the history. He introduced the slogans of ‘Islamic Socialism,’ ‘Roti, Kapra aur Makan,’ ‘1,000 years war’ and nationalization of the industries. He was put behind the bars after a coup and his dead body came out of the prison after a sham trial and was buried in the Ghari Khuda Bux cemetery under the shadow of bayonets in the darkness of night.
Ziaul Haq hanged ZAB and ruled the country for nearly 11 years on the name of Islam and flogging. His Islamisation and Afghan jihad backfired and resulted into the sectarianism, heroin and kalashinkove culture in the country. He perished along with his coterie in a mysterious plane crash on August 17, 1988.
Benazir Bhutto followed Zia and was sworn in as the first female head of the state of an Islamic country. Her first government was discharged on the charges of corruption. Her husband earned notoriety for corruption and was branded as the Mr. Ten Percent and her only brother Mir was gunned down in an encounter with police and later her government was dissolved for second time. She spent nearly seven years in exile and back in the country now and also survived a deadly suicide attack aimed at her.
Nawaz Sharif was a product of Zia tyranny and a general arranged his entry into politics. His first government was dissolved when differences arose between the president and him. The Supreme Court later reinstated his government but the army had to intervene to break the deadlock and both the president and the premier had to pack up. He clashed with the judiciary and sent anther president home after axing his powers. Later, an airborne general put him behind bars when he tried to remove him. He spent nearly 18 months in a prison and was exiled to Saudi Arabia he also tried to make a comeback but again sent on exile forcibly but he is finally back in the country after an eight years gap.
At present we are living in the reign of ‘enlightened despot’ Gen Pervez Musharraf and he had imposed two martial laws during his eight-year rule. Recently he had crushed a rebellion from the judiciary and thanks his all out support for the War on Terror, Taliban- the once blue-eyed boys of establishment, are roaming in the streets wrapping themselves in lethal explosives. Some days ago he had doffed off his military uniform, which he was used to say his second skin and also announced elections in the country.

The militancy, which now plagues most of the NWFP, its proliferation would not have been possible without the manipulation of the radio waves by the hardliner clerics.The FM radio stations installed at the many of Madrassahs across the province and tribal areas have played a crucial role in the proliferation of militant doctrines.

These illegal FM stations with a small coverage area, (a single station costs Rs. 10,000 to 25,000), have been installed by the clerics at the Madrassahs to propagate their ideas to the locals and are running without any check.According to news reports during 2006 there 50 illegal FM radio stations functioning Malakand alone in addition to the NWFP and adjoining tribal areas .

Illegal radio station are operating in most of the areas in Frontier including Swabi, Charsadda, Lower and Upper Dir, Bunir, Mardan, Mansehra, Peshawar, Bannu, Batagram, Karak districts and Malakand and the tribal agencies of Bajaur, Khyber and Orakzai.

The masses under the sway of radical clerics who deem television as evil as it shows picture also banished it from their lives and the anti-TV campaign was launched during the days of Taliban in Afghanistan and these pictures of burning TV sets were splashed in the Pakistani militant press.Due to the unavailability of any other means of entertainment the transmissions of these FM radios are very much popular with the rural population in NWFP, especially with women as it is their only recourse of entertainment in the rural areas.

Another main reason of their growing popularity is due to the fact that the local know those people who make speeches on these radio stations.

The tragedy of Swat is a case in point, a tourist attraction known as the Switzerland of Pakistan came under the spell of militancy and now the government and a warlord cleric are warring for the control of the district. The illegal FM radio station installed by the Maulana Fazlullah also known as the ‘Radio Mullah’ due to his sermons, is the bedrock of the current insurgency in Swat and government has not been able to silence his FM station.Fazlullah, son-in-law of the banned Tahreek-Nifaz-Shiriat-Mohammadi (TNSM) leader Maulana Sufi Mohammad who launched a jihad against the government in 1994 and tried to capture the Saidu Sharif airport and government buildings and many people killed in these clashes. His father-in-law is at present languishing in the Dera Ismail Khan jail after his Afghan adventure when during US invasion of Afghanistan he took thousands of people to fight a holy war against the American and most of the people who followed him were either caught or killed in the war.

Fazlullah, who also fought besides Taliban in Afghanistan, some three years back established an FM radio station on which he started to criticize the policies of the western governments, TV, music, NGOs, girls education, polio vaccination and in the favor of jihad and mobilized militancy in the district.The radio station helped in strengthening his sway over the valley and the construction of the huge complex of his Madrassah at the Imam Dheri, when he appealed for the donations for the construction of Madrassah from his radio, he received huge amounts in donations and women donated their jewelry to the cleric.

Armed with the FM radio he has also formed a commando force by the name of Shaheen Commando Forces numbering around 300-400 armed-to-teeth volunteers.The Mutthida-Majlis-Amal (MMA) government, which ruled in the province for five years, let this menace unchecked fearing the curbs on the radio stations would antagonize the powerful clerics on whom it depends for mass support in the elections.

Interestingly the (MMA) led provincial government in the Frontier entered into an agreement with the controversial cleric on May 22 and allowed him to run his illegal FM radio in exchange for dropping his opposition to the girls schools, police vaccination in the district and stopping the production of arms by his followers in public. This proved to be a proverbial pouring oil on the fire as the cleric didn’t halted his missionary zeal and the agreement gave him a legal cover to propagate his deadly broadcasts with the same intensity. Later the Lal Masjid and Jamia Hafsa operation in Islamabad in July ruffled the feathers of militancy in the district again and the situation started to deteriorate with each passing day and the government moved army to the troubled district but a jirga averted impending military operation against the Mullah. During July the suicide bombers in the Swat also attacked military and police became the prime target of the militants and the state machinery was virtually paralyzed in the face of growing incidents of lawlessness.

In the wake of the Lal Masjid operation Fazlullah announced to launch Jihad if government took action against the seminary and also turned down the agreement with the government which he has signed on May 22 and the first reaction against the operation occurred at Swat, where a mob attacked a police station in Matta Tehsil. Maulana Fazlullah also invited the slain Khateeb of Lal Masjid Maulana Abdur Rashid to make a speech on his FM. Earlier this year when police arrested Maulana Fazlullah, his associates gave a call on his FM and nearly 6,000 supporters took to the streets and released him from the custody.

Another hardliner cleric in the Bara Tehsil of Khyber Agency installed a similar radio station in and has taken the whole area as a hostage. The opponent religious sect who has similar sway in the remote and mountainous Tirah area of the agency has also installed a similar radio station and so far hundreds of people of have died in clashes between the warring outfits.

Recently the cleric in Bara Tehsil banned the uncovering of head in the agency saying it is against the Islamic morality and started to fine people Rs 100 and shave their heads for not wearing caps and now all the people follow the dictates of the religious warlord and the agency where these two warring religious outfits could clash any time is a potential flashpoint due to their excess to the communication technology which could carry their message to the areas where otherwise they couldn’t reach.

Interestingly, the clerics who held these FM stations so dear, are how much averse to the other forms of cultural activities that in the most of the Frontier and tribal areas the CD shops were asked to close and those who dared to say nay were bombed and even barbers were not spared.

The MMA government, when it came to the power in 2002 banned the holding of cultural shows and singing contests in the province only theatre Nishtar Hall which rendered the most of the artists jobless and that is yet to be opened.

The radio has become an essential tool in the process of indoctrination and the government showed reluctance to curb this threat at the earlier stages and now this menace is threatening the very existence of the state.  

“We had no funds, no files, no office, no dictaphone. And yet, with nothing in hand but a pencil, we wrote the most glorious chapter in the cultural renaissance of our people.”
                                      -Kirshen Chander (1966)

Media has a strong tradition of resistance in the Indo-Pak subcontinent. From the refusal of the father of Indian journalism James Augusts Hickey to bow before the British raj during the formative period of Indian journalism to the Karachi journalists’ arrests after the imposition of emergency in the country, media has been the custodian of a great tradition of resistance in this part of the world.

The journalists like Faiz Ahmed Faiz have always bear the burnt for saying nay to the unconstitutional steps of the dictators taken for their survival on the name of national interest.

Dr. Iqbal Ahmed recounts the tale of a Bosnian newspaper “Oslobodenje” in his essay, “Intellectuals Role in Society,” which is similar to the present ordeal being faced by the Pakistani media.

The Oslobodenje was the Bosnia’s largest daily; it was established during World War II as an underground paper by the partisans who fought the fascists and after the break-up of the Yugoslavia it supported the Bosnia as a country.

Dr. Iqbal writes, “ Oslobodenje practised what it preached. Its editor is Muslim, deputy editor is an incredibly brave Serb woman, the staff are mixed - Muslim Serb, and Croat. As such, the newspaper anti its staff became a target of Serb nationalists, an easy target because its offices are located in the ‘death alley’ of Sarajevo within range of Serb gunners, The newspaper and its staff sustained many miunes but did not miss a day of publication printing often a single page. Oslobodenje became a symbol of Bosnian resolve, Sarajevans’ will to live and, above all, of Serb failure to destroy the values for which Bosnia stood. “Why don’t you move the paper out of Sarajevo?” I asked Editor KemaI Kurspahic soon after he had survived a bomb, ‘we can’t”, he replied simply, “Oslobodenje is a lighthouse”.

The same is the condition of Pakistani media after the imposition of the emergency when the government attempted to gag the media and silence the dissent shamelessly. The president who used to brag about the exemplary media freedom closed two popular TV channels in just one go and let the other operate mutilated.

But unlike the past the lawyers and the civil society have rose and speaking the truth to the dictator hand in hand with the media as legendry Faiz puts it.

“If pen and ink are snatched from me, shall I
Who dipped my finger in my heart’s blood complain -
Or if they seal my tongue, when I have made
A mouth of every round link of my chain?”
Translated (A.W)

Bulleh Shah, the greatest mystic poet of Punjab, had lived the most tumultuous period of the Sub-continent history during which Mughal dynasty jolted after Aurangezb’s death and his successors first fought each other for the Delhi’s throne and later the attack of Nadir Shah broke the back of Mughal’s rule in India. The subsequent events led to the ascendancy of the British. 

Bulleh Shah’s real name was Abdullah Shah and he was born in 1680 at the Pandoke area in Qasur, where his father Sakhi Dervish was a local prayer leader.  

He became a disciple of the Qasur’s famous teacher Hafiz Ghulam Murtaza and acquired a deep understanding of the Quran, Hadith (Traditions), Fiqh and Logic. Bulleh Shah was the disciple of the Shah Inayat Qadri Shatari who belonged to the Qadri tradition of the Sufis, which trace their origin to Syed Abdul Qadir Jilani of Baghdad. His affinity to his spiritual leader Shah Inayat grown to such an extent that the people started to taunt him saying that he is a Syed or of the Prophet’s family and Shah Inayat belongs to the Arian which is a lower caste, but he answered the rebukes and taunts of people by saying:  

“Let anyone, who calls me a Sayyiad,

Be punished with tortures of hell,

 And let him revel in the pleasures of heaven,

Who labels me an Arain” (Translation- J.R. Puri and T.R. Shangari)

 Once some action of him annoyed Shah Inayat and it left him in great distress and his poetry is replete with the pain of separation from his master. He tried his utmost to repent his indiscretion but Shah Inayat was not ready to let it go that easy and in a frantic fit Bulleh Shah dressed like a female and reached a party in which his master was also present and started to dance and sing the famous Kafi, Teray ishq nachaya kar thai-ya thai-ya’: 

Your love has made me dance all over.

Falling in love with you was supping a cup of poison.

Come, my healer, it’s my final hour.

 Your love has made me dance all over (Translation-S.K Duggal) 

When Shah Inayat learned it that Bulleh Shah was dancing, he forgave him and he was allowed to the coveted circle of his master.

In the words of K.S. Duggal,”when Aurangzeb banned singing and dancing as an un-Islamic practice, Bulleh Shah’s Master, Inayat Shah, is said to have advised him to go from village to village in the Punjab singing and dancing and thus defy the imperial injunction which Bulleh did with impunity.” He also became a part of what is called the feud between the Sufis and Orthodox Ulema and even when he died the Ulema refused to lead his funeral prayers. He ridicules the traditionalist Ulema in his poetry by saying: 

The Mullahs and Qazis show me the light

Leading to the maze of superstition.

Wicked are the ways of the world

Like laying nets for innocent birds

With religious and social taboos

They have tied my feet tight. (Translation-K.S. Duggal) 

He died in 1758 and is buried in Qasur and his Kafis are much popular across the Sub-Continent as compared to his own time and like his couplet, Bulleh Shah asan marna nahi, gor paya Koi Hor” (It is not me in the grave, it is someone else”.  

Pakistan … anything can happen here anytime. Heroes are reduced to zero in an instant; rulers are forced to pack up; suicide attackers can play havoc with people’s lives; judges are rendered non-functional; intelligence agencies could harass top judges; government servants could embezzle millions of rupees; mosques could challenge the writ of state; state kidnaps its own citizen; artists receive life threats for their art; CD shop are blamed for corrupting morality, proclaimed offenders hold public offices; political parties take whole cities hostage; political leaders change their loyalties overnight; military topples government anytime; terrorist roam around more freely than the law enforcers; journalists receive bullets for writing truth; television channels could be forced to suspend transmission; those responsible for the country’s breakup are let off, prime minister’s brother is shot dead by police in encounter ………. 

Imagine, is all this possible anywhere else in the world? 

Khalil Gibran words sound prophetic if we see them in the backdrop of the contemporary Pakistan.

Pity the Nation that is full of beliefs and empty of religion;

Pity the Nation that acclaims the bully as hero,

And that deems the glittering conqueror beautiful;

Pity the Nation that raises not its voice,

Save where it walks in a funeral,

And will rebel not save when its neck is laid;

Between the sword and the block;

Pity the Nation that whose sages are dumb with years,

And whose strong men are yet in the cradles;

Pity the Nation divided into fragments,

Each fragment deeming itself a nation. 

North-Western Frontier province’s tribal belt is a shadowy and mysterious land for the world, run by a blend of more than a century old colonial laws and primitive tribal traditions. Bordering south-eastern Afghanistan this area over the past few years emerged as the hotbed of Taliban militancy and has been restive since the US invasion of country.

Federally Administrated Tribal Areas or FATA consist seven semi-autonomous agencies: South Waziristan, North Waziristan. Khyber, Bajaur, Kurram, Mohmand, and Orakzai agencies and five Frontier Regions(F.Rs ) F.R Peshawar, F.R Kohat, F.R Tank, F.R Banuu and F.R D.I. Khan.

FATA is spread over an area of 27,220 square kilometers and it shares 600-km. long border with Afghanistan and has population of 3.17 million Pashtuns residing on the Pakistani side of Durand Line which was drawn by Sir. Mortimer Durand the foreign secretary of British Indian government in 1893. It was meant to create a buffer zone between British India and Afghanistan by dividing the Pastuns tribes living on the both sides of the divide.

A major part of the FATA is rugged and inaccessible mountainous terrain. FATA is geographically located in NWFP but have a different administrative setup unlike other parts of the province and is administered under the Frontier Crime Regulations (FCR) promulgated by the British Raj to rein the fierce Pashtuns in 19th century. The governor of the NWFP exercises the executive authority in FATA as the representative of the President with discretionary powers as to ensure the “peace and good governance”.

The rest is left to political agent (PA) who has sweeping powers under his belt to manage, control and administer the respective agency. PA under section 40 FCR can preventively imprison anyone up to three years. Those who are convicted under the FCR have no rights to make an appeal in a court of law in Pakistan and the revision right rests with FCR commissioner appointed by the governor NWFP or final appeal can be made to the FCR tribunal comprised of the provincial chief secretary, law secretary and home secretary. PA can punish entire tribe on the grounds of collective tribal and territorial responsibility for the crimes in their area by imposing fines, arrests and property seizures. Fines are basically heavy and are deducted from the salaries of the employees of the fined tribe. The entire agency is subject to overall economic control by the PA of the respective agency.

The area has a unique psychological profile combining the Pashtun tribal code and orthodox religion. The tribes’ acts upon the Pashtun code or Pakthunwali while settling their internal and tribal issues. Pakthunwali is an unwritten code and is a collection of traditional and customary laws which determines the form and character of the Pashtun life.

During the Afghan war the whole of the FATA was converted into a base camp of the Jihadis with active US support. Later the emergence of Taliban also played a crucial role in strengthening the radical leanings among the population. After the fall of Taliban some of the active elements passed the difficult and inaccessible mountainous terrain and took refuge in the tribal agencies. Reportedly nearly five to six hundreds foreign fighters took refuge in these areas after the Spinghar (White Mountain) operation near Tora Bora in 2001 and operation Anaconda in Paktia in 2002.

The US pressure to rein and brought to justice these elements led to the deadly encounters between the law enforcement agencies and militants since 2002. In 2004 military operation was launched in South Waziristan. On 24 April 2004 military and militants signed an agreement known as the Shakai agreement but in the following weeks the agreement broke down as the tribal failed to handover the militants. On 25 June 2006 a peace deal was signed in the North Waziristan also. The government was also near signing a deal in Bajaur Agency when a missile attack killed more than 82 people in a madrassa and more than 42 soldiers were killed in a suicide attack on military training centre in Dargai in Malakand after the madrassa bombing.

At present there are 70,000 troops are deployed on Durand line to prevent infiltration and movement across the boarder. So far more than 700 hundreds of military personnel killed in clashes with militants along unknown number of militants, civilians and damage to property.