EDITORIAL: The constitutional merger of seven FATA districts with Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) in 2018 was celebrated as a huge success, but four years on all that seems to be a false dawn. The tribesmen are not receiving what was promised to them. The situation has therefore forced them to rethink their agreement to be part of the KP.
This past Monday was one such occasion — irrespective of their party alignments the tribal members jointly protested the decreasing development funding and staged a walkout from the provincial assembly.
Among them was provincial minister Anwarzeb Khan, who said both the federal and provincial governments haven’t honoured their commitments. “The federal government reduced the development budget for the newly-merged districts in the annual budget for 2022-23. It also stopped funding to the health insurance cards for the tribal people”.
PTI member from South Waziristan Naseer Khan Wazir was, however, quite blunt in his expression — he said the tribesmen would be compelled to demand the creation of a separate province if the government remained indifferent to their problems. Ghazi Ghazan Jamal, a former provincial minister and PTI member from Orakzai, reminded that the government had promised that Rs 100 billion would be allocated for development of tribal districts in the annual budget for next 10 years.
But the opposite happened: the federal and governments of Punjab, Sindh and Balochistan did not agree to give even 3 percent share in the National Finance Commission Award for the tribal districts. And as for the KP government, it too reduced the budget for tribal districts from Rs 71 billion to Rs 50 billion.
That the tribal districts, which were not part of British empire and joined Pakistan as its leaders called on Quaid-e-Azam at Peshawar in 1948 and offered to be part of the Pakistan, have their history tainted with blood and sacrifice for this country. They helped liberate a significant part of the Dogra-ruled Kashmir and over the last four decades or so suffered the negative fallout of the Afghan war. And they decided to merge with KP despite stiff opposition by a segment of its own population for none of their faults.
That they should now be treated step-motherly is unacceptable. No chain can be stronger than its weakest link — by keeping this region out of national pail of progress and prosperity the governments in Islamabad and Peshawar would be providing space to the elements who would flourish in hostile tribal districts. And one should know that the land and people of tribal districts have enormous inbuilt potential, both natural and human, to become a pocket of prosperity in Pakistan. It is about time, and it should not be wasted, the federal and provincial governments gave a serious thought to demands made by the tribal members.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2022
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