Festering sore

MUSTAFA QADRI states that the strong public support in Pakistan currently for its war against the Taliban insurgency within its territory arose due to a host of factors including a perception that Pakistan was fighting a war for its  existence, with the armed forces as brave guarantors of national security against foreign actors. In a briefing paper for the Pakistan Security Research Unit,"Public perceptions of Pakistan’s war against the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan", he cautions that this prevented the Pakistani society from confronting the very real, and serious infiltration of militant, political Islam into mainstream society and effectively absolved the state and religious leaders from their culpability in creating the very environment that enabled the TTP to form and so rapidly expand throughout the tribal areas.

Reforms in FATA

Shehryar Fazli, South Asia editor at The International Crisis Group states that the encroaching Talibanisation in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) was not the product of tribal traditions or resistance but that of short-sighted military policies and an outdated legal system that isolated the region from the rest of the country, giving it an ambiguous constitutional status and denied political and economic freedom to the populace. In an International Crisis Group report, “Pakistan: Countering Militancy in FATA”, he states that earlier attempts to counter extremism in the tribal areas had failed because they prioritised short-term gain over fundamental changes to the political and administrative set and calls for dismantling of the existing undemocratic system of patronage driven by political agents.