Pakistan_ A Hard Country - Anatol Lieven [224]
This system was intended not to govern, but to manage the tribes, and contain both their internal feuds and any potential rebellion against the central government. The British usually responded to tribal rebellions and raids not with attempts at permanent conquest, but by a strategy cynically described by British officers as ‘butcher and bolt’, or ‘burn and scuttle’; punitive expeditions would enter a given territory, burn down villages and the forts of maliks and religious figures held to be responsible for the attacks, kill any tribesmen who resisted, distribute subsidies to allies, and then return again to their bases. Some British officials denounced this in favour of an intensified ‘forward policy’ of extending direct British rule up to the Afghan border; but in general ‘the issue on which almost all administrators and soldiers agreed was that a permanent military presence inside tribal territory was not a feasible option.’5
In 1947 – 8, the new state of Pakistan, believing that the Muslim tribes would not revolt against a Muslim state, withdrew regular troops from the tribal areas. Security there was left to the locally recruited Frontier Corps, a system that remained generally in place until the launch of the campaign against the Afghan Taleban in Waziristan in 2004. The new Pakistani state felt that the tribes had demonstrated their loyalty by the enthusiasm with which many, and especially the Mahsuds of Waziristan, had joined in the ‘jihad’ in Kashmir in the autumn of 1947.
The population of FATA is overwhelmingly Pathan with a few Hindko-speakers. Apart from the Turi tribe in the Kurram Agency, who are Shia, the whole population of FATA are Sunni Muslims. FATA covers 10,500 square miles, and has a population of some 3.5 million. Its development indices are far lower even than those of the NWFP, with only 30 per cent male literacy and 3 per cent female. These miserable figures have been widely blamed on FATA’s peculiar system of government (or non-government) – which is doubtless true; but they can also be attributed to the inaccessible nature of the territory and the intense conservatism and xenophobia of its people.
An ANP dissident, Juma Khan Sufi, summed up the problem for FATA and Pathans more widely in words which are harsh but which are also a necessary antidote to the endless self-pity, self-praise and paranoid conspiracy theories that I heard during my time on the Frontier:
Pukhtoons are happy with their archaic tribal culture. A large part of our society is content living in its tribal particularism, which people cherish as freedom ... The attitude of the ordinary Pukhtoon does not at all tally with the modern world. Illiteracy and poverty are common. Most of us don’t send our children to school. Female education is still disliked by a majority of Pukhtoons ... The empowerment of women is anathema. They have no rights in their society. During elections, village elders belonging to opposing parties try to reach a consensus on not allowing womenfolk to exercise their right to vote ...
We take pride in these things, which in reality should be a cause of shame. Hence the claim of most Pukhtoons: whatever good is found, is there because of us and whatever bad is found in society is the creation of aliens.6
Or as Noman Wazir, CEO of Frontier Foundries, put it with deep bitterness: ‘There is all this talk of helping bring Pashtuns into the twenty-first century, but this is nonsense. It’s too much of a leap. What we need to do is bring them from the Bronze Age to the Iron Age.’ Admittedly, he is a steel manufacturer.
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