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3 Pakistan's nut that won't
crack By Mark LeVine
crucial role in securing rights to
land, particularly in the Afghan-Pakistani border
regions that today are part of the NWFP and FATA.
Tribes and the foundations of Pakistani
history Both regions, which together
comprise almost 100,000 square kilometers, are
composed of at least a dozen tribes belonging,
largely, to the Pashtun ethnic group. Pashtuns
have long been
known
for their refusal to submit to foreign domination,
and the more than a dozen tribes of the regions
that would become the NWFP and FATA fought a
succession of outside powers in the 18th and 19th
centuries, including the Mughal, Afghan, Persian
and British empires, in their quest to retain as
much local autonomy as possible.
The
British alone engaged in well over four dozen
"expeditions" in the frontier or tribal areas
between 1847 and 1908, as part of the struggle for
control of these strategically important regions
against Czarist Russia. Despite the regular and
large scale use of force - in the first war with
the Pashtuns, 14,800 soldiers went into the tribal
areas, only one came out alive - the British never
managed to secure full control over them. This was
a primary reason why the government of India
acquiesced to relatively wide local autonomy for
the regions compared with much of India or in
other colonies.
Indeed, by 1877, the
British administrator of the "frontier districts"
described the regions as "a spectacle unique in
the world ... where, after 25 years of peaceful
occupation, a great civilized power has obtained
so little influence over its semi-savage
neighbors, and acquired so little knowledge of
them ... There is absolutely no security for
British life a mile or two beyond our border."
The NWFP was created by the British in
1905 as a reflection of the need to offer
significant autonomy to the region's Pashtun
majority if a semblance of order was to be
maintained. Its seven agencies or districts
reflected not just the power of Pashtun identity,
but the enduring impact of Arab, Hindu, Sikh,
Dravidian, Sindhi and Punjabi influences, and the
confusing interplay of caste and tribal structure
as well. Religiously, Sufism rather than the
orthodox Islam today associated with the Taliban
was dominant in the region.
Tribes,
criminals and the law Given the
circumstances that led to its creation, it's not
surprising that the tribes of the NWFP have born
the stamp of criminality since the days of British
rule. First, they were defined by the "Criminal
Tribes Act" of 1871. Until 1917, tribes were
classified as "Backwards Classes" or "primitive"
and were divided into "criminal and wandering
tribes, aboriginal tribes and untouchables".
Even today, the region is governed by the
"Frontier Crimes Regulation Ordinance", which
continues the centuries-old tradition of
governments equating the frontier regions with
lawlessness and criminality.
The British
placed Peshawar, capital of the NWFP, under direct
federal administration to ensure a modicum of
control of the surrounding areas by the central
government. But in the NWFP and what would become
the FATA, tribal customs were allowed to govern
most aspects of people's lives, as they do today.
Politically, when provincial elections
were held beginning in 1935, the leaders of the
main tribes, or maliks (often referred to
as "feudal lords" in the West, and by some
Pakistanis as well) were most often elected to the
local or national assemblies, extending their
local power by participating in the emerging
British, and then Pakistani, state structures.
As the central government attempted to
exert greater power over the frontier and tribal
regions, however, the long-standing tensions
between the secular laws of the state, sharia, or
Islamic law, and 'urf, or local customs,
grew. Aggravating the situation was the fact that
the NWFP and FATA were home to a particularly
powerful code of ethics and behavior, known as
Pashtunwali, or the Pashtun
way.
Pashtunwali is based on the powerful
obligations to provide hospitality and sanctuary,
even to one's enemies, yet at the same time to
exact revenge at all costs against any slights
against one's honor, or that of members of one's
family, clan or tribe. The code also requires
Pashtuns to abide by the decisions of the council
of tribal leaders when they meet in the assembly
known as the jirga, which decides on
disputes and feuds.
The overall system
long served not just to maintain honor (which is
what most Western commentators focus on), but
equally important, to maintain a rough equality
and balance of power between and within tribes.
This function is crucial because in the imperial
as well as globalized eras, external forces have
exercised power precisely by disturbing local
equality, or at least stability, in order to
create new political orders more favorable to
their interests.
Indeed, this process
generated significant instability in the tribal
regions in the decades leading up to the creation
of Pakistan in 1947, as economic transformations
in India and neighboring regions increased the
power of previously minor tribal leaders at the
expense of the more established maliks.
They in turn aligned themselves with the British
and later central Pakistani governments to retain
their hold on power.
As is so often the
case in countries under colonial rule, the very
system that the British imposed to maintain order
politically was threatened by the instability
their economic and military policies generated. As
time wore on, the increasing power, corruption and
exploitation of the "big Kahns" (as the
maliks are also known)encouraged the rise
of a new generation of charismatic religious
figures, and eventually the Taliban. Their
egalitarian and purified vision of a just Islamic
order was more in line with local customs and
ideals than were the actions of the politically
connected major land-owning maliks.
What is particularly dangerous about this
dynamic is that the coming together of the Taliban
and the tribesmen brought into synergy two
seemingly contradictory positions: the
anti-nationalist and pan-Islamic identity of the
Taliban, many of whom came from outside Pakistan,
and the particularistic and locally rooted
identity of the region's tribal groups.
The Taliban brought in their own, much
needed financial resources to the region, and
their activities were supported by then president
Zia ul-Haq (to help legitimize his dictatorial
rule), by the United States and Saudis, and by
remittances sent home by migrants working in the
wealthy Gulf countries. The local people offered
hospitality, generations of anger at the central
government, and a history of violent rebellion
under the banner of Islam.
This
combination of economic, geostrategic, political
and ideological interests made the NWFP and FATA a
natural base
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