It is not an exaggerated question at all if asked by a person who hails from and lives in FATA.
It is an adequate term to describe the plight and the series of agonies, the people of FATA are facing, for the last 66 years. Sword is not used in modern warfare just because it does not fulfill the requirements of present day warfare.
The legal and administrative systems applicable in a population of 5 millions are as anachronistic as a sword in modern warfare. FCR, a legal and administrative system is one such example that set apart FATA from the rest of the country.
A Political Agent, head of a tribal region exercise extensive executive and judicial powers that at certain circumstances cannot be revised even by a regular court of law, which is at all costs the negation of the basic human rights.
An experimental laboratory animal is entitled for certain basic rights in the world of global village of 20th millennium but the tribal men, the devoted guardian of Pakistan’s 2500 miles Durand Line are deprived of the same basic human rights.
The per capita public development expenditure is shockingly low, one third of the national average. Social development indicators are worse from the day zero. The overall literacy rate is 17.42% compared to 56% nationally.
FATA has a per doctor rate of 1:6,762 compared to the national 1:1,359. Most locals depend on agriculture since there is no industrial development.
The Peshawar High Court Chief Justice Remarks that tribal areas were being treated like the British colonies are historic and self-explanatory forever.
We demand of government that the FATA forum convention three recommendations, calling for extending the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court of Pakistan and Peshawar High Court to FATA, separating judiciary and executive in the tribal areas and
enforcing the fundamental rights provided by the Constitution of 1973 be extended to bleeding FATA without any query and further delay.
Dr Mukhtar Ali
Kurram Agency
Is FATA a Colony of Pakistan?