REPORTS that the military has presented to a tribal jirga of elders from North Waziristan an eight-page document setting out the terms under which IDPs can return to their homes in some parts of the agency has brought some welcome coverage, even if tangential, to what is rapidly becoming a forgotten war.

As Operation Khyber-II and the operation in Karachi dominate, it seems a lifetime ago that Operation Zarb-i-Azb was initiated amidst claims and rumours that it was to be the biggest, most decisive of all counter-insurgency operations attempted by the military.

In fact, that lifetime was just nine months ago. It is also not the first time that a military operation has been launched amidst a torrent of official propaganda before quietly slipping off the public agenda. Consider that before North Waziristan, there was South Waziristan.

Know more: Elders express inability to maintain peace in North Waziristan

And before South Waziristan, there was Swat. What’s common to all these places is that relevant, verifiable information dries up, the military’s presence is extended indefinitely and the local populations struggle to return to their normal, pre-insurgency lives.

In the latest case of the military requiring some North Waziristan tribes to pledge, among other things, to keep out militants from their areas before IDPs are allowed to return home, what is particularly disturbing is that the military, via the Fata administrative apparatus, is effectively seeking to return to the pre-insurgency status quo of the FCR, collective punishment and the jirga system.

Not only does that suggest that the very idea of Fata reforms has indefinitely been put on hold, it also suggests a fundamental misreading of what led to the unprecedented insurgency in Fata over the last decade and a half.

Specifically, while the war in Afghanistan, the state reliance on proxies and the growing radical Islamist discourse in the country were all contributing factors, Fata has been on fire because it has been for all intents and purposes kept as a buffer zone between Afghanistan and Pakistan, a no-man’s land meant to extend Pakistan’s influence into Afghanistan and prevent Afghan influence from radiating into Pakistan proper.

While the immediate priority in Fata has to be to tamp down militancy and recover all territory under control of militants, no strategy to achieve that will succeed if it does not factor in long-term considerations. Fata needs to be reformed and, administratively and legally, made like much of the rest of Pakistan — not returned to the anachronism it has always been.

As for the rest, with independent, verifiable information from North Waziristan all but impossible and the state, both civilian and military wings of it, seemingly preoccupied with new issues, there needs to be some political pressure — from parliament, through the media or perhaps even civil society — to prise more information from the state about what is happening in North Waziristan.

An information blackout is contrary to the public interest.

Published in Dawn, March 28th, 2015

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