Tribal Areas Need Justice to Consolidate Taliban's Defeat, The National, 18 December 2009
EXCERPT: "Now that Pakistan has reportedly secured the Pakistani Taliban’s major strongholds in South Waziristan, analysts say Islamabad must immediately address the underlying conditions that allowed militancy to flourish in the region or it will again become a sanctuary for insurgents. 'If we don’t deal with some of these issues related to governance, then we are doomed to fail in trying to stabilise this region,' said Ziad Haider, a former US Senate foreign policy staffer currently at the Harvard Kennedy School. If such a strategy to incorporate the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (Fata) is not implemented, the region may prove to be an Achilles heel for US President Barack Obama’s revamped war plan in Afghanistan, whose success depends on establishing security in the tribal belt where many Afghan militants who cross the border to fight US and Nato troops are based. At the heart of the problem is a decrepit administrative regime that governs the semiautonomous region, a patchwork of tribal customs and the colonial-era Frontier Crimes Regulation (FCR), which includes a frequently used provision for collective punishment."
Read the full story.
Related articles:
Govt worried about post-operation in SW, Daily Times, 19 December 2009
The next phase of counter-militancy, The News International, 25 November 2009
Iron fist no answer to insurgency, The Australian, 24 October 2009
Pakistan to democratise lawless Tribal Areas, Telegraph, 14 August 2009
Amendments to Frontier Crime Regulation approved, DAWN, 13 August 2009
Pakistan's victories over the Taliban: Will they last?, TIME, 2 June 2009
Related posts:
Waziristan success only a starting point, 1 December 2009
Despite govt claims, long-term instability in FATA, 30 November 2009
Govt pressured on post-offensive plan, 10 November 2009
Countering militancy in FATA, 26 October 2009
