New conflict lines in Pakistan’s tribal areas

Pakistan’s tribal areas bordering Afghanistan have long been known to the world as the place where al-Qaeda’s core and the Taliban could operate from. However, during the past years, the Pakistani military and civil government have taken remarkable decisions to eliminate that image and responded to local and international calls of integrating the semi-autonomous federally administered tribal areas (FATA) into Pakistan. They have initiated military operations, but also development projects such as building roads and schools. At the same time, the Pakistani Taliban and foreign militants are facing difficulties in operating from the areas due to the heavy military presence. Despite all these developments, new conflict lines have emerged, calling for attention.

The merger
The northwestern tribal areas bordering Afghanistan have always had a very specific nature of governance. Previously no laws passed in the parliament applied to the tribal areas, and only the president of the country had the power to issue ordinances or amend laws for the areas. The Frontier Crimes Regulation (FCR), which dated from the colonial era was the main regulation of the Tribal Areas, and its strongly punitive nature suggested that controlling crime rather than extending service delivery had been the main priority.

In May 2018, FATA was dissolved and became part of the KPK province, and the jurisdiction of the high courts is now extended to the tribes. This was part of a counterterrorism strategy, since the lack of development and access to education, infrastructure and justice has long been pointed out as something that eases the recruitment to militant movements. My own work, based on interviews with the Pakistani Taliban, shows that one of the grievances that made recruits join the movement was the lack of justice infrastructures.

Yet, the merger will not happen without tensions. We have already seen how the Pakhtunkhwa Milli Awami Party - PkMAP (one of the political parties representing the Pashtuns) - is demanding that FATA becomes a province of its own, with their own chief minister. Party members walked out when the law on the merger was voted in the parliament. At the same time, one of the big challenges will be how to balance new and old legitimacy structures. In Pakistan, like many other countries, there are competing sources for law and justice (the British common law, sharia, tradition/riwaj such as the jirgas organized by tribal elders). Whether the jurisdictional extension of the Supreme Court and the Peshawar High Court will be accepted by the tribes is still an open question.

The remnants of the Pakistani Taliban
The Pakistani Taliban – a movement that established itself in 2007 as the umbrella movement TTP, uniting against the Pakistani military and its war on terror - have had difficult times since 2013-14 when the Pakistani military initiated large-scale military operations in Waziristan. The remnants of the TTP have largely moved to Afghanistan and to the urban areas of Pakistan. The 2013-14 operations were a response to internal events, but also to the criticism by the US that Pakistan had been playing a double game and not been hitting hard on those movements who were using Pakistani soil to prepare their operations against the US in Afghanistan. .

Today, the TTP is split between fractions that either supports jihad against Pakistan’s military or a wider Jihad (against the US). The TTP has always been a divided movement, but in 2017 it split over leaderships issues and questions about where to concentrate their jihad. Today, the main factions of the TTP are TTP-JA (Jamaat ul Ahrar) and HuA (harakat ul Ahrar). The latter dedicated its jihad to Pakistan only. In any case, the movement appears to be considerably weakened, not least because the US claims to have eliminated the leader of the movement in a drone attack, and some senior commanders as well.

Mullahs, pashtuns and the tribes
One ‘lump’ of the Pakistani Taliban is, however, still active in South Waziristan. They are organized in one of the peace committees in the district and are also called the “good Taliban”, the ones who the military is not targeting. They are no longer part of the larger umbrella of TTP, and they have been granted the right to control an area in South Waziristan. Granting autonomy to insurgent groups is a traditional conflict resolution mechanism, together with an old peace deal with this group that implies that the militants do not target the military and vice versa. The South Waziri Taliban are today organized under four different commanders, they have their own police and public morality “corps” and their own justice system. Adding to this, they collect taxes from local businesses.

Since the latest military operations in Waziristan, we can observe new developments and conflict lines emerging in the tribal areas.

First, we have the old TTP (operating mostly from Afghanistan) vs. the South Waziri Taliban (controlling Wana and its bazar). They disagree on their stance towards the Pakistani government and military forces.

Second, we have the maliks vs. the mullahs: There are frequent clashes between the tribal elders (the people who are against the presence of the Taliban in South Waziristan) and the Taliban-affiliated militants. The old tribal-based system has lately been uniting against the Taliban reign: at a jirga earlier this year, people from the Wazir and Mehsud tribes met to discuss how to deal with the peace committee/South Waziri Taliban.

Third, we have the Pashtuns vs. the Pashtuns: The South Waziri Taliban (who are Pashtuns) clashes the PTM (Pashtun Tahaffuz Movement/Pashtun Protection Movement). While both movements have followers among the Pashtuns, none of them are separatist, and the last-mentioned is a non-armed movement. It rose in 2013/2014 as a protest movement against the landmines, which caused many civilian causalities in Waziristan.

Finally, we have the conflict between the PTM and the military: The military is hitting hard on the PTM, which by observers has been described as a Pashtun human rights movement, as it is also claiming equal rights and treatment as other ethnic communities. They have raised a voice against the Pakistan army’s arrest of activists of the movement, demanding transparency and legal justice. Their slogans accuse the Pakistani army of being behind terrorism, and they accuse the army for granting the Taliban protection.

While the Pakistani government has taken a considerable step against integrating the tribal areas into the infrastructure of the rest of Pakistan, volatile conflict-lines are hence still prevalent – only in new forms. How the civil government and military will handle the competing visions of governance and belongings as well as demands for justice, rights and transparency will be decisive for whether Pakistan will succeed with this new phase of its counterterrorism policies.