For Najibullah Wazir, a resident of North Waziristan, May 28, 2018, marked a historic turning point. On that day, Pakistan’s Parliament passed the 25th Constitutional Amendment, formally abolishing the colonial-era Frontier Crimes Regulation (FCR) and merging the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (Fata) with Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (KP). The decision was hailed as a watershed moment — an end to more than a century of legal and political exclusion for the region’s residents.

The merger held out the promise of equal rights, access to courts, regular policing, improved infrastructure, and civic inclusion. For young voices such as Wazir, who had long advocated for the mainstreaming of Fata, it signified the dawn of a new chapter. “We believed we would finally be treated as citizens, not subjects,” he recalls. “They promised us development, peace and justice.”

Seven years later, those promises remain largely unfulfilled. Despite legislative success, the implementation has faltered, undermined by bureaucratic inertia, political ambiguity and chronic funding shortfalls.

“We were betrayed,” Wazir says flatly. “Forget roads and hospitals. Our only demand now is security. We cannot survive being caught between Taliban militants and another military operation.”

Field observations and local interviews reveal a growing sense of frustration and abandonment. The hopes of rapid development have been eclipsed by rising insecurity, especially since the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan in 2021, which revitalised cross-border militancy. Incomplete infrastructure, poorly resourced courts and police, and stalled public services underscore the state’s limited presence.

The May 28, 2018 merger of the erstwhile Federally Administered Tribal Areas into Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa was meant to herald the abolition of colonial-era governance, and provide equal rights to their citizens, as well as access to courts, regular policing, improved infrastructure and civic inclusion. Seven years on, many of those promises remain unfulfilled. Eos looks at the reasons why discontent is rising…

Exacerbating the crisis, international aid cuts, especially following the Trump administration’s reorientation of US foreign policy, have disrupted critical stabilisation projects.

This piece evaluates the outcomes of the 2018 Fata-KP merger, questioning whether the legal victory has translated into substantive change. It situates the issue within broader historical and geopolitical contexts, highlighting the urgent need for structural reform and sustained engagement.

COLONIAL LEGACY AND TRANSITION

The roar of trucks bound for Afghanistan echoing through the Khyber Pass marks a route that has been a corridor of trade, migration and imperial ambition for centuries. This vital artery slices through the Khyber, one of the seven former tribal districts that had made the erstwhile Fata a region steeped in history. 

British colonial engagement with the region began in the 19th century, culminating in the establishment of the Khyber Agency in the 1870s, the first formal administrative unit in what later became Fata. Situated at the crossroads of British India, Afghanistan and the Russian Empire, the region was treated by colonial authorities as a buffer zone rather than an integral part of the state. The demarcation of the 19th-century Durand Line institutionalised this strategic ambiguity, by creating a semi-autonomous tribal belt.

Initially, the British established four agencies — Khyber, Kurram, South Waziristan and North Waziristan. The Fata region expanded after Pakistan gained independence, with the addition of Mohmand in 1951, Bajaur in 1971 and Orakzai in 1973, the latter being the only agency not bordering Afghanistan. 

Following the merger in 2018, these seven agencies were merged into KP and re-designated as the Newly Merged Districts (NMDs) of KP for administrative purposes, alongside six Frontier Regions (FRs) that were incorporated into adjacent districts of KP.

Covering roughly 27,000 square kilometres — less than five percent of Pakistan’s territory — the former Fata area is home to over five million people. However, this figure remains contested, with significant displacement caused by conflict and military operations, leading to widespread migration to urban centres.

GOVERNED WITHOUT RIGHTS

For Muhammad Shoaib, a construction material trader from Mohmand, an incident in 2002 remains vivid. “A man was killed near our farmland and, under the FCR’s collective responsibility clause, 30 of our men — including my father and brothers — were detained,” he recalls. “We were punished until the culprits were produced. It’s a long story — how much we suffered, how long we were imprisoned and how many homes were demolished.”

Shoaib’s experience is a powerful illustration of the arbitrary and punitive governance under the FCR, a colonial-era legal framework introduced by the British in the late 19th century. Enacted to control the strategically sensitive Pakhtun frontier and quell tribal resistance, the FCR institutionalised collective punishment, allowing entire communities to be penalised for the actions of a single individual. Suspects were denied access to formal courts, with tribal jirgas replacing due process.

The British emphasised control over inclusion, granting sweeping powers to Political Agents (PAs) and tribal elites (Maliks), who operated with near-total impunity. Legal rights and civil liberties were systematically curtailed.

In a recent scholarly article, Dr Adeel Malik, an academic at the University of Oxford, alongside Rinchan Ali Mirza and Faiz Ur Rehman, critiques the enduring legacy of colonial governance. They reference Sir Olaf Caroe, a former colonial administrator, who observed that “the line of administration stopped like a tide almost at the first contour” of the frontier. They argue that this “rule of difference” created a profound institutional discontinuity, legally disenfranchising the frontier population and excluding them from the broader judicial and electoral frameworks of the state.

Following Independence in 1947, successive Pakistani governments maintained this........

© Dawn (Magazines)