While Pakistan is striving hard to defeat extremism and terrorism perpetrated in the name of Islam, there remains a serious lack of understanding regarding the underlying sources of radicalisation and violence in the country.
Since much of the terrorism, if not extremism, justified in the name of religion over the past many years has emanated from the country’s Pakhtun tribal regions—now known as the Merged Tribal Districts (MTDs) and previously called the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA)—there exists widespread misunderstanding, or rather insufficient comprehension, within policy circles and among decision-makers about the factors that have contributed to the persistent waves of terrorism originating from these areas. It is important to note that the residents of the Pakhtun tribal districts face numerous and deep-rooted problems, and the state has never meaningfully responded to address these myriad issues, many of which are of a highly specific nature. Consequently, the MTDs have remained extremely underdeveloped, and despite their merger with Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) province in 2018, there has been virtually no tangible progress on the ground.
On the contrary, since the merger of the former FATA into KP, terrorism—particularly by the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), officially dubbed Fitna-tul-Khawarij—has made a strong and dangerous comeback, affecting not only the former tribal areas but the entire province. Taliban militants in the MTDs have long exploited local grievances to sustain their activities, yet it is deeply regrettable that Pakistan’s decision-makers have failed to develop a serious and informed assessment of the sources of terrorism and militancy emanating from these regions. This failure can be attributed either to the myopia, lethargy and lack of capacity among policymakers to conduct realistic assessments, or to a deliberate unwillingness to honestly analyse the problem because, in many ways, they themselves laid the foundations of militancy and benefited from it. A striking example is the massive war economy that emerged in ex-FATA during the Afghan resistance against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan (1979–1988), when the tribal areas were turned into a global rallying ground for militant training under the regime of General Zia-ul-Haq, a policy that bestowed enormous benefits on segments of Pakistan’s political and security leadership.
The continued inability and unwillingness to realistically analyse these sources and forces of terrorism have inflicted irreparable damage on the country and its security. The grievances of the tribal population are innumerable, and successive governments have consistently failed to address them, resulting in recurring crises and prolonged conflict, as reflected in repeated military operations across the tribal belt and the displacement of nearly three million people to KP and other parts of the country. These grievances include the unclear constitutional and legal-administrative status of the MTDs, the complete lack of basic infrastructure, the absence of an effective local government system, decades of administration by unelected officials, widespread poverty, unemployment and illiteracy, and the inhuman living conditions of women.
Successive regimes have effectively maintained the former FATA as a buffer zone between mainland Pakistan and Afghanistan, continuing a colonial-era policy despite the fact that millions of Afghan refugees were allowed to settle freely across Pakistani cities. This contradiction renders the very rationale of the buffer meaningless, as the supposed sources of instability were permitted to penetrate the heart of the country. Given these realities, it is hardly surprising that militants exploited local grievances, and responsibility for the rise of extremism and terrorism therefore rests squarely with successive governments and their flawed policies.
Today, as Pakistan confronts one of the gravest phases of its existence amid a renewed wave of Taliban violence, there is an urgent need for a realistic and objective assessment of conditions in the tribal areas. Yet, despite acknowledging that the state’s writ in the MTDs is virtually nonexistent and that the merger with KP has been largely symbolic, authorities continue to shy away from genuinely empowering local governments. Without robust, self-governing local government structures, no effective state apparatus can be established in the MTDs, nor can the long-standing grievances of the people be addressed.
Administrators imposed from outside have repeatedly mismanaged the region, pursued personal or institutional interests, and left behind disorder, while urging locals to rely on jirgas without granting them real control over their land, resources or governance. This approach has clearly failed, and the only viable solution lies in establishing empowered, self-governing local government institutions in the MTDs to address grievances and restore the writ of the state.