Federally Administered Tribal Areas - History

History

The region was annexed in the 19th century during the British colonial period, and though the British never succeeded in completely calming unrest in the region, it afforded them some protection from Afghanistan. The British Raj attempted to control the population of the annexed tribal regions with the Frontier Crimes Regulations (FCR), which allowed considerable power to govern to local nobles so long as these nobles were willing to meet the needs of the British. Due to the unchecked discretionary power placed into the hands of the jirga put into place by these nobles and to the human rights violations that ensued, the FCR has come to be known as the "black law." The annexed areas continued under the same governance after the Partition of India, through the Dominion of Pakistan in 1946 and into the Islamic Republic of Pakistan in 1956.

According to the United States Institute of Peace, the character of the region underwent a shift beginning in the 1980s with the entry into the region of the Mujahideen and CIA Operation Cyclone, against the Soviet Union prior to the fall of the Berlin Wall and collapse of Soviet Union.

In 2001, the Tehrik-e-Taliban militants began entering into the region. In 2003, Taliban forces sheltered in the FATA began crossing the border into Afghanistan, attacking military and police. Shkin, Afghanistan is a key location for these frequent battles. This heavily fortified military base has housed mostly American special operations forces since 2002 and is located just six kilometers from the Pakistani border. It is considered the most dangerous location in Afghanistan. With the encouragement of the United States, 80,000 Pakistani troops entered the FATA in March 2004 to search for al-Qaeda operatives. They were met with fierce resistance from Pakistani Taliban. It was not the elders, but the Pakistani Taliban who negotiated a truce with the army, an indication of the extent to which the Pakistani Taliban had taken control. Troops entered the region, into South Waziristan and North Waziristan eight more times between 2004 and 2006 and faced further Pakistani Taliban resistance. Peace accords entered into in 2004 and 2006 set terms whereby the tribesmen in the area would stop attacking Afghanistan and the Pakistanis would halt major military actions against the FATA, release all prisoners, and permit tribesmen to carry small guns. In 2007 the Pakistani Taliban in FATA became officially known under the name Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan.

On June 4, 2007, the National Security Council of Pakistan met to decide the fate of Waziristan and take up a number of political and administrative decisions to control "Talibanization" of the area. The meeting was chaired by President Pervez Musharraf and it was attended by the Chief Ministers and Governors of all four provinces. They discussed the deteriorating law and order situation and the threat posed to state security. To crush the armed militancy in the Tribal regions and Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, the government decided to intensify and reinforce law enforcement and military activity, take action against certain madrassahs, and jam illegal FM radio stations.