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 colonial structure. The constitutions of 1956, 1962 and 1973 all preserved Fata’s exceptional status. Though the FCR underwent amendments, its coercive core persisted.
THE COLD WAR’S GEOPOLITICAL LEGACY
During a 2022 visit to Tari Mangal, a Sunni-majority village near the Gavi border crossing near Parachinar in Kurram, I encountered an unsettling silence. Once a vibrant market town, it now stood in quiet ruin, with shuttered shops and dilapidated buildings marking the passage of time. In 2023, the village once again made headlines when seven Shia teachers were killed in a sectarian attack, underscoring the persistent sectarian tensions in the region.
Tari Mangal’s strategic location made it a key transit point during the Cold War. Following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, the village became a vital corridor for Afghan mujahideen fighters backed by the US, Pakistan and Arab states. This shift turned the village into a target for Soviet and Afghan retaliatory strikes.
The broader Fata region became the epicentre of Cold War covert operations. Hundreds of madressahs [religious seminaries] and training camps were established, channelling fighters into Afghanistan. “Fata had transformed into a launch pad for one of the largest covert operations in modern history,” noted a former Pakistani diplomat.
In From Muhajir to Mujahid, Dr Fazal-ur-Rahim Marwat, a Peshawar-based academic, records that the number of Afghan refugees in Pakistan rose from 400,000 within days of the Soviet invasion to over 3.2 million by 1990. Though Pakistan was not party to international refugee conventions, it managed the crisis independently. The Afghan Cell and Commissionerate categorised refugees into ‘muhajireen’ [refugees] and ‘mujahideen’ [freedom fighters], though this distinction was often blurred. Publicly, it was claimed that refugees resided in settled areas, while the mujahideen were based in tribal regions. In practice, however, these distinctions were often blurred, according to Marwat.
Niyaz Ahmed Karbalai, a community elder from Parachinar, recalls how Afghan refugees settled on Shia-owned land in the 1980s. “Gulbuddin Hekmatyar’s Hizb-i-Islami set up a training centre there,” he says. “Not only were attacks launched into Afghanistan, but sectarian harmony in Kurram also began to unravel.”
Following the Soviet withdrawal in 1989, Afghanistan plunged into civil war among rival mujahideen factions. Pakistan continued backing the ‘Peshawar Seven’, a coalition of Sunni Afghan groups, which established further camps in Fata.
As the Taliban rose in the 1990s, recruits from Pakistani madressahs and tribal areas once again flowed into Afghanistan, reinforcing Pakistan’s influence in shaping its neighbour’s future. Meanwhile, Fata itself descended into lawlessness, becoming a breeding ground for arms smuggling, kidnappings and criminal networks — legacies of a Cold War fought on its soil.
FATA POST-9/11
In the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 attacks, the Fata region underwent profound transformations that redefined both its internal dynamics and its geopolitical significance. Located along the porous border with Afghanistan, Fata’s rugged terrain and minimal state presence rendered it an ideal sanctuary for Al-Qaeda operatives and Afghan Taliban fighters escaping US-led military offensives in Afghanistan. As American forces dismantled Taliban strongholds across the Durand Line, waves of militants infiltrated Fata, often welcomed by sympathetic local elements.
The influx of foreign and local militants began to reshape the socio-political order of the region. With the central government largely absent and traditional tribal structures already weakened, these groups filled the power vacuum. The situation reached a critical juncture after the Lal Masjid operation in Islamabad in July 2007, which sparked a nationwide radicalisation and served as a rallying point for militant factions. In December that year, Baitullah Mehsud consolidated various insurgent outfits under the banner of the Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), formalising a militant umbrella organisation that entrenched itself across Fata.
The TTP’s ascendancy marked the collapse of the traditional tribal governance model. Tribal elders, or maliks, who once mediated conflicts and upheld customary law, became prime targets of assassination campaigns aimed at dismantling any alternative authority. Fata quickly became emblematic of global jihadist activity. By 2009, then-US President Barack Obama famously referred to the region as “the most dangerous place in the world.”
Efforts by the Pakistani state to regain control alternated between military operations and peace deals, often with limited success. It was not until Operation Zarb-i-Azb in 2014, following the TTP’s attack on Karachi airport, that a concerted and sustained military campaign began to roll back insurgent strongholds, signalling a critical shift in Pakistan’s counterterrorism strategy.
By 2018, the Pakistani government declared a significant victory over the TTP, characterising the outcome as a transformation from being “victims of terrorism” to emerging as “victors” in the fight against militancy.
PUSH FOR REFORM IN FATA
In a modest hall in Islamabad on a cold winter day in 2016, an NGO convened a rare gathering to address one of Pakistan’s most intricate political questions: the future of Fata.
The event brought together a diverse array of voices from the tribal areas — Pakhtun nationalists, maliks, federal and religious party leaders, civil society representatives and youth activists. I was present, covering the event as a journalist, closely observing the discussions — tense, impassioned, yet filled with cautious optimism.
The dialogue was part of a broader momentum that began after the federal government, led by the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N), established a Sartaj Aziz-led committee in 2015. Tasked with exploring political, legal and economic integration options for Fata, the committee worked against the backdrop of ongoing military operations, particularly Operation Zarb-i-Azb.
The relative stability that followed the military offensive created space for reform-oriented dialogue. Pressure mounted both domestically and internationally. Western diplomats viewed administrative reforms in Fata as critical to long-term counterterrorism efforts and regional stability.
Consensus on the need for reform was evident at the meeting, yet the visions for that reform diverged sharply. Pakhtun nationalist parties, particularly the Awami National Party, strongly supported a full merger with KP, arguing that tribal communities were already deeply linked to KP’s urban centres for education, healthcare and employment.
Opposing them were tribal politicians advocating for a separate Fata province. “Why should we tie ourselves to KP, which has struggled with its own governance challenges for decades?” said one tribal leader. Many of these figures had long operated outside party structures, securing influence through tribal networks and financial means.
A third group favoured establishing a semi-autonomous Fata Council, modelled after Gilgit-Baltistan’s governance system. They believed a locally elected council could preserve tribal identity while initiating incremental reform.
Yet, a fourth segment resisted any form of structural change. Comprising political agents, select bureaucrats and traditional maliks, this group benefitted from the status quo and saw in its continuity the preservation of their power and privilege.
Following extensive consultations with stakeholders, the Sartaj Aziz-led committee submitted its report in August 2016, recommending the full integration of Fata with KP. The proposal aimed to dismantle the colonial-era FCR and bring Fata under Pakistan’s constitutional and administrative framework.
MERGER WITH KP
The culmination of this reform initiative came on May 24, 2018, when the 25th Constitutional Amendment Bill was introduced in the National Assembly. It received overwhelming parliamentary support, though two political parties — the Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam-Fazl (JUI-F) and the Pakhtunkhwa Milli Awami Party (PkMAP) — opposed the bill.
The following day, the Senate endorsed the bill and, shortly thereafter, the KP Provincial Assembly approved it as well. On May 31, 2018, then-President Mamnoon Hussain signed the amendment bill into law, formally merging Fata with KP and ending its distinct legal status rooted in British colonial rule.
In the aftermath of the merger, significant administrative changes were implemented. The traditional role of PAs was abolished, with these officials re-designated as deputy commissioners (DCs), and their subordinates as assistant commissioners — aligning the administrative hierarchy with the rest of the country. Moreover, the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court and the Peshawar High Court was extended to the region. District and sessions courts began to be established, gradually integrating the judicial framework.
To support this transition, the federal government announced a phased integration strategy. A five-year plan was introduced to mainstream the tribal districts, anchored by a Rs 1 trillion, 10-year development package. The National Economic Council approved this in principle, and provincial governments, though initially reluctant, agreed to contribute according to their National Finance Commission (NFC) shares.
The merger marked a historic milestone, offering the long-marginalised population of Fata access to political representation, constitutional rights, and a pathway to socio-economic development within the national mainstream.
UNFULFILLED PROMISES
Despite the historic merger, many of the commitments made to the people of the former Fata remain unfulfilled.
In late March 2025, KP Chief Minister Ali Amin Gandapur addressed a letter to President Asif Ali Zardari, urging the immediate convening of the long overdue 10th NFC meeting. He cited constitutional obligations and fiscal disparities that emerged following the merger, stressing the need for an equitable redistribution of national resources.
This demand reflects a broader discontent over the slow and uneven implementation of the federal government’s post-merger promises. Although the 2018 reform package included a five-year mainstreaming plan and a 10-year development program worth Rs one trillion, actual disbursements and outcomes have lagged. For many residents, the merger’s promise of full political, legal and economic inclusion remains elusive.
This month, Muzammil Aslam, adviser on finance to the KP chief minister, said that KP was facing a Rs 42 billion shortfall in federal divisible pool receipts during February to May of the current fiscal year. Discussing the NMDs, he noted that, although Rs 69 billion was allocated under the Accelerated Implementation Programme and Annual Development Programme, only Rs 22.5 billion had been released. Despite this, KP spent Rs 31 billion on development projects in the region.
Aslam criticised disparities in federal allocations, pointing out that, while Azad Jammu and Kashmir received a 50 percent budget increase and Gilgit-Baltistan 36 percent, the NMDs were allocated only Rs66 billion — far below the Rs 104 billion in actual expenditures. He also noted that, although police, judiciary and administrative services have been extended to the NMDs, the area remains understaffed. He called for ending the grant-in-aid system and including NMDs in the NFC Award.
Mohsin Dawar, a former MNA from North Waziristan, attributes the slow progress of the ex-Fata merger to a lack of prioritisation by the authorities and blamed both federal and provincial governments.
“The central government has failed to release the promised share for the NMDs under the NFC Award for the KP province,” he says. “Meanwhile, the provincial government has not fully utilised the funds it received for the development of NMDs.” Dawar adds that residents widely demand a separate, transparently managed account for development funds, to ensure allocations are used exclusively for the uplift of the NMDs.
LONG ROAD TO INTEGRATION
“We inherited a region with no modern offices, no trained staff, and no systems,” recalled a KP official who once served as DC in an NMD. “Building governance from scratch while managing expectations has been overwhelming.”
Seven years after the FATA merger, progress remains painfully slow. Despite formal integration, the region continues to suffer from inadequate infrastructure, substandard public services and a fragile governance system.
The transition from the colonial-era FCR to Pakistan’s formal legal system promised justice and equality. Yet, due to insufficient judicial infrastructure and a lack of trained legal professionals, thousands of cases remain unresolved. “People don’t trust the new system,” says Malik Khanzeb Khan, a tribal elder from Khyber. “It’s slow, costly and distant.”
District courts have been established in select areas, but access to justice remains limited. Security concerns often hinder the functioning of courts, while the traditional jirga system continues to serve as the preferred dispute resolution mechanism, due to its familiarity and swiftness.
More than half the population lives below the poverty line. Health and education services remain underdeveloped, and roads linking these areas to the rest of the province are either damaged or incomplete.
Administrative reforms have also faltered. While political agents were formally rebranded as deputy commissioners, many residents claim their bureaucratic behavior remains unchanged. “They operate from outside and are barely accessible,” a local from Khyber laments.
For many in the tribal belt, the promise of integration has yet to materialise into tangible change. “The merger was supposed to bring progress,” said one teacher in Kurram, “but our lives remain stuck in the past.”
RESURGENCE OF MILITANCY
In mid-April, amid growing unrest, a group of Mehsud tribesmen held a protest in South Waziristan against curfews and fears of renewed military operations. “We’ve already endured decades of war,” one speaker said. “Now we fear another operation is looming.”
Following the success of military operations such as Zarb-i-Azb, relative calm had returned. However, recent years have seen a resurgence in militancy, which now threatens both tribal and neighbouring settled districts of KP. Analysts attribute this escalation in part to the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan in August 2021. Militant groups such as the TTP and the Hafiz Gul Bahadur faction have found renewed momentum and safe havens across the border.
In Bajaur, the so-called Islamic State’s local affiliates pose a growing threat, while in Kurram, Shia neighbourhoods remain cut off from the rest of the country since November due to sectarian violence linked to unresolved land disputes, highlighting the fragile security landscape in the region. Compounding the issue is the fragile writ of the state and limited access to basic governance and services in these regions.
Militant attacks on security personnel, including soldiers and police officers, have increased. The integration of traditional paramilitary forces — Levies and Khasadars — into a formal police structure faces critical hurdles, particularly in terms of training and operational capacity.
These challenges have left the force ill-equipped to counter modern security threats. “In this environment,” the KP official admitted, “development in the NMDs has effectively stalled.”
DEMANDS FOR A REVERSAL
Frustration with slow reforms and deteriorating security has led to growing calls for reversing the merger. Some tribal elders and Islamist parties have demanded the restoration of the previous administrative system, a position echoed by the TTP during its negotiations with the government in 2021.
“Residents never demanded police, courts, or bureaucratic systems,” says Bismillah Afridi, a tribal elder leading the reversal campaign. “They only wanted reforms within the existing framework, by removing oppressive colonial laws.”
However, experts warn that any reversal could jeopardise national security. “Reversing the merger would recreate ungoverned spaces,” says Naveed Ahmed Shinwari, author of Political and Social Change in Pakistan’s Tribal Areas. “These spaces have historically served as sanctuaries for militants, such as the TTP, and could seriously undermine counterterrorism efforts.”
Seven years after the merger, the NMDs represent a paradox of promise and paralysis. The constitutional shift was historic, but implementation has been marred by administrative delays, underfunded development and a lack of political will. The recent rise in militancy has only deepened public disillusionment.
Law enforcement remains underprepared, and promised development funds have either been delayed or mismanaged. For many residents, the transformative potential of the merger has yet to be realised. The state’s writ remains fragile in several areas, and public frustration is mounting. The future of the merger — and the stability of the region — hinges on the state’s ability to deliver on its promises. Without substantial, inclusive reforms and sustained development efforts, the risk of renewed unrest remains dangerously high.
As one university student from Kurram regretfully says, “We were promised a new dawn, but it still feels like the same long night.”
The writer is a journalist and researcher whose work has appeared in The New York Times, Dawn and other publications, and has worked for various policy institutes. He can be reached at zeea.rehman@gmail.com
Published in Dawn, EOS, May 25th, 2025
