Betwixt and Between: The FATA Reform Process and the China- Pakistan Economic Corridor

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Abstract

Pakistan offers very unique political culture featured by deeply entrenched security-dominated worldview and concrete processes of behaviours in all spheres of the country’s politics. One of the most remarkable characteristics of Islamabad’s official rhetoric is the persistently formulated claim of the existence of a ‘foreign hand’ in all kinds of the internal issues. However, there are clear indications that most of these flashpoints are of colonial origin and/or are ‘homemade’. The unfortunate trajectories present in the Federal Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), Pakistan’s most fragile, underdeveloped, and war-torn areas, can be seen as an example par excellence of how conflicts inherited by former colonial ruler turned worse due to a bad governance, geo-political considerations, and partisan economic interests of the national elite after gaining independence.