Editor’s note: We are cross-posting a five-series article titled “Voices from FATA and the panic” recently published in Daily Times. In this series Farhat Taj present a Pashtun nationalist perspective on issues of ethnic and provincial identity and the war on terror. In particular, she highlights the concerns of the Pashtun population of FATA and KP about Pakistani state’s policies of strategic depth and Jihad enterprise.

Farhat’s critica...

Courtesy to "Daily Times"

The Difa-i-Pakistan rally was a combination of both: the Taliban with and without beards. The common denominator is that they both support the establishment’s use of religious bigotry in foreign as well as domestic policies of Pakistan

Militant outfits known for close ties with the military establishment of Pakistan held the Difa-i-Pakistan Conference (Defence of Pakistan Conference) on December 18, 2011. They declared jihad as an obligation for Muslims a...

By--Farhat Taj

The PPP is losing space to the religious fanatics and silencing with its own hands all the sane and principled voices within the ranks of the party. Shortsighted and insensitive people are running the show in the party

Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) has arguably been the most popular federalist party of Pakistan. The party has been binding Pakistanis across the ethnic and religious divide with the federation of Pakistan. It has secular credentials and has been backin...

The ANP fell on its knees during the signing of the Swat peace deal with the terrorists. ANP circles have anonymously claimed that suicide bombers were sent to the top leaders to force them to sign the peace deal. If they refused, they would have been killed on the spot

It has been quite a few days now since the top leaders of the Pakhtun nationalist party, the Awami National Party (ANP), have been issuing strange statements. The party chief, Asfandyar Khan, described NATO’s purs...

Farhat Taj: A survey of Drone Attacks in Pakistan. What do the people of FATA think?

Courtesy to "LUBP"

ANALYSIS: An unethical survey on FATA —Farhat Taj

Courtesy to "Daily Times"

The people of FATA perceive state collusion with the Taliban. They want the termination of this collusion before the military operations. Until then, they are comfortable with the drone strikes on militant positions

Recently, a survey was conducted by the New America Foundation (NAF), a US think tank, and Terror Free Tomorrow (TFT) about the tribal public opinion in FATA about the war on terror, including the US d...

ANALYSIS: A gender-blind ‘neo-miratha’ —Farhat Taj

Courtesy to "Daily Times"

Tribal leaders in FATA have been killed along with their female relatives. The aim of such attacks seems to be to wipe out any possibility, no matter how remote it may be, of the female heirs taking up the anti-Taliban struggle

Miratha is a Pashto word that refers to the now obsolete practice of killing all males, adult and minors, in a family so that there are no male heirs left to inherit the family...

analysis: Drone attacks: challenging some fabrications —Farhat Taj

Courtesy to "Daily Times"

The people of Waziristan are suffering a brutal kind of occupation under the Taliban and al Qaeda. Therefore, they welcome the drone attacks

There is a deep abyss between the perceptions of the people of Waziristan, the most drone-hit area and the wider Pakistani society on the other side of the River Indus. For the latter, the US drone attacks on Waziristan are a violation of Pakistani’s ...

analysis: Kidnapping for ransom: a family’s ordeal —Farhat Taj

Courtesy to "Daily Times"

The Pakistan Army is conducting an operation in Bara, Khyber Agency. Thousands of people of Bara have become IDPs due to the operation. Despite the operation, the Mangal Bagh group is active and kidnapping people for ransom as usual

Various jihadi outfits based in FATA generate revenues through kidnapping for ransom. One of them is Bara-based Lashkar-e-Islam led by Mangal Bagh in Khyber Agency. Vill...

analysis: Paranoid about Pakhtun ethnic identity —Farhat Taj

Courtesy to "Daily Times"

The people of Hazara have the right to demand a separate province in their area, but they have no right to dictate a name of their choice on the overwhelming majority of the Pakhtun

Renaming of the NWFP as
Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa in the 18th constitutional amendment has led to a wave of violence in Hazara Division. Eight people have been killed, including policemen on duty and dozens injured. The PMN-N and t...

analysis: A plea for Bara IDPs —Farhat Taj

Courtesy to "Daily Times"

The IDPs request the government to open vocational centres in the camp for training in employable skills like carpentry, masonry, welding, electrical wiring, plumbing, etc. The IDPs also request for vocational centres for income generation and skill development purposes for the women IDPs, like embroidery and tailoring

There are about 4,000
registered and 1,300 unregistered Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) from Bara, ...

analysis: Mohmand IDPs: forced expulsion? —Farhat Taj

Courtesy to "Daily Times"

The IDPs from Mohmand must not be forced to leave the camp. Let us not forget that the people of Mohmand Agency, like people from elsewhere in FATA, are paying the torturous price for the military establishment’s policy of strategic depth
in Afghanistan

About 2,000 registered and 1,000 unregistered Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) from Mohmand Agency in FATA are living in Jalozai camp, Nowshera, for about...

analysis: Pak-US dialogue: a Pakhtun perspective —Farhat Taj

Courtesy to "Daily Times" 

Basically, the jirga is saying that it does not trust the military establishment, which is leading the dialogue with the US. The military establishment will follow the policy of strategic depth in Afghanistan, which is the key cause of the sufferings of Pakhtuns on both sides of the Durand Line

Days before the Pak-US strategic dialogue in Washington on the issue of terrorism, a grand tribal jirg...

analysis: Assaulting the Pakhtun culture —Farhat Taj

Courtesy to "Daily Times"

The Pakhtun culture is reflected in Ghaffar Khan’s non-violent movement, in the mysticism of Rahman Baba’s poetry and in the romanticism of Ghani Khan’s poetry. This is a society that produced hundreds of anti-Taliban lashkar leaders all over Pakhtunkhwa who were target killed because they insisted that Talibanisation is the antithesis of
Pakhtun culture

Essentialism means that people have an intrinsic �...

analysis: Kamal Mehsud: did the ISPR cheat him? —Farhat Taj

Courtesy to "Daily Times" 

Kamal Mehsud’s story is just one of the hundreds of stories of horror in Waziristan. The other stories are much more brutal and sinister in terms of the intelligence agencies’ collusion with the Taliban

Kamal Mehsud was the most famous singer of Waziristan. He died in January 2010 in a fire that broke out in his house when his family was away for a wedding ceremony. The family believes he has...

analysis: Interpreting tribal leaders of FATA —Farhat Taj

Courtesy to "Daily Times" 

Anger against the Pakistan Army and the Taliban is intense and getting more intense with every passing day and so is disappointment with the government of Pakistan

I am compiling a list of the
tribal leaders of FATA who have been victims of target killings from 2003 onwards. This is still a work in progress and my estimate is that the names in the final list would be well over 1,000. There is a wid...

analysis: The dauntless heroes of NWFP Police —Farhat Taj

Courtesy to "Daily Times" 

The public perceive the police as as much an innocent casualty as the innocent civilians in the state’s pursuit of strategic goals in Afghanistan. They see an ethnic discrimination behind the lack of equipment, and training of the police

A considerable public perception in the NWFP puts an alarming ethnic perspective on the rising police casualties in the province. They note that the police dispr...

analysis: Zaid Hamid and strategic depth —Farhat Taj

What are we first of all: Muslim or Pakistani? Is our ultimate commitment with Pakistani citizenship or a global Muslim brotherhood? What kind of Pakistan should we aim at: a progressive multi-ethnic social democracy or some kind of medieval caliphate?

FATA continues to be
used and abused as a strategic space by the security establishment of Pakistan in violent pursuit of strategic depth in Afghanistan. In short, strategic depth means ...

ANALYSIS: Drone attacks and US reputation —Farhat Taj

Courtesy to "Daily Times"

In terms of the drone attacks, the US must not make any distinction between al Qaeda and the Taliban. They both have internalised a global ideology that is anti-civilisation and anti-human

There is news coming up in the media that al Qaeda in Waziristan may run away to Yemen in the face of growing drone attacks. The people of Waziristan have expressed deep concern at this news. They do not want al Qaeda to run...

analysis: Dangerous abyss of perceptions —Farhat Taj

Courtesy to "Daily Times"

The Pakistan Army is engaged in ‘friendly fire’ with the jihadi gangs in which the civilians, poor soldiers of the security forces, especially FC soldiers, policemen and foot soldiers of the Taliban are killed. This, according to the Pakhtun perception, is in line with the scheme of things of the military-militant leadership

I have been writing in these pages that there is a remarkable difference in the per...

Analysis: Pakhtun diaspora: irresponsible and insensitive —Farhat Taj

Rich Arabs in the Middle East are ‘earning’ a place in paradise in the life hereafter through never ending generous donations to the Taliban and the madrassas producing foot soldiers and a jihadi mindset on the Pakhtun land. They do not even care to consider that their ‘pursuit’ of a place in paradise is causing so much death and destruction

This column is about the lack of action of the Pakhtun diaspora on its mo...