The total population of the FATA was estimated in 2000 to be about 3,341,070 people, or roughly 2% of Pakistan's population. Only 3.1% of the population resides in established townships. [4] It is thus the most rural administrative unit in Pakistan. The Jurisdiction of Supreme Court and High Court of Pakistan does not extend to FATA and Provincially Administered Tribal Areas (PATA), according to Article 247 and Article 248, of existing 1973 Constitution of Pakistan . Still governed by the FCR 1901 Frontier Crimes Regulations. 10509 The way of the Pashtun is called Pashtunwali . The code includes notions such as hospitality and giving refuge to strangers and people on the run, which Johnson says Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida were well aware of and have taken advantage of over the years.
The literacy demography above clearly suggests that how lack of education amongst the women in particular has contributed to the longevity of tribalism and ignorance of the society at large which becomes the breeding grounds for fundamentalist terrorist and a nuisance for the rest of the world.
Tribalism and Taliban: A recipe for disaster. Hindrance to the assimilation of new ideas and concept of tolerance.
The Taliban seek to establish a puritanical caliphate that neither recognizes nor tolerates forms of Islam divergent from their own. They scorn democracy or any secular or pluralistic political process as an offense against Islam. By choosing such a name the Taliban (plural of Talib ) distanced themselves from the party politics of the mujahideen and signaled that they were a movement for cleansing society rather than a party trying to grab power.” The Taliban’s most original aims were, as Ahmed Rashid, the Pakistani journalist and author of Taliban (2000), wrote, to “restore peace, disarm the population, enforce “Sharia” law and defend the integrity and Islamic character of Afghanistan.
To a greater extent American foreign policy and intervention in the Afghanistan during the Soviet war sowed the seeds for the environment which led to the rise of Taliban. Operation Cyclone is once such example. An acclaimed and NY times best seller book “Passage to Peshawar” by Richard Reeves details the account of religious indoctrination that was being instilled into the masses by Pakistan’s Zia-ul-haq administration who was favored by American foreign policy to prevent democracy to take root in Pakistan. Which further eroded the democratic infrastructure of the country. ISI played a major role in supporting the army of religious zealots who later called themselves Taliban and turned back against the US interests.
Starred Review. Some failures lead to phenomenal successes, and this American nurse's unsuccessful attempt to climb K2, the world's second tallest mountain, is one of them. Dangerously ill when he finished his climb in 1993, Mortenson was sheltered for seven weeks by the small Pakistani village of Korphe; in return, he promised to build the impoverished town's first school, a project that grew into the Central Asia Institute, which has since constructed more than 50 schools across rural Pakistan and Afghanistan. Coauthor Relin recounts Mortenson's efforts in fascinating detail, presenting compelling portraits of the village elders, con artists, philanthropists, mujahideen, Taliban officials, ambitious school girls and upright Muslims Mortenson met along the way. As the book moves into the post-9/11 world, Mortenson and Relin argue that the United States must fight Islamic extremism in the region through collaborative efforts to alleviate poverty and improve access to education, especially for girls. Captivating and suspenseful, with engrossing accounts of both hostilities and unlikely friendships, this book will win many readers' hearts. (Mar.)
The only way that this war can be conclusively won against Taliban and fundamentalist minded Muslims is to provide access to knowledge and learning. This has the promise to change this region just as Guentenberg’s printing press spread the ideas freedom, free will, choice tolerance and religious reflection changed the face of Europe and brought it from the doldrums of feudalistic dark ages to the exuberance of Renaissance .
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