Parachinar Updates: Kurram Agency, the border district of KPK, which is on the Afghan border. Around 200 to 250 people have died there, and they are also Pakistani citizens. Since the tragic event of November 21st, peace has not been restored in the area, and there is an acute shortage of food and medicine because of road closures, and it seems the area is being cut off from the rest of the country and its citizens left to starve. The local people are saying that due to the icy weather, at least 40–50 children have died due to the infection or complications. The elderly and the rest of the people, their lives are also at stake. The provincial government is claiming on its own that there are problems, but what sort of problems stops necessities of life from reaching there?
As far as medicines are concerned, 10 tonnes of medicines have been delivered by different humanitarian agencies. Apart from this, wheat is being supplied to the local people at concessional rates because the weather is bad. And this is the Parachinar, Kohat Road, which is the bloodiest road in Pakistan. The most recent visit was made by Faisal Edhi, and he supplied food and medicines to the region, but on the other hand, the government claims to be helpless, and so does the starving population.
A special police force of 400 people is being formed to make that road safe. Apart from this, the most important thing that has come to light is that the provincial APEX committee, which includes civil and military officials, has said that by February, all the illegal weapons will be confiscated, and the barricades that the rebel groups have set up will be demolished. On the Kohat road, temporary check posts will be made, which will also be made permanent later.
On the other hand, the Jirga is also trying to find a solution to the issue that has been going on for the last 80–90 years. Several attempts in the past have been made to declare it a weapon-free zone, but it is obvious that the tribal nature of the place and both the tribes got agitated over it. Now the government has set a deadline of February 25, one month later. The thing is that in reality the declaration is something else, and the will of the state is something else, and the people sitting there who are members of the government have a different capacity. All this is happening. When things come together, a package is made. If you apply that package on someone, you get its result. So here we call the federal and provincial governments as a state. At this time, their will is that when the matter heats up and the action starts from different places, they immediately become active.
Apart from this, they do not even realize the gravity of the matter, and till date they have never wanted this issue to be resolved on an independent basis. So this time also we will feel that the government is dealing with the people of the side who killed 10 people and the people of the side who killed 100 people. We are sitting them face to face and talking on the basis of equality with the people of both groups. So this means that no one will be punished, no one will be investigated, nor will it be known who did what or who took the initiative, and till now this is the situation.
Why is it so, and why are these children wandering around? Why are there no medicines? Why are the roads closed? Is there any audit of this? Neither is there any audit being done legally, so why do you have their forces on the ground? How can a policeman do crisis management, and he also feels that if I am strict, then I can go home later? So there are so many aspects that we can solve this issue for some time, but one cannot give any guarantee that this will not happen later, so the issue is of will, of capacity.
Due to heavy weapons, deployed aircraft guns, and this road blockade, both the tribes are suffering losses, both the free quarters are suffering losses, and everyone’s children are dying of hunger and shortage of medicines.
What can the government do realistically when we can see here that the two factions are so thirsty for each other’s blood? All these people do not live there; their negotiators and these people live here as well, and they also live in other districts of the settlement area. They also talk on their behalf. There was a law of collective responsibility here that has ended now, but you can enforce that here at least for some time that yes, we can enforce the same law here that if a person of a tribe commits a crime or breaks a truce, then the entire tribe will be responsible for him, and if someone gives shelter to someone, then as a result of that shelter, someone’s house will be demolished or something like that. If it happened earlier, people did not do such things, but here the issue is something else. This district of Kurram is not an ordinary district; there are three or four factors there because of which this is happening. Till now the biggest issue of governance there is that the government is cleaning up fractions, but the government is not taking the decision that this land of entire Kurram is not registered in anyone’s name, so why not make a commission and send it there immediately, where all the papers and documents are given and everyone is told that this has been remarked, this is yours and this is yours, so when people start fighting among themselves over a piece of land, what happens is that as soon as one starts getting weak, he calls his tribe, he calls the people of his Fiqa, saying come, they are beating me because I have a connection with this Fiqa, so these people who are fueling these types of issues can be addressed accordingly.
The government can do that by imposing an emergency there, firstly, collecting arms and saying that whoever does not give up, then that tribe will not stand for them, or the community will not stand for them. The government will stand against them. The government should make an announcement, but the issue is that here a lot of compromises are made, the state looks weak, and its order is not obeyed; the authority of tribe and community surpasses the state. In order to make a decisive decision, these rebellious factors must be submitted to the state first for any productive outcome.