Noreen Naseer

University of Peshawar

“Law, Rights, and Colonial System in the FATA: A Critical Note on the Frontier Crimes Regulation (1901)”

This article focuses on the administrative and judicial system in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) of Pakistan. These areas were once part of the battleground of the ‘Great Game’ of imperial domination in the 19th century. In that colonial time period the British colonial administrators for effective control of these areas, designed a series of crime regulations, which had oppressive consequences for tribesmen. With these regulations, the colonial administration consolidated the long-term basis of their power and institutionalised the oppressive administrative-judicial system. For this purpose they also engaged local elites and local customs.  The administrative-judicial system introduced on the North-western border was different from the criminal and civil laws introduced elsewhere in British India. In 1947, when British colonial governance ended, and the tribal areas became part of Pakistan, the colonial oppressive system of the Frontier Crimes Regulation (FCR) continued. It is still in force to the present day. In this article I discuss the state as a control structure that it imposed through these crime regulations in the FATA. I argue that these regulations are against fundamental rights prescribed in Pakistan’s Constitution of 1973 and the UN Human Rights Charter. I also highlight the plight of tribal people suffering politically, socially and economically due to these undemocratic and discriminatory regulations, which are unduly unjustified and defended by a certain group of people with a vested interest.

Bio

Noreen Naseer is a lecturer at the Department of Political Science, University of Peshawar. She has a PhD from Area Study Center, University of Peshawar, Pakistan. Her research focuses on Pakistan-Afghanistan borderland’s social, economic, and governance system. She has several publications in academic journals. Her current work relates to women and children of tribal areas, and it has been published by the Journal of Women’s Studies: “FATA Woman Voiceless/Invisible Entity: Victim of Cultural Structure and State System.” Another paper dealing with violence against non-combatants in the FATA was recently published by the Pakistan Journal of Criminology: “Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA): Militarization and War Crimes Impacting Tribal Women and Children” specifically . She has a book chapter entitled “FATA “A Permanent War Zone”: Breaking Silence” in Women and Politics of Peace: South Asia Narratives on Militarization, Power and Justice, published by Sage Publication (2016). She can be reached at noreennaseer22@gmail.com.