In
August
this
year,
three
soldiers
from
the
gendarmerie
Balochistan
Levy
Force
were
killed
in
a
landmine
explosion
in
Ziarat,
a
southwestern
town
of
Pakistan.
A
parlat
(sit-in)
ensued
as
the
deceased's
relatives
and
well-
wishers
refused
to
bury
the
corpses
and
blocked
a
highway.
The
protestors
became
further
enraged
by
the
arrival
of
a
provincial
government
minister
and
his
attempts
at
placating
the
situation.
They
demanded
an
immediate
evacuation
of
the
military
and
a
roll
back
of
its
expanded
presence
in
the
region.
They
complained
that
paramilitary
forces
regularly
fire
hundreds
of
rounds
during
training
in
close
proximity
to
a
civilian
population,
terrorizing
children
and
not
letting
anyone
sleep
quietly
at
night.
One
of
the
irate
protestors
wailed,
“Who
flies
a
drone
over
the
village?
What
a
blatant
disregard
to
chadar-o-
chaardiwari
(honor of the house)!”
Refusing
to
bury
the
dead
bodies
and
rejecting
khatir
(deference)
of
the
minister
are
uncharacteristic
actions
in
the
honor-based
Pashtun
society
that
treats
both
the
corpse
and
visitors
with
great
respect.
But
such
has
been
the
norm
in
the
northern
and
western
tribal
regions
of
Pakistan
since
the
rise
of
a
social
movement,
the
Pashtun
Tahafuz
(Protection)
Movement,
four
years
ago.
The
preplanned
and
coordinated
jalsa
(political
gathering)
as
the
main
mode
of
political
expression
has
given
way
to
parlat
sit-ins
that
do
not
await
a
prior
approval,
announcement,
or
mobilization
from
leaders
or
political
organizations.
Such
uncoordinated
spontaneous
efforts
sometimes
amass
into
large
gatherings
that
outmatch
jalsas
from
the
past
and
attract
leaders
and
followers from across political divides.
The
Pashtun
Tahafuz
Movement
(PTM),
earlier
known
as
the
Mehsud
Tahafuz
Movement,
emerged
in
response
to
the
Pakistan
military’s
many
reckless
operations
in
the
northern
tribal
region.
Among
these,
Zarb-e-Azb
1
(sharp
strike),
proved
as
the
most
lethal
operation
that
took
a
heavy
toll
on
the
local
populations
who
came
to
scathingly
call
it,
Zarb-e-Ghazb
(wrathful
strike).
The
operations
were
launched
by
the
Pakistani
state
in
response
to
growing
domestic
pressure
to
limit
the
frequent
militant
attacks
and
in
line
with
the
United
States’
“Af-Pak
policy,”
which
viewed
expanding
the
Global
War
on
Terror
(GWOT)
to
Pakistan’s
tribal
region
—
where
the
Taliban
and
other
militants
held
hideouts
—
as
crucial to its success
Like
the
American-led
war
in
Afghanistan,
Iraq,
and
beyond,
the
Pakistani
military
also
indiscriminately
rained
bombs
over
civilian
populations
and
continued
to
permit
the
U.S.
to
conduct
drone
strikes
at
a
varying
level
of
frequency
in
the
northern
tribal
region.
Mirali
bazaar
in
the
North
Waziristan
Agency,
a
sizable
and
bustling
marketplace
in
the
area,
was
left
devastated
like
a
ramshackle
archeological
site
from
the
past.
Those
who
got
killed
in
the
operations
were
reported
as
“militants”
without
proof
or
identification
and
those
who
went
missing
never
returned.
PTM
claims
that
the
missing
person
list
surpasses
4000
men,
and
this
is
not
a
definitive
total.
While
accurate
figures
are
hard
to
come
by,
the
operation
resulted
in
the
displacement
of
about
800,000
people
.
Since
9/11,
Pakistan
has
lost more than
80,000 lives
due to the war.
Beyond
these
deaths
and
destruction,
the
counter-terrorism
operations
put
the
Pakistani
military
in
a
new
role
to
oversee
civilian
affairs
even
more
meticulously.
While
there
is
nothing
new
about
the
Pakistani
military
interfering
in
civilian
affairs,
its
operational
capacity,
influence,
and
spatial
reach
touched
new
limits
during
the
war
decades,
particularly
in
the
tribal
region.
In
the
past
the
military
made
a
show
of
force,
quelled
local
resistance,
and
returned
to
its
cantonments.
But
during
wartime
it
worked
with
and
dominated
the
civil
administration
permanently.
Visa
and
border
control
regimes
have
been
established
by
the
federal
government
with
the
assistance
of
the
military
to
regulate
hitherto
free
movement
of
people
and
goods
in
and
out
of
the
country
at
an
unprecedented
level.
Fencing
and
manning
of
the
borders
with
Iran
and
Afghanistan
are
near
completion
while
military
check-posts
now
dot
the
entire
landscape
in
the
North
and
Southwest of Pakistan.
Moreover,
in
the
Baloch
areas,
international
mining
companies
have
been
awarded
lucrative
contracts
by
the
federal
and
provincial
governments
without
consultation
with
the
local
populations,
while
the
Pakistani
military
provides
security
at
such
sites
including
the
security
of
Chinese
engineers
and
laborers
working
on
the
Pakistan
China
Economic
Corridor.
The
military’s
engineering
of
politics
at
the
local
level
has
reached
new
heights
as
well.
In
Balochistan,
these
efforts
have
culminated
in
the
creation
of
a
military-
orchestrated
political
party,
the
Balochistan
Awami Party.
The
military,
however,
has
been
mindful
of
its
rapid-paced
intervention
in
tribal
society.
It
has
set
up
new
military-run
schools,
increased
recruitment
intake
from
the
troubled
region,
and,
most
importantly,
provided
security
solutions
to
businesses
and
efficient
dispute-
resolution
mechanisms
to
the
mining
industry
run
by
locals.
The
civilian
administration
and
courts
have
an
outdated
and
compromising
setup
to
deal
with
complex
mining
disputes
in
a
society
transitioning
from
tribal
and
family-
owned
land
and
enterprises
to
individual
and
private
ownership.
In
this
instance,
at
least,
the
ineptness
of
an
unmotivated
civil
bureaucracy
has
allowed
the
military
to
build
its
legitimacy
anew.
The
military’s
capture
of
the
civilian
functions
is
but
one
aspect
of
state-making
in
the
tribal
areas;
civilian
institutions
too
got
overhauled.
The
civilian
security
setup
got
beefed
up
as
new
police
units
were
launched
to
enhance
the
state’s
combat
capacity.
The
working
perimeters
of
the
regular
police
were
increased
by
adding
areas
from
the
control
of
tribal
police,
the
Levy
Force.
These
militaristic
interventions
have
been
supported
by
increased
surveillance
mechanisms,
such
as
issuing
biometric identification cards
.
In
big
towns,
gun-toting
men
and
the
display
of
light
weapons
in
the
bazaar
area
is
no
longer
a
common
sight
as
it
used
to
be
fifteen
years
back.
The
movement
of
people
is
now
more
closely
tracked
and
regulated.
Drones
are
being
used
for
purposes
other
than
war
and
combat.
And
the
people
of
Balochistan
and
Northwestern
frontiers
are
being
increasingly
subjected
to
the
country’s
taxation
regime,
a
feat
that
the
British
state
could
not
achieve,
which
had
to
either
to
waive
taxes
altogether
or
keep
them
at
a
minimum
to
not
risk
its
authority.
But
these
invasive
state-making
efforts
have
attracted
a
nemesis
in
the
tribal
borderlands.
The
Baloch
are
militarily
resisting
the
militarized
capital-extractive
state
expansion
with
broad-based
ethnic
solidarity,
unlike
tribe-
specific
revolts
of
the
past.
The
Pashtuns,
if
less
secessionist
now
than
before,
have
become
even
more
critical
of
the
new
security
regime.
They
are
resisting
the
military
establishment
through a social movement, PTM.
The
current
unrest
is
yet
another
episode
of
capitalist
transformations
and
modern
state
intrusion
in
tribal
society.
Both
modern
state
authority
and
capitalist
interventions
have
emerged
on
the
former
imperial
borderland
in
a
perpetual
war-like
condition
and
continue
to
tightly
knit
“war
and
security”
in
a
way
that
bears
the
hallmark
of
what
Benjamin
Hopkins
calls
“frontier
governmentality.”
2
As
both
the
militants
and
the
state
are
deploying
new
war
technologies
and
tactics
that
are
increasingly
encompassing
the
civilian
arena,
the
PTM
and
its
allies
among
nationalist
parties
are
emerging
as
the
new
hope
for
anti-war
politics
and a future without military domination.
© 2021 Oriental Institute, The Czech Academy of Sciences,
Kevin L. Schwartz, and Ameem Lutfi
© 2021 Oriental Institute, The Czech Academy of Sciences,
Kevin L. Schwartz, and Ameem Lutfi
Written by
1.
Also, a namesake of Prophet Muhammad’s sword.
2.
Benjamin D. Hopkins, “The Frontier Crimes
Regulation and Frontier Governmentality,” The
Journal of Asian Studies 74.2 (2015), pp. 369-89.
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