Pakistan - appeasing the militants?
The International Crisis Group, an independent think tank, has issued a report: Pakistan's Tribal Areas: Appeasing the Militants. According to the Daily Telegraph:
The ICG report said that the militants "now hold sway in South and North Waziristan agencies" and had begun to expand their influence. It added that the state's "failure to extend its control over and provide good governance to its citizens in federally administered tribal areas is equally responsible for empowering the radicals".However, as the International Herald Tribune the governor of North West Frontier Province has gone on the defensive.
A spokesman for Pakistan's foreign ministry declined to comment on the report.
The ICG report's executive summary and recommendations can be found here along with downloads of the full report in both pdf and MSWord formats.
Update 13.12.06
Having now read the ICG report, I can recommend it as a first rate general introduction to the history, politics and governance of the Pakistani areas bordering on Afghanistan. The report's proposals,however,seem to me to amount to a wish list for the imposition of western liberal norms and concepts of human rights-based legal systems to replace the current neo-feudal administrations in the borderlands. Irrespective of its merits or otherwise, such would require a major cultural and political revolution which is unlikely to happen as a "big bang".
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