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n as a result in the first instance of an 1893 agreement between henry mortimer durand the foreign secretary of british india at the time and the afghan amir abdur rahman khan the border marked out in the 1890s runs for 2 640 kilometres is poorly marked and cuts right through the pashtun tribal areas pashtun tribespeople work trade marry and move across the border pretty much at will afghanistan and many pashtuns reject it as an arbitrary division of the pashtun heartland and do not consider it to be a validated international boundary so much so that afghanistan opposed pakistan s application to join the united nations upon independence in 1947 in 1901 the tribal agencies on the british side of the durand line were first formally designated as such under british rule as part of the arrangements for the administrative separation of the pashtun region from the province of punjab the pashtun region itself was divided into initially five tribal agencies and the settled region of the pashtun belt which latter became the north west frontier province nwfp the tribal agencies did not come under the administrative purview of the nwfp but were administered by political agents under the orders of the governor of nwfp who was directly responsible to the viceroy of india the governor was expressly instructed not to interfere in the internal affairs of the tribes but to maintain friendly relations with them and to disburse tribal allowances that had been agreed in a series of treaties with tribal leaders if in spite of the agreements and the financial inducements the tribes caused trouble the british would mount punitive expeditions and impose collective fines or other retribution and withdraw speedily on partition in 1947 the fledgling state of pakistan induced all of the tribes to become part of pakistan rather than india but the status of the region remained somewhat ambiguous all pakistan s regular army units were withdrawn from the region in december 1947 and in 1949 pakistan negotiated an instrument of accession under which the fata would maintain the semi autonomous status and administrative arrangements established by the british in 1901 under pakistan s 1973 constitution the pakistan parliament has no power to legislate for the fata the president extends laws to the fata through presidential regulations the fata have no police or law courts and the supreme court does not have jurisdiction to safeguard and enforce constitutional rights there today the fata consist of seven semi autonomous agencies and the six frontier regions which are situated within the nwfp the fata cover an area of 27 000 sq km inhabited by 3 5 million people and have a 600 km durand line border with afghanistan it is into this delicate situation that the u s has thrust itself as part of its war in afghanistan with demands that the pakistan government get the tribals under control something no one has ever done since the pashtuns first appeared in the historical record in about 500 b c and its autonomously initiated cross border drone strikes against people it considers to be its enemies this leaves the weak civilian government of pakistan in an impossible situation and the resulting mess means that the afghan war is destroying pakistan as well as afghanistan note principal source for the above background hilary synnott transforming pakistan ways out of instability published by routledge for the international institute for strategic studies 2009 hilary synnott was british high commissioner in islamabad from 2001 to 2003 and the coalition provisional authority s regional coordinator for south iraq in 2003 4 before joining the diplomatic service he was a submariner in the royal navy his account of pakistan s current problems in their historical setting is a very readable one and quite succinct 181 pages of text i would recommend it as very good place to start for anyone who wants to acquire an understanding of contemporary pakistan without dedicating a huge amount of time to doing so posted by paul barratt at 11 41 pm no comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest labels afghanistan pakistan us pakistan 17 february 2010 hillary s at it again us secretary of state hillary clinton is in the middle east according to the report from doha by bloomberg s indira lakshmanan published in the australian financial review 16 february 2010 she is visiting qatar and saudi arabia to build support for pressuring iran and for urging the palestinians to return to peace talks with israel in regard to the first of these objectives she was urged by the qatari prime minister to engage in direct dialogue with iran in response to which mrs clinton replied that mr obama made numerous overtures last year to engage iran with scant results engagement has to be a two way street she said it cannot be done alone in a room talking to yourself what mrs clinton neglected to mention was the long history of us meddling in the internal affairs of iran and in particular the bush administration s policy of encouraging ethnic separatist groups covert action carried out by proxy in the case of the baluch through pakistan s inter services intelligence directorate or i s i and in the case of the kurds by the c i a in cooperation with israel s mossad see meddling in iran it is by no means clear that the obama administration has abandoned these policies supreme leader ayatollah ali khamenei asserted not in a speech delivered in the kurdish city of bijar on 12 may 2009 if the policy of encouraging ethnic separatism has been abandoned the us should come right out and say so if it is serious about engaging with the iranian leadership there are three possible explanations for mrs clinton s failure to mention this important matter none of which does her much credit she is wilfully misleading her various audiences she doesn t know what is going on or she doesn t see the connection on the question of pressuring the palestinians to return to peace sic talks with israel why is it that the us pressure is always on the palestinians rather than on the people who have stolen their land posted by paul barratt at 10 53 am no comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest labels iran israel pakistan us iran us israel 01 january 2010 looking ahead at 2010 in the countdown to the new year our media are full of retrospectives looking back at what happened in the year that is coming to a close and in the case of some who think that the first decade of the twenty first century came to an end last night ten year retrospectives this first day of the bright and shiny new year is perhaps a good time for those who are presumptuous enough to think that they know a few things to put their money where their mouth is and attempt some forecasts of what the year ahead will bring forecasting is a hazardous business but here goes 1 there will be no progress towards an israeli palestinian settlement settlement building on the west bank will resume the slow ethnic cleansing of east jerusalem will continue and gaza will remain strangled by israeli sanctions there will be hand wringing in washington but not much else 2 the surge in iraq will by year s end be a proven failure 3 it will be even clearer than it is now that there is no possibility of victory or success in afghanistan and the us administration will be busy positioning hamid karzai and everyone around him to take the blame for the failure of what was a doomed enterprise from the start an old colleague of mine used to say that the opportunity of a lifetime had to be grasped within the lifetime of the opportunity if the invasion of afghanistan in 2001 presented us with the opportunity of a lifetime to do something or other the lifetime of the opportunity certainly did not last through eight years of neglect if there was ever a chance it is now far too late the failure to establish any clear objective for the invasion did not help 4 there will be modest efforts to salvage something from the wreckage of the copenhagen conference on climate change but we can be sure that whatever action is agreed will be far too little far too late for a long term hold buy shares in engineering companies that are very good at sea walls 5 spin doctors will find creative ways to present all of the above as success or at least as meaningful progress modern governments never do anything that is unsuccessful 6 pakistan will look more like afghanistan than it does today the us administration will continue to pressure the pakistanis to take actions in the federally administered tribal areas which will prove disastrous sooner rather than later there are good reasons why those areas were directly administered by delhi during the raj and why the tailor made administrative regimes were continued from 1947 in the successor state pakistan at the outset of the invasion of afghanistan in 2001 a lot of people would probably have agreed that if afghanistan ended up looking a bit like pakistan in 2001 that would be success the net effect of our efforts will in fact be to make pakistan look a lot more like afghanistan 7 nothwithstanding pakistan s travails the directorate for inter services intelligence will continue to intervene unhelpfully in afghanistan with a view to pakistan establishing itself as the dominant power in central asia much of the money to fund this will be diverted military assistance funding from the united states 8 there will be a very significant evolution of the iranian political system it is hard to see this happening without a lot of blood being shed because neither side can afford to give up in the next few months there will be increasingly heavy handed efforts to suppress the reform movement but the reform movement has such momentum and so many members of the urban classes are so sick of the current regime that it is hard to see the current leadership being successful in reimposing order there are grounds for cautious optimism but don t mortgage your house to bet on it 9 whoever is running iran will remain firmly committed to the development of an independent nuclear energy program and in so doing will reduce the lead time for iran to develop and deploy a nuclear weapons capability nevertheless the iranian regime will refrain from committing to a nuclear weapons capability 10 the united states will not succeed in establishing any sort of effective sanctions regime against iran for which we can all be thankful 11 as we emerge from the depths of the global financial crisis the full meaning of the crisis will become clearer as we begin to appreciate the consequences for the united states and the united kingdom in particular of the massive sovereign debt they have incurred it will become evident that there can be no return to normal that a new normal meaning a substantial realignment of economic power and political influence is in the process of being established 12 some of the above predictions will turn out to be profoundly wrong i just don t know which ones that is a pretty bleak bunch of predictions but that is the way it looks to me military adventures come at a cost posted by paul barratt at 1 32 pm no comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest labels afghanistan iran iraq israel middle east pakistan palestine us iran older posts home subscribe to posts atom total pageviews twitter twitter readership percentage of last 44 000 page loads australia 64 9 united states 18 4 united kingdom 2 9 canada 1 5 france 1 3 germany 1 0 new zealand 0 9 india 0 7 indonesia 0 5 netherlands 0 5 80 countries 0 5 twitter tweets by phbarratt popular posts last 7 days on the trail of jock mcdiarmid politicians behaving badly paul dirac s phd thesis more on the resource rent tax seven key things we have learned from wikileaks revolutionising letters to the editor columns ha aretz on the orthodox tyranny adfas armidale young arts grants 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foreign affairs and trade nautilus institute the brookings institution national security archive bulletin of the atomic scientists global security cia world factbook followers your blogmeister paul barratt has had over forty years experience of policy advising and international negotiations in the areas of defence foreign relations international trade and climate change after completing an honours degree in physics he joined the department of defence as a scientific intelligence analyst he undertook an intensive course at the australian school of nuclear science and engineering and completed a second degree in economics and asian civilisations he has been secretary to the department of defence secretary to the federal department responsible for mining oil gas agriculture forestry and fisheries deputy secretary of the foreign affairs department and of the trade department special trade representative for north asia and executive director of australia s leading business roundtable he is 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