Tribesmen reject Fata’s merger with KP, demand separate province

BARA: Khyber Union and Qabail Qaumi Tehreek on Sunday rejected the merger of Fata with Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

Speaking at a public gathering in Bara, Qabail Qaumi Tehreek Chairman and former federal minister Hameedullah Jan Afridi said that the government had not taken the tribespeople into confidence before merging the former tribal areas into Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Besides him, Khyber Union president Bazaar Gul Afridi, general sectary Murad Saqi, Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam-Fazl (JUI-F) Bara amir Shamsuddin Afridi, Badshahi Khan from South Waziristan, Ziarat Gul from Mohmand district and other elders were present. The people from all tribal districts and frontier regions also participated in the gathering in Bara.

Hameedullah Jan Afridi said that the previous government had decided wrongly about merging Fata into Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. “Now the 10 million tribal people have been facing a host of problems and passing through miserable circumstances,” he said, adding, it was an agenda of the US. He said that the people did not accept the merger decision as it was illegal and unconstitutional.

Hameedullah Jan added that the government should review the decision or else they would launch agitation against it. He said the government should consult with elders in this regard. He warned if the government occupied of the resources of tribal districts, they would launch protest against it. He said that incompetent rulers destroyed the tribal culture and tradition. “The government pushed the tribespeople to somebody’s else war and made them internally displaced people,” Badshahi Khan from South Waziristan said. He said that government had merged the former-Fata with KP forcibly and without consulting the elders. He said that the merger was a historic mistake and we would fight against it. “We will soon launch a movement for a separate province,” he added. The other speakers said that the tribespeople had lagged far behind in all the spheres of life.

They said first the government should take the tribal population into confidence and then impose a separate system and enforce Shariah law in the merged districts. They said that the tribal people wanted a separate province in the name of Qabailitan.