Catching Up On Things in the North-West Frontier Province

David Dichter, a scholar and recent traveler in the North-West Frontier Province in Pakistan, submitted to the PCR Project a short piece on his visit and a proposal for a labor-intensive public works program he believes the area would benefit from. Comments and questions are welcome.

Historically, Pathan tribesmen supplemented the poor agricultural yields of their harsh environment by exacting tolls from those traversing their rugged homeland, or by serving in locally-conscripted “Levies” or other types of paramilitary or tribal-based police units. These units were willingly subsidized by outsiders; first by the British for about 150 years and more recently by the Pakistani authorities. Both did so to try and gain the loyalty and ‘cooperation’ of the tribesmen in helping keep peace in the region. These practices were dramatically and permanently altered when the tribes of the NWFP were actively recruited to fight a “Proxy War” against the Soviet troops occupying Afghanistan; which they did with great enthusiasm and quickly learned on-the-job how to do it with ruthless efficiency. Emboldened by the success they achieved in helping force Soviet troops out of Afghanistan, and with all kinds of new modern weaponry now in their hands, the tribesmen saw the opportunity to become important players in a new version of the “Great Game” which was then unfolding; an attempt by radical Islamists to supplant Soviet ideology and western interests not only in Central Asia, but in South Asia as well. It was a role the fiercely religious Islamic tribesmen readily embraced with great fervor and conviction and still do. And, since their rapidly expanding population had by this time far out-stripped the “Frontier’s” severely limited natural resource base, they saw they had nothing to lose in taking advantage of what they obviously regarded as being attractive new realities. History has shown time and again the Pathan tribesmen were always willing and able to quickly take full advantage of whatever and whenever potentially interesting political and economic opportunities came their way! It is doubtful that the tribes can now be reigned-in quite so easily as a result of these heady new experiences; this includes being once again relegated to the somewhat limited ‘spoiler role’ these proud tribal warriors previously enjoyed in the region before the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. A new more aggressive genie is now out of the bottle and thus there are a whole new set of dynamics which need to be taken into account in order to try and stabilize the region. And, what is equally important there are relatively few options available to bring this about. One possibility involves a massive labor-intensive public works project for restoring agricultural productivity to vast areas of land in the plains and foothills leading down from the Frontier’s border areas along the Sulaiman Mountains with Afghanistan to the Indus River. During the time I spent on the Frontier some years ago conducting post-graduate research for Birkbeck College, London University on the economic and political geography of the NWFP*, I was struck by the fact how much could be done to bring large areas of the Frontier back under cultivation. Rampant and unchecked deforestation and years of overgrazing by cattle, goats, sheep and even camels along with the consequent ravages of sheet and gulley erosion has systematically destroyed the landscape, and this has meant that whatever valuable soil which once was available for agricultural purposes was swept away mainly during the short often violent summer rains to the silt-choked, flood-prone Indus River and its tributaries. Thus, instead of looking outside their own area for some type of ‘foreign or regional adventure’ to get mixed-up in, every effort would be made to help the tribal people focus on doing whatever it takes, after countless years of neglect and misuse, to restructure and make large areas of their homeland once again cultivatable. It means, for example, organizing the tribal men to take part in vast labor-intensive public works development schemes which are not only aimed at altering the physical character of their landscape so they might be able to settle down and once again grow things, but also try and fundamentally change the way the tribesmen utilize their land and natural resources. What is at stake is a huge undertaking, in which great accumulations of boulders, rocks and stones now covering large areas of the NWFP are physically removed. However, instead of carting the material away , it would be used to build ‘retaining walls’ not only for the purpose of demarcating property lines, but also as special ‘receptacles’ for new top soil. Into each of such ‘cubicles’ large amounts of valuable silt material dug-up from surrounding wadis, streams and rivers would be spread-out to a certain depth in order to create a new soil profile. In fact, dredging the Indus River itself for such valuable top soil might turn out to be an important flood-prevention measure. Additionally, specially- protected water courses leading to these ‘cubicles’ along with the construction of large numbers of stone check dams – all built from the rocks and stone waste material previously collected – would be utilized in order to effectively control and effectively utilize the moisture reaching these newly rehabilitated land areas. Lack of arable land has always been a constant source of contention among the various tribal clans and families of the NWFP, and what limited amounts of arable land which are still available have invariably been sliced-up by primogeniture into smaller and smaller land fragments so they can no longer be cultivated by draft animals. But make no mistake, what is being suggested here is back-breaking and very labor-intensive, but at the end of the day the thousands of Pathan tribesmen participating in the program would be able to see for themselves the great accomplishments which can be made using picks and shovels in changing abandoned, stony wastelands into productive farm enterprises. I am equally confident we would also see a resurgence of economic activity in these newly rehabilitated areas of many new small and medium-sized businesses and industries soon after these re-developed areas showed signs of agricultural activity. *Later published by Oxford University Press under the title: “The Northwest Frontier of West Pakistan” : A Study in Regional Geography