Writ of the State

The borderland lies at the political periphery of the state, where political institutions serve little function beyond representing the legitimacy of the authority of the political centre of the state over the borderland. Borderland political institutions are often electorally non-representative, have no political impact on the centre of political power of the state, and consequently enjoy little legitimacy.

To understand the underlying structural causes of tribal resurgence in the Afghan borderland, it is necessary to understand how the state is receding from the borderland, both territorially and in a psycho-social sense as a cultural phenomenon amongst the Pashtun tribal population of KP and FATA. As such, this chapter addresses the phenomenon of the ‘writ of the state’ as a conceptual criterion by which to examine the recession of the state in the borderland.

5.2.1 The term ‘writ of the state’

‘Writ’ is a term originally used in a legal context. Carrying the connotation of sovereign judicial right, use of the term ‘writ’ has since expanded to refer to the sovereign nature of authority in

whatever context it is employed.² In a political context, the ‘writ of the state’ is widely regarded as the exclusive authority of the state to issue decrees that are binding upon the population and over territories present within the state. ‘Writ of the state’ also describes the actual capacity of the state to impose and execute its decrees upon the population exclusively and without challenge, beyond institutional checks and balances upon executive authority.

A common example is the raising of a police force by the state to deter criminality and assist effective administration. In a conventional political sense, the state enjoys the sole right to raise a police force that in turn enjoys the exclusive authority to enforce decrees issued by the state. A challenge to the writ of the state in this context would be constituted by any rival or alternative police force raised from an alternative institution outside the structure of the state, or indeed quite possibly from a rival institution within the state.

Afghanistan has faced crises relating to the writ of the state since its territorial demarcation.

As addressed in section 3.4.3., the demarcation of Afghanistan’s territorial limits by 1893 was a resolution to the strategic contest between Russia and Great Britain in Central Asia, an observation evidenced by Mortimer Durand’s records of correspondence with both Amir Abdur-Rahman and the Calcutta government.³ Because the southern boundary in particular transects the tribal Pashtun population, thus limiting its legitimacy and effectiveness, the Afghan state experiences a crisis of legitimacy regarding its territoriality, and consequently its authority. Constantly challenged by Ghilzai and Tajik tribal elements, the Durrani dominated executive has not effectively established legitimacy across the state in the intervening century, although the tenure of King Zahir Shah (1933-1973) did see relative stability and a gradual but definite expansion of the writ of the Afghan state beyond Kabul into the major cities of Mazar-e-Sharif, Herat and Kandahar in the north, west and south of the country respectively. The domestic political turmoil of the intervening decades has culminated in an insurgency that continues to pervade much of Afghanistan, consisting of tribal, jihadist and intervening external state elements. The nascent writ of the Afghan state is challenged by these elements, and superseded by the authority of international forces, which provide the bulk of the hardware, manpower and expertise currently employed against the insurgency. Hence, in Afghanistan the writ of the state is a limited phenomenon.

2 The Oxford English Dictionary defines writ as; “…a formal written authoritative command;

someone’s power or influence.” The Oxford English Dictionary, Oxford University Press, Oxford 2002, p. 602.

3 Durand‟s correspondence and the larger context of the demarcation of the Durand Line is dealt covered in detail in Percy Sykes‟ biography of Durand. See Sykes, Percy The Right Honourable Sir Mortimer Durand: A Biography Cassell and Company, London, 1926.

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In Pakistan, the writ of the state is established in Punjab, Sindh, much of Gilgit-Baltistan, and parts of eastern KP. In these areas, the civil administration functions with a degree of effectiveness, and there are no sub-state structures that challenge the exclusivity of the state’s writ and its legitimacy. Society in Punjab does not reflect segmentary patrilinealism as a determinant social structure, and is not characterised by the territorial exclusivity of tribes, factors that are determinant features of FATA and the adjoining areas of KP. Further, feudal structures in the largely agrarian Punjab along with the largely Punjabi army constitute two parallel structures that consolidate and perpetuate the writ of the state in Punjab and adjacent areas in northern Sindh and eastern KP.

In the Afghan borderland, however, the state has not effectively penetrated the enduring, pre-state structures of tribally driven territorial autonomy. The system of political agency through which the Pakistani state nominally administers FATA, practically redundant due to the resurging tribal militancy across the agencies, is a state provided veneer over a tribally dominated system of local, zai based structures of authority and adjudication.⁴ The principal function of the political agent has remained as a facilitator of agency and cross-borderland economic flows.⁵ These economic flows include the provision of nikkat and lungi allowances, as well as the repatriation of ATT labelled commodities to the Khyber based bara or karkhano markets. The absence of the writ of the Pakistani state in the borderland currently manifests in the emergence of alternative judicial structures, rival military structures and re-emergent, pre-state and sub-state centres of political gravity that enjoy both authority over the population and also legitimacy in a psycho-social context, despite their lack of sanction from, and their opposition to, the Pakistani and Afghan states. ⁶

The absence of any state presence in the Afghan side of the borderland is a contributant to the difficulty facing the Pakistani state in seeking to extend its writ into FATA. The movement of tribesmen into and out of FATA from Afghanistan determines that the population of FATA is not static, and identifies with trans-border tribal polities. As a result, the options available to the Pakistani state in seeking to assimilate this population are compounded by the absence of a government in Kabul with an effective writ that extends into the borderland. The government of Pakistan thus resorts to a combination of incentives and intimidation designed

4 Interview with Rehmat Shah Swati, Tanda, KP, 6^th July, 2008.

3 Interview with Rehmat Shah Swati, Tanda, KP, 6^th July, 2008.

6 Here, „alternative judicial structures‟ refers to the multiple sharia courts that function across FATA and KP, a phenomenon treated in more detail in subsequent sections. „Alternative military structures‟

refers to the tribal lashkars that are active, in many cases against the Pakistani military, across FATA and KP, a phenomenon dealt with in detail in the section entitled „Militancy‟.

to manage the autonomy of the tribes of FATA. This includes the provision of vital services and limited infrastructure, largely in exchange for guaranteeing the uninterrupted flow of trade, and the containment of inter-tribal feuds. The withdrawal of such subsidised vital services has historically functioned as a disincentive, an approach dominating the Pakistani army’s engagement with FATA since 2002.