ISLAMABAD — Pakistan lifted a ban on political activities in its tribal regions Friday, granting the areas close to the Afghan border parliamentary representation for the first time in the hopes it would reduce the grip of the Taliban there.
Pakistan’s seven semiautonomous agencies have never been politically and administratively integrated into the rest of the country — a vacuum that observers say has allowed lawlessness and an al-Qaeda- and Taliban-led militancy to thrive.
“This breaks the monopoly of clerics to play politics from the pulpit of the mosque to the exclusion of major secular political parties,” said Farhatullah Babar, a spokesman for President Asif Ali Zardari. “It empowers the locals and weakens the extremists.”
Since the days of British colonial rule, the region’s 4 million people have been ruled by government-appointed agents in concert with tribal leaders. They are subject to tribal laws that allow for detention without trial and communal punishment among other unpopular measures. Babar said the announcement did not reduce the political agents’ powers.
