ABSTRACT
This research focuses on the relationship between the tribe and the state in Pakistan’s Western borderlands and how this relationship has been continuously affected by the security needs of the state. I argue that there is a dialectical relationship between the tribe and the state. Both of them represent an authority structure, institutions, leadership and rules and procedures to govern populations. While the logic of the state and the modern notions of national sovereignty and territorial control would require assimilation of the tribe into the larger national community, the tribe and its chieftain would strive to maintain their autonomy, traditions and time-tested political arrangements that have served their purpose. The ethos and structural needs of the two to survive and develop – for the state to expand and the tribe to resist and maintain its relative autonomy – clash.
The research explores the historical trajectories the colonial Britain and post-colonial Pakistan have pursued toward assimilation, integration or mere control of tribal regions. The central question I explore is how the geopolitical needs of the state and policy of intervention toward Afghanistan have changed this region from a neglected periphery to the centre of conflict. In answering this question, the article examines the role of dominant structures of world power and their effect on shaping the interests, strategies and alliances among local, regional and global actors. The focus is on how the three international systems – British colonial, Cold War, and American hegemonic – have defined and redefined dynamics and interactive process between tribes in the borderlands and the Pakistani state.
