The State of Dir

Simon Gillett

Excerpts from "Tribesmen, Politics, Opium & Development in Dir"

DIR; Its Geography and History

Dir district [1] is 5,280 square kilometres in area and part of the Malakand division of Pakistan's North-West Frontier Province, lying along the Afghanistan border between Chitral and Peshawar. Almost all of it lies in the valley of the Panjkora which rises high in the Hindu Kush at Lat. 35.45 and joins the Swat River near Chakdarra, where the district is usually entered, at Lat. 34.40. Apart from the tehsils of Adenzai round Chakdarra and Munda in the south-west, Dir is rugged and mountainous with peaks rising to 16,000 feet in the north-east and to 10,000 ft. along the watersheds with Swat to the east and Afghanistan to the west. The only motor road to Chitral reaches 10,234 ft at the Lowarai pass. Timergara, however, the district headquarters, lies at only 2,700 ft. twice the altitude of Peshawar but much lower than the traditional and eponymous capital of Dir at the foot of the Lowarai. Except for them and a number of rapidly growing bazaar towns along the main roads the population is rural, scattered in more than 1200 villages over the plains of Adenzai and Munda and the deep narrow valleys of the Panjkora and its tributaries. Of these the largest are Barawal, Usherai, Nihag, Karo and Toormang.

Upper Dir receives over 1,000 mm of rain annually and between 4,000 and 10.000 ft. much of it is still forested: deodar and other conifers are dominant at the higher altitudes, and deciduous species including oak, wild olive and walnut proliferate lower down. Increasing population pressure and the insatiable demand for firewood locally and for timber throughout Pakistan has reduced tree cover drastically. Much cleared forest has become seriously degraded through uncontrolled grazing and conversion to arable. Unfortunately, unless new farmland is laboriously terraced and irrigated the thin soils soon erode and lose fertility. Even as rough pasture such steep slopes are of little value, since high rates of evapo­transpiration and unshaded capped soils inhibit the maintenance of grass and shrub cover.

Although there is still room to expand summer cultivation of maize and potato above the 7,000 ft. contour where winter cropping ceases, little remains below it for either winter or summer crops. Dir's population has grown at over three per cent annually in the last fifty years and in the 1998 Census was found to be almost 1.3 million. In the last thirty years living standards have nevertheless risen through the expansion and diversification of agriculture and through the remittances of very large numbers of men working in the cities of Pakistan, in the coal mines of Baluchistan and in the Gulf states. If living standards are to be sustained, much more needs to he done to intensify commercial agriculture and horticulture, to provide work outside agriculture and to reverse environmental degradation. in particular deforestation.

The people of Dir now facing this challenge are the Yusufzai Pakhtun who arrived in the sixteenth century absorbing the existing population or driving it into the high valleys of Kohistan above the altitude at which winter crops can be grown. Even there only the Bashkar and the nomadic Gujars retain distinct languages. In the rest of Dir until well into the 20th century endemic warfare between the different Yusufzai Khel [2] favoured those who had settled in the well-watered and forested upper Panjkora valleys. There they were secure from attack and could raid the people of the plains. Each clan was fiercely independent, but the primacy of the Painda and Sultan Khel in Nihag, Usherai and Karo valleys seems to have been early recognized. It is from Kohan in upper Nihag that the Khans of Dir emerged in the 18th century to seize control of the trade routes with Chitral and Afghanistan.

Dir Street Scene

Throughout the 19th century the Khans of Dir effectively controlled only upper Dir and their attempts to dominate lower Dir and even lower Swat were strongly resisted. A notable opponent was the famous Umra Khan of Jandool, a bitter enemy of British hegemony. In 1895 he intervened in the struggle for the succession to the Mehtar of Chitral and besieged the British Political Agent. After some hesitation Khan Mohammad Sharif of Dir assisted the 10,000 strong British relief force and was duly rewarded. During the withdrawal of the relief force he met the Political Agent Malakand at Janbhatai Kandao. The resulting treaty recognized the Khan as ruler of both upper and lower Dir and also lower Swat. British protection was guaranteed provided he refrained from contact with all foreign rulers, especially with the Amir of Afghanistan. In lieu of his right to charge tolls he received an annual subsidy of Rupees 10,000 and an additional grant of Rupees 15,000 to pay for a corps of levies to protect postal services, troop relief's and other traffic with Chitral. Further assistance was provided to build forts or levy posts between Chakdarra and Lowarai which are still in use. Finally, after a visit to the Viceroy in Calcutta Mohammad Sharif was awarded the title of' Nawab.

Mohammad Sharif proved his loyalty to the British during the Malakand rising of 1897, dying in 1904. Both he and his successors, Aurangzeb 1904-1925 and Shah Jehan 1925-1960, were however deeply reactionary autocrats opposing all forms of social and economic development and especially suspicious of any subject who sought a modern education. The Nawabs' attitudes and policy were in marked contrast with those of the Wali of Swat, the first of whom had regained lower Swat from Dir and obtained British recognition in 1917. As a result and to this day, Dir remains poorer, less developed, less liberal in religion and politics and less stable than its better known neighbour.[3]

Merger with Pakistan

After Partition in 1947 Nawab Shah Jehan made his three sons governors of different parts of the state; Mohammad Shah Kisro taking upper Dir, Shahabuddin Khan governing Munda and Samar Bagh in the south-west and Mohammad Shah administering Balambat and Maidan (tehsil Lalqila). In Maidan the people tired of Mohammad Shah's oppressive rule and in particular his demands for forced labour. They broke out in revolt in 1960 killing 200 of the Nawab's men including its commander. This attracted unfavourable notice in the press and General Yahya, Field Marshal Ayub Khan's successor as Pakistan's Head of State, exiled Nawab Shah Jehan to Islamabad where he died in 1968. He was replaced by Mohammad Shah Kisro who left the business of government to the Political Agent until 1969 when he too was removed along with the Wali of Swat and other traditional rulers whose territories were then formally annexed into Pakistan.

Dir's subsequent political and administrative status has been riddled with anomalies. Designated one of the Provincially Administered Tribal Areas (PATA) it was given a Deputy Commissioner and made subject to both the Penal and the Criminal Procedure Codes, while the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) continued under Political Agents and subject to the Frontier Crimes Regulations of 1901. As part of the NWFP Dir also obtained representatives in the Provincial and National Assemblies elected by all adult males, whereas the FATA Agencies continued to be restricted to representatives in the National Assembly elected only by tribal elders. Finally, although the Pakistan Civil Code was also extended to Dir, no land settlement has been carried out, so title to land is determined solely by customary law.

Handicapped by these anomalies it has not been easy for the district administration to maintain law and order in the mountainous centre and north of Dir. Even in the south there have been endemic, often violent, disputes over Land between the former feudatories of the Nawabs and their tenants, which the courts have been unable to resolve. In the north and centre disputes over rights to extract forest timber, formerly strictly controlled by the Nawabs, resulted in widespread disturbances in 1977. The Government then reduced its share of the value of felled timber to 20% in favour of customary owners, but their rights were and largely remain unrecorded. As a result it has not been difficult for entrepreneurs in collusion with tribal elders to clear extensive tracts without any benefit accruing to the majority of communal owners. Some have benefited from the operations of the Government controlled Forest Development Corporation between 1977 and 1997, but forest rights and their exploitation remain a major political and administrative problem which has only recently begun to receive adequate attention.

The politics of democracy 1980-1999

The last two decades have seen the pro-Islamist military regime of General Zia ul Haq, followed by the alternating elected governments of the Muslim League led by Nawaz Sharif and the Peoples Party of Benazir Bhutto. Their regimes have held office at both national and provincial level, and any practical difference in their policies has been hard to detect in Dir. Both are committed to "modernisation" and are equally rejected by the majority of voters with little or no education other than that provided by the village madrassa. For them the Islamic simplicities of the Jamaat Islami party or its more radical local rival the Tehrik Nifaz e Shariati Muhammadi (TNSM) of Maulana Sufi Mohammad of Maidan are much more attractive. Unfortunately the religious parties reject the ballot box and as a rule offer no candidates at elections. As a result, only 20% of registered electors voted in the general election of 1997 which brought Nawaz Sharif back to power.[4] All of them were men, since although women are under the Constitution entitled to vote, attempts to permit them to register have everywhere met with opposition, often violent.

Lacking any ideological appeal to the masses, both PML and PPP politicians have only been able to attract support by the politics of the pork barrel. The metaphor is inappropriate in a Muslim country, but what it means is that candidates seek election by offering the better educated and wealthier voters jobs for their relatives in the civil service or funds from provincial or central government for building a school or a health centre, for erecting electricity cables or for anything else that fits into the government's development plans. Where they can, civil servants try to ensure that these funds are spent on properly planned and executed schemes, but MPAs and MNAs of both parties have been quick to realize that a word with the relevant minister will ensure that civil service rules are manipulated to favour the contractors and candidates for office known to them. By such means public funds are wasted and civil servants corrupted and demoralized. Worse still, because the people are still too unsophisticated to appreciate the benefits of the franchise, political influence remains with their "natural" traditional leaders, the more or less educated and wealthy tribal maliks. When they do use their votes independently they may still be fooled. For example in 1997 the PML candidate for the National Assembly had promised a large number of people that if they deposited money with him he would buy cars for them at very favourable prices. When pressed to deliver the vehicles, he admitted he was unable to do so and obtained their votes because if elected he would be able to buy the cars with public funds. He is not the only parliamentarian from Dir with a criminal record.

Political corruption of such gravity is of course common elsewhere in Pakistan. It has been accentuated in NWFP by the continuing suspension of the District Councils and the lower tier of Union Councils. Their members were closer to the people and should therefore have been more easily held to account. However, in Dir there is no land settlement and no land revenue nor other direct taxes, so these local bodies were also largely concerned with the distribution of central government grants. Their corruption, inactivity and inefficiency were the pretexts for suspending them, but the failure to reinstate them before the military coup of October 1999 was undoubtedly due to the reluctance of MPAs and MNAs to share the government's pork barrel with them.

For all these reasons democratic politics has, to put it mildly, lacked accountability. This will he difficult to change even if the devolution plans of the current military regime proceed smoothly. Until the new local councils develop an adequate revenue base independent of government. voters will not learn the fundamental lesson that while there should be no taxation without representation, responsible and effective representative government is unattainable without taxation.

NOTES

1. Dir district was officially split into Upper and Lower Dir in 1996. Until 2000 as funds were not available to provide the accommodation needed at Dir town by government depart­ments at a district headquarters, both districts continued to he administered by a single deputy Commissioner stationed at Timergara.
2. Khel means clan in Pashtu, as distinct from the larger gouz or tribe such asYusuflzai or Khattak.
3. The authority of the Nawabs depended on support From the British and their credibility as upholders of Islam. See Charles Lindholm. Leadership Categories and Social Processes in Islam: The Cases of Dir and Swat: Journal of Anthropological Research 42: I 13. Reprinted in Frontier Perspectives: Essays in Comparative Anthropology. OUP Karachi 1996.
4. It is expected that Jamaat IsIami will contest the local government elections. TNSM with Its headquarters in Maidan will boycott them. Both demand the full introduction of Shariah in Malakand Division and favour the latter's; retention of its semi-tribal status, This is popular because it permits duty free imports via Afghanistan and excludes direct taxation.

The author spent live years from 1996 in Dir district as United Nations Adviser to the Dir District Development Project.

Published sources on the history of Dir are limited. Official publications in British India such as the NWFP Gazetteer have scanty references apparently based on H.W Bellew's General Report on the Yusufzai 1864 (Sang-e Meel Lahore 1991) and McMahon and Ramsay's Tribes of Dir Swat and Bajaur, issued in 1901. McMahon later Sir Harold and High Commissioner in Egypt-and Ramsay were respectively Political Agent and Asst. Political Agent Malakand. Their report is regarded as authoritative by people in Dir, so it is unfortunate that although reissued in 1981 by the NWFP government it is now again out of print.