Waziristan has always been plagued with terrorism, violence and instability. Their impact has wrought enormous damage to its indigenous people of the region. Despite having ample natural resources and untapped or partly tapped reserves of coal, oil, gas, chromite, and copper, this hapless region is marred with operations and unending terrorism encounters. This has plagued the potential and dynamic process and prosperity of Waziristan region.
Majority of people live a substandard and impoverished lifestyle. The reason why the very abundance of the precious land resources could not bear a genuine fruit for the well-being of this region is because an exploitative extraction of these resources go unchecked and unaccountable due a fright security situation there.
Waziristan has such an abundance of resources that if tapped fairly and efficiently, not only can it make this impoverished region a prosperous but it can also help mitigate the curse of extremism and terrorism; there is no denying the fact that terrorism and extremism have roots in economic inequality and abject poverty.
Our state institutions and the concerned authorities should mull over other way-outs beyond a kinetic operations to ensure peace and prosperity. Had merely short-sighted approaches and strategies been effective to steer this region out of quagmire of conflict and violence towards real peace, they would have done this so far.
Waziristan issues and woes needs an insightful and comprehensive steps that go beyond what state authorities keep telling us viz. security. But also people to people connections from grassroots levels of socio-economic fabric of society to engage masses of the region to help improve things is also equally mandated.
Waziristan entitles to have its resources harvested on its own people rather than an unfair mechanism of exploitation and extraction.