New American Foundation

FATA: Inside Pakistan's Tribal Regions

Data and in-depth analysis from all seven tribal agencies of FATA-pakistan
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About this Project

Few places in the world have assumed as much importance for the United States and its allies since 2001 as Pakistan’s northwestern tribal regions, which have served as a base for the mix of militants seeking to attack the governments, militaries and civilians of the United States, Afghanistan, Pakistan and others. Yet our understanding of this region – its politics and history, U.S. involvement there, and the opinions of those who call it home – is painfully limited.

This project aims to help bridge that knowledge gap, by combining three streams of work from the New America Foundation’s Counterterrorism Strategy Initiative:

  1. A first-ever poll of sensitive political issues in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan (FATA), conducted jointly by New America and Terror Free Tomorrow. This poll, based on face-to-face interviews in all seven tribal agencies in FATA-Pakistan, was funded by the U.S. Institute of Peace. The field work was conducted by the Community Appraisal & Motivation Programme (CAMP), a Pakistani NGO operating in FATA and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province. The full methodology for this survey is below.

  2. Ongoing monitoring of U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan. This mapping project, headed by New America Research Fellow Katherine Tiedemann and widely recognized as the definitive source on this subject, is underwritten by the Open Society Insitute.

  3. A series of in-depth analyses on politics and militancy in Pakistan’s tribal areas, written by local Pakistani researchers and other regional experts. These papers, published in mid-2010, provide invaluable context for the data mapped here, and are available on the agency-specific pages of this site. This series was made possible by a grant from the Smith Richardson Foundation.

About the New America Foundation

The New America Foundation is a nonprofit, nonpartisan public policy institute that invests in new thinkers and new ideas to address the next generation of challenges facing the United States. Launched in 1999, the institute is now led by President Steve Coll and a Board of Directors chaired by Eric Schmidt, Chairman and CEO of Google. The New America Foundation’s Counterterrorism Strategy Initiative, which is co-directed by New America senior fellow Peter Bergen and Steve Coll and advised by Patrick Doherty, aims to provide data-based analysis of Afghanistan, Pakistan, and international terrorism. To learn more, please visit http://counterterrorism.newamerica.net