Federally Administered Tribal Areas

The Federally Administered Tribal Areas, or FATA, was a semi-autonomous tribal region in north-western Pakistan that existed from the country's 1947 independence until its merger into Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province in 2018. It comprised seven tribal agencies and six frontier regions covering roughly 27,220 square kilometers, bordered by Afghanistan to the north and west, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa to the east, and Balochistan to the south. FATA retained the colonial-era governance system inherited from British rule, administered under a special set of laws known as the Frontier Crimes Regulations that granted substantial authority to local tribal leaders through indirect rule. Instability grew from the 1980s onward and intensified after 2001 amid militant activity and military operations against Taliban forces, leading Pakistan's government to pursue integration with Khyber Pakhtunkhwa; on 31 May 2018 President Mamnoon Hussain signed the Twenty-fifth Constitutional Amendment, formally merging FATA into Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and ending its 71-year existence as a separate administrative entity. This description is adapted from Wikipedia contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0; changes were made. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/