It is a system seemingly designed to foster unrest & militancy -- and under the Taliban's predations the tribal leadership of the FATA has been brutally persecuted.

Islamabad has taken some halting steps to end the FATA's political isolation: late last year, President Asif Ali Zardari expanded political and legal reforms to the region, allowing political parties to field candidates for parliament. Though these reforms have not substantially altered political life in the tribal areas, they are a welcome first step toward addressing one major cause of local militancy.

To end finally the threat of Islamist militancy in Pakistan, however, requires the Pakistani government to stop supporting it.

In the midst of the Afghan civil war, in 1995, Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto " capitulated to [Pakistani intelligence's] persistent requests for unlimited covert aid" to the Taliban, which she described to U.S. officials as a "pro-Pakistan force."

Islamabad then refused to help the United States apprehend Osama bin Laden in the late 1990s. By this point, decades of Pakistani elites' deliberate politicization of Islam had created a monster they could no longer control. Still, they tried, and Pakistan's intelligence service sent those militantswest to fight in Afghanistan and east to fight the Indians in Kashmir. Those militants eventually found a home in the FATA, where they could operate in a legal no-man's land.

In other words, Islamist militancy in the FATA is the creation of the Pakistani state.

But there is a bigger question that needs asking: Is there a better way?

Ending the drone strikes is not as simple as halting operations. One way or another, both Washington and Islamabad want to neutralize the militants that threaten their citizens (both countries often disagree over which militants to target, which prompts most of the outcry by Pakistani officials). When Pakistan doesn't use drones to target militants, they kill thousands of civilians and displace hundreds of thousands of people; besides sending hundreds of thousands of troops to forcibly secure the area, the United States just doesn't have any other options for striking at militants.

Pakistani politicians, rather than grappling with this complicated challenge, have chosen instead to demagogue the issue. The sophisticated media wing of the ISI constantly redirects any ire for its own support of Islamist militancy into anti-American drone outrage. Imran Khan, the popular cricket player-turned politician, has been particularly brazen in this regard, going so far as to hold an " anti-drone rally" in South Waziristan this Sunday. This rally does nothing to address the horrors of militancy in the FATA, and it redirects blame for the shattered communities of the region from Islamabad to Washington. It makes sense, then, that the Taliban have endorsed his rally and promised his followers safe passage.