Pashtuns are suffering in the South Asia region. In Afghanistan, they are kept out of power and face the wrath of Nato-led forces. In Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), they are troubled by drone attacks and the Frontier Crimes Regulation (FCR), an outdated and cruel system of collective punishment. The newly formed Pashtun Tahafuz Movement (PTM) is also proving to be yet another case of jumping out of the frying pan into the fire.
Historically, the word “Pashtun” has been used interchangeably with “Afghan.” The people who initially inhabited the region southeast of the Amu Darya river in Afghanistan, to the west of the Indus River in Pakistan, are Pashtun. They primarily speak the Pashto language and follow the Pashtunwali code of conduct. They are primarily found in Afghanistan and Pakistan and form the world’s largest tribal society.
Worldwide, the Pashtun tribe comprises at least 50 million people, with some estimates much larger. Most live in Pakistan, with around 28 million in Afghanistan and smaller numbers in Iran. There are 1.8 million registered and unregistered Afghan refugees in Pakistan, a majority of whom are Pashtuns.
Of the Pakistani Pashtuns, more than 26 million live in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KPK), 9 million in FATA, and around 7 million in Karachi alone. There are 9 million in Punjab, 3 million in Sindh and 6.5 million in Baluchistan. These figures do not include the Niazi tribe of Mianwali, who are also Pathans but fewer speak the Pashto language. Pashtuns are very well integrated into Pakistani society and enjoy positions of power in government, civil and military bureaucracies. They also enjoy vast connectivity due to intermarriages with other ethnic groups.
The Pashtuns for the first time want to integrate fully into the Pakistani state and its legal system. However, the current government has been dragging its feet on this new development and not meeting the demands of the Pashtuns.
The Pashtuns for the first time want to integrate fully into the Pakistani state and its legal system. However, the current government has been dragging its feet on this new development and not meeting the demands of the Pashtuns
Anti-Pakistan forces are using a few politicians, political activists and social workers to slow down the integration of FATA into mainstream Pakistan. The PTM, which began as a noble student initiative launched in 2013 for the purpose of clearing landmines in Waziristan, has been hijacked.
The movement rightfully protested the extrajudicial killing of Naqeebullah Mehsud by police in Karachi. A long march followed by a sit-in in Islamabad was organized by the movement and was supported by many patriotic citizens of Pakistan.
However, later, key PTM personnel started making radical speeches against the Pakistan army and its security agencies in Baluchistan, accusing them of forgetting the human rights of Pashtuns.
Anti-Pakistan speeches by PTM workers are also provoking wide publicity put out by Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), a US-funded organization. A website called Gandhara and Mashaal Radio have also cultivated suspicion between the Pakistani military and Pashtuns.
Saira Bano Orakzai, a proud Pashtun and research fellow at Harvard University, said in a recent article that the time is ripe for the people of the tribal areas to make a clear choice: to struggle to restore rights and peace or to struggle against this country’s institutions and ideology, only to get entangled in a perpetual conflict, thus derailing an already fragile reform process for FATA’s future.
The government of Pakistan should immediately merge FATA with KPK and implement FATA reforms. The killing of Naqeebullah Mehsud must be immediately resolved because some forces are exploiting the situation. The Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority must monitor and check the hostile propaganda against the unity and interests of Pashtun people in national and international media.
It is high time Pashtuns identify their enemies and friends.
What Mr. Malik does not acknowledge is the fact that Pakistan Army Cabal Inc. has effectively arrested the state as its personal fiefdom and currently all but the province of Punjab are fighting an insurgent war in orser to go their own seperate way. This process though had been underway from the outset for the province of Balochistan but for Pakhtun and Sindh it is much recent. Pakistan Army Cabal through its goons at the ISI are riding the people roughshod and looting the national treasury blind in an effort to featherbed nest egg, retiement in the comforts of some western democracies, like Canada, where they sell their coveted Green Cards.
Army Cabal will not change, for such phenomenon once begun can only end in the liquidation of the entity. Pakistan is really a misnomer, for the state had died with the formation of the state of Bangladesh way back in 1971, where the Bangalis’s had been 52% of the population, but they chose their ethnic name as they should have for there exist no such entity as Pak to have a needed -istan. In any case what we have in Pakistan is really a Zombiistan that ought to have been further subdivided into its remaining tribal parts, but such is the general stuper of the umma. There are those in Sindh, Balochistan, and Pakhtunkhwa that rather call it Punjabistan due to the fact that it’s the elite of the Punjab that effectively controls the Army Cabal or vice versa and has the largest population share.
But this inevitable breakup is well underway, one would have to be exceedingly blind not to see it coming, and when such determinations take root they have a way of fruition, I’ll give it no more than 10 years, and wouldn’t be least bit surprised if it were to occur in less than three.
I expect four to five seperate nation-states in the place of Punjabistan with a sigh of relief that they would live peaceably with free trade and cooperation without ever needing the military, just police force and coast-guards.
Very good analysis…..right now Pashtuns are fighting to prevent discrimination and atrocities which they are going through for no reason….war in Afghanistan was not their fault, it was a huge international battlefield but end loosers are poor pushtuns on both side of the border…..new awareness movement is in hands of young Pashtuns, and I am very positive they won’t go against Pakistan or Army but they would be able to regain thrir rights in Pakistan!
“The PTM, which began as a noble student initiative launched in 2013 for the purpose of clearing landmines in Waziristan, has been hijacked.” I think that the contention of the writer that the PTM has been hijacked (or carjacked or rickshaw-jacked or taanga-jacked) is not based on ground realities. In his latest press talk, DG ISPR “assured that no foreign agency was driving the indigenous movement (PTM) forward.” Here is a link to the English daily “The Nation” editorial, which deals on the subject. https://nation.com.pk/29-Mar-2018/dg-ispr-on-ptm
In this regard, the following articles written by two natives of Waziristan are worth reading.
Mazar-e-Miramshah by Ghulam Qadir Khan
https://www.dawn.com/news/1389221
To be young and Pashtun in Pakistan by Raza Wazir in New York Times
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/09/opinion/pashtun-pakistan-young-killing.html
The writer is baised in fever of Pakistan army and therefore the article is not neutral. Such international and standard media outlets should publish articles justifying genocide of Pashtuns.
Should not publish