State repression leads to growing instability in Pashtun areas of Pakistan
Pakistan’s western province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa is seeing increasing signs of rebellion against the Punjabi-dominated federal government and military leadership.
The minority Pashtun community in Pakistan is consolidating under the newly formed Pashtun Qaumi (national) Jirga (PNJ), which came into existence after the unlawful banning of the Pashtun Tahaffuz Movement (PTM) in September. Pashtun leaders held a three-day Jirga, or public court, from October 11-13 to raise their demands and call for peace in the Pashtun areas.[1]
These developments in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and an emerging Pashtun unity have raised concerns among the military leadership in Pakistan.
The growing militancy in the country’s border provinces—Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa—and peaceful civilian movements in Baloch and Pashtun areas have brought back long-held fears of Pakistan’s partition along ethnic lines.[2]
More importantly, Islamabad’s ‘strategic depth’ policy in Afghanistan has failed after the Taliban refused to behave as an “extended” arm of Pakistan’s military establishment. This has created a sense of paranoia in Pakistan, which is now looking at unstable western borderlands extending from the Swat Valley in the north to the Makran coast in southern Balochistan.
The return of the Taliban has intensified the turbulence in the Pashtun lands straddling the Durand Line between Afghanistan and Pakistan. Pakistan’s hopes of controlling Afghanistan through the Taliban have been dashed. The Taliban is asserting its autonomy and raising the traditional demands of the Pashtun people against Rawalpindi. Moreover, Kabul has been accused of sheltering Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), which is trying to carve out autonomous zones within the Pashtun lands along the so-called ‘Durand Line’ and undermining the writ of the Pakistani state. Adding to this is the growing social movement, the Pashtun National Jirga in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, led by the known activist Manzoor Pashteen.
The Jirga issued a 22-point agenda on October 13, which included the complete withdrawal of Pakistan’s security forces from Pashtun areas within two months.[3] The group also refused to accept the Durand Line as an official border between Afghanistan and Pakistan and called for an end to military interference in politics.[4] More importantly, the Jirga has warned of acting against the Pakistani state institutions for refusing to fulfill their demands within the given timeframe. Pashteen and other Pashtun activists have been calling for peace and stability in border provinces for over five years now. However, the military establishment violently targeted several Pashtun activists, including Pashteen, and even banned the Pashtun Tahaffuz Movement (PTM) last month under Section 11B of the Anti-Terrorism Act 1997.[5]
Furthermore, anti-Pashtun sentiments have increased across Pakistan, and multiple incidents have occurred in recent years in which Pashtun students were attacked at universities in Islamabad and Lahore. Local media channels and the film industry in Pakistan also portray Pashtuns in a negative light as terrorists, drug dealers, and refugees from Afghanistan. After the Taliban’s return to power in Afghanistan in August 2021, the Pakistani government forcefully expelled over one million poor Afghan refugees from the country. It accentuated sentiments against Pakistani Pashtuns as well, who were labeled as ‘Afghan refugees’ in their own country.
Adding to the recent upsurge in state-backed ethnic and racial discrimination against Pashtuns, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province has witnessed exceptional violence, forced internal migration, and a lack of resources since the early 2000s. As the military establishment in Pakistan rejoiced over the Taliban’s return to Kabul in August 2021, many Pashtun activists, including Pashteen, warned against the impending instability in the region.[6] Despite clear signs of instability in the border districts, the government in Islamabad chose to ignore the plight of the Pashtun population. Consequently, the Pashtun areas are now witnessing daily terror attacks and targeted killings of innocent civilians. Therefore, people like Pashteen and other Pashtun leaders in Pakistan are now trying to unite the community, which is divided into tribes and sub-tribes.
Since the formation of Pakistan in 1947, Pakistan’s security establishment has managed to divide Pashtuns along tribal lines on both sides of the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan. Furthermore, the military has conducted almost ten counterterrorism operations in the Pashtun regions, thus preventing the community from prospering and consolidating as one ethnic unit. The country’s wealthy and politically dominant Punjabi leadership fears a potential pushback from Pashtuns and recognizes that the historical idea of a separate Pashtun land, or Pashtunistan, could become a reality if the Afghan Taliban, TTP and its proxy groups, and activists like Manzoor Pashteen decide to unite as a common Pashtun front against the Pakistan military.
The Pakhtun Qaumi Jirga has proposed constituting a “Pashtun Milli Lashkar,” an unarmed force to protect Pashtun communities in the region as a local defense mechanism and to supervise the extraction of resources throughout the Pashtun belt, which stretches from Quetta to Kohistan and Chitral.[7] Additionally, Pashteen called for the removal of “undue trade restrictions” at key border crossings between Afghanistan and Pakistan, including Torkham, Nawapass, Chaman, and Angoor Adda. He demanded that Pashtuns be allowed to trade freely without unnecessary obstacles. All these demands may never be fulfilled; however, Pashtuns are now openly demanding their rights to local resources and open borders with Afghanistan to connect Pashtun families on both sides.[8]
Fearing the mass support for the Pashtun Jirga, Pakistan’s Interior Minister, Mohsin Naqvi, said in a presser on October 9, “On one hand, they are referring to the gathering as a jirga, and on the other, they are portraying it as a court,” warning that the government will now allow a “parallel judicial system” at any cost.[9] The statement reflects growing insecurity in Islamabad over the Pashtun consolidation and the likelihood of targeted attacks against the Jirga leaders in the future. However, despite the government warnings, it appears that the Pashtun population has now decided to take the Pakistani state authorities head-on without worrying about the consequences. This may result in a new phase of violent instability in Pashtun areas of Pakistan.
Sources:
[1] https://www.thenews.com.pk/print/1239653-pashtun-qaumi-jirga-begins-amid-high-hopes
[2] https://www.aa.com.tr/en/asia-pacific/august-proves-deadly-for-pakistan-with-254-killed-in-terror-attacks/3321223
[3] https://voicepk.net/2024/10/pashtun-qaumi-jirga-issues-22-point-declaration-for-self-determination/
[4] https://amu.tv/130137/
[5] https://www.voanews.com/a/pakistan-s-banned-ptm-a-movement-for-pashtun-rights/7818187.html
[6] https://tribune.com.pk/story/2503293/ptm-pti-and-pashtun-qaumi-jirga
[7] https://www.geo.tv/latest/568906-jirga-proposes-to-create-unarmed-lashkar
[8] https://www.thenews.com.pk/print/1242171-ptm-stages-protests-to-seek-implementation-of-jirga-s-demands
[9] https://www.geo.tv/latest/568134-wary-of-ptms-jirga-naqvi-vows-strict-action-against-facilitators-of-banned-outfit
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