The Pashtun nation (Pashtunistan) is now raising its voice for national identity after a long break of silence and state’s religious oppression. Obviously, this is not easy because Pashtuns have so far been the billy goat in the name of religion. In 2018, in the Sindh province of Pakistan, Pashtun youth Naqibullah Masood was targeted by Pakistani police in a fake encounter.
The Pashtun Tahafuz Movement (PTM) came to the public at the national level and the Pashtun nation found a platform against state repression and it’s fake encounters. The issue of “missing persons” was raised and a new spirit blew in the Pashtun nation leading to their demands that landmines laid by Pakistan Army and Taliban be cleared immediately and the duplicitous policy of good and bad Taliban must be stopped. Pashtuns demanded the withdrawal of Pakistan Army and Taliban from Pashtun areas and asked that useless check posts should be abolished.
Today Pashtun nationalists want the same status from Pakistan that a dominant ethnic group in Punjabis have it, but as usual it is not approved by the military establishment for the Pashtunistan in any way. The barbarism continues every day across Pashtunistan and Rawalpindi’s military establishment tries to temporarily silence Pashtuns in the name of committees and negotiations. But it’s no longer so easy to fool the Pashtun people in the era of modern technology and social media.
Pashtun Tahafuz Movement (PTM)
The two PTM leaders, Ali Wazir and Mohsin Dawar are members of Pakistan’s largest Constituent Assembly– the National Assembly. They are elected by a large number of people of Pashtunistan. Yet, Ali Wazir is in the lockup for speaking out against Pakistani intelligence agency the ISI and fake cases have been lodged against him. Mohsin Dawar, also a member of the National Assembly, has been arrested several times. Several attempts to assassinate Pashtun leader and PTM founder Manzoor Pashteen have been made by Rawalpindi.
Pashtunistan is still struggling for its universal and human rights today. The evil Pakistan Army is once again organizing its puppet Taliban in Waziristan so that the Pashtuns are killed in the name of Islamic extremism and the uniformed men of Pakistan Army are able to make money by playing with the lives of Pashtun youth in Waziristan.
Today, the Pashtun movement is expanding for the first time such that Pashtunistan’s mutual relations have been established with the Pashtuns in Afghanistan and they have recognized their common enemy, which is certainly a good omen for the Pashtuns. On March 20, bullet ridden bodies of four Pashtun youth aged between 13 to 17 years were found behind the Pakistan Army camp. According to local sources the Pakistani soldiers had sexually abused these four Pashtun children in their camps and eventually killed them and dumped their bodies. Pashtuns protested against this fascism and demanded justice but the infamous ISI then played the game in the name of so-called committee and inquiry.
In April, two mutilated bodies were again found in Waziristan near the military cantonment. Pashtunistan is aware of its enemy. However, the Pashtun leaders do not seem to be in a position to take the path of resistance like Baloch resistance. The PTM leaders, demanded an FIR against Wing Commander Colonel Raheel Hussain, Captain Bilal, the provincial Major Ghani Khattak, and yet the Pakistani establishment couldn’t file an FIR against its own uniformed terrorists the Pakistan military personnel.
Similarly, on April 26, Pakistani security personnel opened fire on a shop in South Waziristan killing two young men and injuring one PTM member. Pashtuns staged a fierce protest against this terrorism and brutal violence they face at the hands of Pakistani forces.
These so-called ‘incidents’ of state repression against the Pashtun nation have not diminished. Whenever people protest against state atrocities, they are targeted in some way. During 2019, the security personnel opened fire in northern Waziristan peace demonstrations that killed 13 people and injured more than 30 people. This incident is still fresh in the minds of Pashtunistan and hatred has increased dramatically since this state invasion.
In the current era, Pakistani intelligence agency ISI is once again organizing the Taliban to crush Pashtun nationalism in Waziristan. According to reports from Waziristan, the Pakistan Army in South Waziristan has given the Taliban a place in their cantonment and reorganized regular Taliban patrol markets, including weapons.
Pashtun youth are also running a campaign on social media to bring Pakistan to justice against the organized genocide across Pashtunistan and put pressure on Pakistan to stop the Pashtun genocide. The Pakistani military and the ISI have pursued a policy of maintaining and spreading unrest in the Pashtun tribal areas so that they can use Islamic extremist ideologies on the hapless Pashtuns and turn them into suicide machines.
Pashtun nation (Pashtunistan) have been used as a weapon of Pakistani proxy war, it has always been used by the (ISI) and the Pakistani military as an important tool of Islamic extremism. Only time will be able to answer the question of how they can counter Pakistan’s dangerous policy of destroying Pashtunistan and save the future of their future generations.
(Urdu to English translation: Gafoor Ahmed)