The Pashtun rising
Rashed Rahman
The Pashtun Tahaffuz Movement (PTM) is fast becoming something of a phenomenon. The platform emerged in response to the extrajudicial killing of a young Pashtun aspiring model in Karachi, Naqeebullah Mehsud, allegedly at the hands of the Karachi police led by disgraced and under arrest SP Rao Anwar, the alleged ‘encounter specialist’ of the metropolis. On Sunday, April 8, 2018, the PTM put on an impressive show at a rally in Peshawar. Police estimates of the crowd put it at 30,000 but the pictures of the rally on the social media suggest this may be an underestimate. The electronic media shamefully failed to cover the rally, whether because it was exercising the self-censorship that has overtaken the mainstream media in recent years or under ‘instructions’ is not known. However, when all the TV channels decide to overlook a significant development like this one, it cannot be put down to coincidence. Print media coverage too was sketchy the next day, albeit there was at least some coverage and even editorial comment.
People had flocked to the Peshawar rally from FATA and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP). Students from all over the country participated. Women and children too were in attendance, despite the regression in women’s presence in the public space in KP and FATA in recent years.
The PTM Peshawar rally was accompanied by similar rallies on the day in Karachi (a major Pashtun community now resides in the city) and outside the White House in Washington. PTM’s leader Manzoor Pashteen called for the release of all missing people. He said the Pashtuns have now burnt their boats and the movement would continue till the last missing person was either released or produced before a court of law. He underlined the fact that the campaign would remain peaceful but reiterated the demands mutedly circulating amongst the Pashtun community for many years now of protecting the Pashtuns’ fundamental rights, which had been badly and with impunity violated since the so-called war on terror began by the terrorists and the military operations against them. In other words, the Pashtuns have become grist in the mill grinding them into dust from both sides.
Manzoor Pashteen announced at the rally that the PTM intended to hold such rallies all over the country, starting with one in Lahore on April 22, 2018 (supported by the newly formed Lahore Left Front) and Swat on April 29, 2018. Pashteen demanded the trial of former Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) spokesman Ehsanullah Ehsan, who has been treated with kid gloves since his ‘surrender’ to the authorities. He also demanded the arrest and trial of absconding Pervez Musharraf and the setting up of a judicial commission of inquiry into the Army Public School massacre. He went on to claim that the ‘good’ Taliban in South Waziristan had threatened the PTM supporters not to attend the Peshawar rally. He did not, however, give any details regarding the identity of these ‘good’ Taliban. He rejected the canard that the PTM was dancing to the tune of foreign agencies (this has become the normal response of the agencies to any even peaceful movement for fundamental rights). Pashteen emphasised that militancy and the military operations against it had adversely affected the economic condition of the Pashtun people, with businesses closing and industries moving out of their areas because of lawlessness and extortion. He demanded punishment for Rao Anwar, an end to abuses by the police and troops, enforced disappearances and harassment by the authorities. Ethnic profiling of Pashtuns all over the country lies at the heart of such abuse. While underlining that the PTM was not against anyone in particular but against the cruelty being visited on their people, Pashteen revealed that 2,000 new cases of forced disappearances had been registered during the rally to add to the thousands already missing, some of whose families and friends held posters and photographs of the missing at the rally. He called on the Pashtuns to fight to secure their legitimate rights enshrined in the Constitution.
While the Peshawar rally of the PTM proved a huge success, some disquiet had emerged on the eve of the rally at Manzoor Pashteen and another prominent leader of the PTM, Ali Wazir’s visit to the Haqqania madrassa. Progressive and liberal supporters of the PTM and its aims were deeply troubled by the PTM leaders’ failure to comprehend that the visit would prove controversial, given the Haqqania madrassa’s unsavoury reputation for being the mother of the Taliban. Maulana Samiul Haq’s continuing role in this matter is hardly a secret. Nevertheless, and despite the not very satisfactory response of the PTM leaders to the questioning of the visit, their support amongst Pashtuns and all progressive forces throughout the country emerged relatively unscathed from this development.
Whereas the missing persons phenomenon first became known years ago in the context of the nationalist insurgency in Balochistan, by now the practice has spread to Sindh, Punjab, Gilgit-Baltistan and all four corners of the country. In the case of KP and FATA, after all the main battlegrounds in our war against terrorism, thousands are said to be missing for years. Occasional and sketchy information about a few of the disappeared revealed that they were being held incommunicado without being charged in secret detention centres dotted all over KP and FATA. Even when this information was revealed, neither the courts nor the Commission of Inquiry on Enforced Disappearances succeeded in piercing the veil of impunity that shrouds such operations by the deep state or do justice by ordering either their release or being arraigned before a court of law according to due process.
The Commission on missing persons has proved a toothless and abject failure in the face of the cocoon of impunity around the actions of the deep state. While the rising of the Pashtuns for their fundamental rights in the shape of the PTM can only be welcomed, we should also spare a thought for all the other missing persons from all over the country. It would be a great contribution to the democratic and law-abiding ethos of our polity if the Pashtun example spreads and joins up with all the other ethnic groups of the country in a broad platform against the malign affliction euphemistically called ‘missing persons’.
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