PM’s advice to PTM
Addressing a rally in Orakzai Agency on April 19, 2019,
Prime Minister (PM) Imran Khan argued that the issues facing the people of the
tribal areas being highlighted by the Pashtun Tahafuz Movement (PTM) now are
the same he had spoken about 15 years ago. He reminded his audience that he had
been speaking about innocent people dying and being displaced, which the PTM is
reiterating at present. But, he said, although the PTM’s complaints were justified,
the tone and tenor they were using was not in the interests of the tribal areas
or the country. The PM went on to remind the audience that he had spoken
against the army going into the tribal areas (for the first time in Pakistan’s
history) in 2004 at the behest of the US because the tribesmen are our ‘unpaid
army’. The then military dictator Pervez Musharraf, according to the PM, along
with people from other parts of the country had very little idea about the
tribal region, people and their traditions. It was not the army to blame but Musharraf,
he continued, for siding with the US. The consequence was that soldiers were
martyred and the tribal people suffered. Nobody knew the pain of the tribal
people having to move their women to safety in an honour-bound society. Only I
knew, Imran Khan asserted. This was because no other PM had been to the tribal
areas as frequently as him, Imran Khan claimed. I am here again he said because
only I know your pain, knowing the area better than anyone else. Now the
country and the region must think ahead about educating children, employing the
youth and improving conditions. In another reference to the PTM, Imran Khan
said just rubbing salt into the wounds without offering solutions was a futile
approach. What was needed was balm for the wounds, help, compensation and
support to those who had suffered. He ended by revealing that the registration
of internally displaced persons had been completed and the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa
Chief Minister Mahmood Khan had been asked to draw up a plan to support all
those who had suffered losses of houses, cattle and businesses.
While the PM’s argument that anti-army slogans by the PTM
would weaken the country and inciting people without offering solutions to the
problems would benefit no one has weight, there are some glaring omissions in
his analysis and message. One, Imran Khan when he criticised the army’s forays
into the tribal areas starting in 2004 placed his trust in negotiated
settlements with the extremists, a view that proved naïve and unworkable when
agreement after agreement with the militants broke down. Two, when he advocates
balm on the wounds of the tribal people instead of what he refers to as salt
sprinkled on them by PTM, it should be remembered that the tribal people have
been asking for redress for their grievances even before the PTM came into
existence. PTM is merely the angry and frustrated voice of the tribesmen who
feel they have been the meat in the grinder between the Pakistani Taliban and
the military. It is natural to assume that when military operations were
mounted against the militants, some collateral damage was caused to innocent
tribal people caught in the crossfire. Previous governments and the military
failed to apply the balm of compensation and help after these operations,
particularly after 2014 when, following the Army Public School massacre in
Peshawar by the Pakistani Taliban, the military mounted a massive and
ultimately successful counterinsurgency campaign (at least as far as winkling
the militants out of their safe havens in the tribal areas and forcing them to
flee across the border into Afghanistan is concerned). Taking the cue from the
PM’s remarks, it is still not too late to assuage the hurt and losses caused to
the tribal people along the lines suggested by him as the best panacea for the
anger and frustration of the PTM.
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