Manzoor Pashteen: The voice of Pashtuns for many in Pakistan - aljazeera

[Desert Fox]

I stand with every Pakistani who has been oppressed, regardless of who the oppressor is. I stood with Urdu speakers when Rao Anwar was accused of doing the same, but I didn't see any of these thekedars of humanity then. And got called an Urdu speaker with one poster inventing a fake parental history for me lol. But I guess some people are allowed to have ethnic biases and others aren't.

Pakistani establishment needs to take their heads out of their behinds and stop protecting khinzeers and treat every Pakistani equal. You already lost us Bangladesh because of your selfish stupidity, we don't need anymore of your great strategic plans. Concentrate on this country for God's sake.

Someone is protecting him? And please, our "establishment" are not angels.

And when I say Establishment, it includes all of those elite scum bags in leadership positions in Politics/Bureaucracy/Armed Forces/Judiciary who can get away with anything and most of their decisions are based on their personal goals and objectives, those who are too busy getting bribes and commissions on everything from sales of plots to weapon imports.

Someone somewhere is protecting him. Rao Anwer is the type of scum bag to show up at your door when you are getting threatened by a criminal gang, then he acts as the mediator to get them to back off after a sweet deal. This is from personal experience.

He cannot do this without his leadership knowing exactly what he's doing. He has people protecting him.



I agree with you, but please. It has nothing to do with Punjabi or Pashtun. These corrupt scum bags protect their own regardless of their ethnicity. All patriotic Pakistanis are with the oppressed. To me all Pakistanis are equal and I stand with my Pakistani Pashtun brothers in their hour of bereavement.

Playing in the hands of the enemy ? I take it the enemy is called common sense.
There are only three things that come to mind as to why Rao Anwar still hasn't been caught.

1. The agencies don't want to find him.
2. The agencies are either sheltering him or are allowing him to run free on purpose.
3. The agencies don't have the ability to find him.

If you have some other theory then I'm all ears.

It's funny seeing the boot gang in this thread who's idea of dealing with anything is to kill it. Doesn't work like that. This is not the first time we are facing such a situation. But sadly even after three such incidents some lads think they will deal with things "with an iron fist" and then things will be all hearts and butterflies.

Here's what the iron fist (and the people who support it) got us. They lost us half the country in 1971. Then had thousands killed in Karachi in the early 90's and alienated millions ( and eventually covering the city in blood for the next 15 years). Sparked an anti-state rebellion in the late 2000's in our most precious province. And now here we are at the cross roads again and like all three incidents before instead of negotiating and trying to improve the situation we are further alienating them and proving their point.

I'm not saying that all of these instances didn't have foreign backing or foreign influence. But it takes two things to fuel a rebellion. Resources and an idealogy. And even if we assume the resources are foreign there's no doubt that we practically handed over the reasons ourselves.

True. There are genuine grievances and the perpetrators don't discriminate when it comes to oppressing the weaker segments of society, though some groups are more easy targets than others, especially with the whole negative stigmatization of certain ethnic groups as being more prone to "terrorism", which does have a grain of credibility to it however this phenomenon is the result of historical circumstances rather than that group of people themselves.

But of course there are nefarious elements that seek to exploit this division. When the establishment is corrupt and oppressing its own people there is a danger that other subversive elements will seek to exploit the anger of the population for their own agenda. Unfortunately our leaders seem to take very little heed from history.

 

[newb3e]

True. There are genuine grievances and the perpetrators don't discriminate when it comes to oppressing the weaker segments of society, though some groups are more easy targets than others, especially with the whole negative stigmatization of certain ethnic groups as being more prone to "terrorism", which does have a grain of credibility to it however this phenomenon is the result of historical circumstances rather than that group of people themselves.

But of course there are nefarious elements that seek to exploit this division. When the establishment is corrupt and oppressing its own people there is a danger that other subversive elements will seek to exploit the anger of the population for their own agenda. Unfortunately our leaders seem to take very little heed from history.

there will always be elements that will always look to exploit any situation against Pakistan it is state responsibility to handle such situation this whole s**t could easily be avoided had our "#1" agency in the world caught and prosecute Rao Anwar and his accomplice and if found guilty hang him! but no they are chicken s**t scare of Mr Asif Zardari their puppet master!

I am not and never against PA i am against corrupt generals who are coward greedy and who are actually reason why we have people like Asif Ali Zardari!

 

[Desert Fox]

there will always be elements that will always look to exploit any situation against Pakistan it is state responsibility to handle such situation this whole s**t could easily be avoided had our "#1" agency in the world caught and prosecute Rao Anwar and his accomplice and if found guilty hang him! but no they are chicken s**t scare of Mr Asif Zardari their puppet master!

I am not and never against PA i am against corrupt generals who are coward greedy and who are actually reason why we have people like Asif Ali Zardari!

Within the corridors of power everyone gets their piece of the pie. As long as one power holder is not transgressing into the realm of the other there is nothing to be expected. The common man may suffer however much it won't make a difference to the power holders as long as they honor their agreement with one another.

 

[Hamza913]

He is descendant of sher shah suri then what he is doing in Pakistan go to your country this is not their country From seventy years of Pakistan history these pashtunes are liability and for sale to any country India Afghanistan Israel America against Pakistan Their history shows they could never be reliable They are neither good friend nor good enemy

Asalamu Alaikum

Pakhtuns are a major ethnic group in Pakistan, they have contributed to the country significantly and have always been instrumental in Muslim dominance of the region. They are as Pakistani as anyone else, ignore the few crazies among them (we all have them).

Also, Sher Shah Suri was born in the Punjab, making him a Pakistani Pakhtun. His father even had a Punjabi wife, showing that they had integrated well into the region.

Pakistani Pakhtuns are also genetically very similar to the other major ethnic groups of Pakistan. The differences are purely cultural/linguistic, other than that they are almost identical to the rest of us:

he was an Afganistan king..

No, he was born in the Punjab. Being a Pakhtun doesn't make you Afghan by nationality, only Pakhtuns in Afghanistan have any right to claim him as their own.

@Mian Babban is a kanjar, but what do you mean by saying 'shitwari'? Behave yourself.

Asalamu Alaikum

Non Pothwaris are just jealous of the Salt Range, Taxila, Porus and the fact that Islamabad is in our land, not theirs.



They wish they were as cool as us!

 

[Winchester]

this is the difference between pakistani, british and India media
while pakistani media is anti state and will not even question valid point as you questioned, british media is kinda neutral and india media is prostate that it will even spin the most obvious things around

now its rating and pakistani people who fuel it, remeber that, so dont blame them..most media will twist news per their viewer wishes

now job is to discredit him or ignore him

In this interview the hosts did a good job. I will give credit where its due.

You can't ignore it now its all over social media. The best thing going forward is to question them and correct them every time they make a false claim or divert from their legitimate primary goals.

It is in the best interest of the tribal people themselves that movement isn't hijacked by separatist elements.

 

[Mian Babban]

A FATA spring is going on ........people of FATA suffered immensely in the last ten years and a generation has grown up seeing the destruction and violence caused by both Talib and fauj. Back in 2009, i saw faujis giving kicks to the behinds of Mahsud passengers in Tank district for no other reason that they were Mahsuds....they asked Mahsud passengers to come out of their vehicles, gave them a boot in their buttocks and then told them that they are now free to go (Military operations in South Waziristan were going on at that time and faujis were very agitated all over Pakhtunkhwa). I saw this vulgar and unprofessional behavior by faujis and predicted back then that this policy of humiliating tribals will have its repercussions and long lasting effects.

I have seen some tweets that why PTM is protesting against fauj? that they should be rather thankful to Pakistan army for 'liberating' them from Taliban. They would have been, if Taliban were some foreign invading forces. They are not because they know that these very same Taliban were nurtured and groomed by ISI on their soil for interference in Afghanistan. Naik Muhammad Wazir, Abdullah Mahsud, Baitullah Mahsud etc were sent to Afghanistan by ISI to assist Taliban against Ahmad Shah Masud in late 90s. This Talibanized the tribal belt and the whole thing blew back when Pakistan gave up on Afghan Taliban and decided to do military operations in Waziristan in 2004 when the local Taliban refused to gave up on their Arab guests......the same people who were actually guests of CIA and ISI in Afghan Jihad and were accommodated in Waziristan by the same ISI/Army. TTP came into being and locals saw the game of "divide and rule" by ISI to weaken the TTP. Broke away factions of TTP were backed by fauj and were seen drinking tea and shaking hands with army men. This sickened a whole lot of locals. They also saw "good Taliban" being hosted on their soil for Afghanistan. They realized that the actual problem is not some mindless talib, but the manipulators and gamers from GHQ who are playing with fire and are using them like pawns on chess board. Thats why the protests are not violent, but peaceful and within confines of laws of Pakistan......they want to be merged with mainstream Pakistan because they are not protected from army in FCR......they went into the hands of ANP-walas because there was total media blackout and no one else was tolerating their grievances against the holy cow army except ANP and PkMAP.

Some one is having fits over Manzoor Pashteen's statement that Pashtuns in Army are not from them. Just like they dont own a Pashtun in TTP, they also dont own a Pashtun in ISI/Army.

Lets see how Army tackles this problem. I hope they stop playing with fire by usage of Jihadi fanatics for their purposes. They should realize that in this day and age world is very unforgiving to jihadi militants. A mujahid for Kashmir Jihad can turn into a Talib and a Talib can turn into a Daesh lunatic. Focus should be on promotion of pen and books among Pashtuns, not misusing their warrior-streak for their agendas. By now they should have learnt a lesson that a religiously fanatic Pashtun is a double edged sword, dont play with it.

 

[Mian Babban]

After the deluge

CARRYING on a reasoned debate in the era of hot takes, context-less sound bites, screenshots and social media lynch mobs in a society as polarised as ours is something of an extreme sport.

The simple is obscured; the complex reduced to binaries. Logic is drowned in a tide of whataboutery and false correlation. Straw men abound, and unlike the scarecrow in Wizard of Oz, they are happy to be without a brain.

With this in mind, let us turn to the debate on the Pashtun Tahaffuz Movement (PTM) and its young, charismatic leader Manzoor Pashteen, whom I interviewed a few days back. Clear in his beliefs, Pashteen speaks with the passion of a man who has grown up seeing nothing but war and devastation.

For those of us in ‘mainstream’ Pakistan, his is an experience we cannot relate to. We cannot walk in their shoes, feet blistering as we shuffle in lines at checkposts, tread carefully along tracks for fear of IEDS, cannot know what it is like to live in fear, tormented by the Taliban and cowering under drones and artillery fire.

The PTM’s demands are the bare minimum.

Even when they leave their homeland, they face discrimination, suspicion and suffer the atrocities of a hundred Rao Anwars. This is quite apart from the draconian FCR, under the yoke of which generations have lived their lives. Had we suffered a tenth of a tenth of what Fata’s people have, we would consider the ramshackle ‘system’ we shelter under to be a utopia.

Now, finally, Fata is emerging from the fog of war — one fought as much in the shadows as in the open. A war fought against an elusive enemy, one made all the deadlier because of the hand we ourselves had in creating the enemy. If the PTM seems sudden it is because we were not watching the cracks develop in the dam, and are now amazed at the flood. Their demands are the bare minimum that citizens can ask from their country.

These have been detailed at length in Khurram Husain’s ‘The Pashtun spring’, and for the sake of brevity suffice it to say that I agree with him in full: the removal of landmines, the status of missing persons, extrajudicial killings, the streamlining and improvement of checkpoint procedures (using military for policing must be avoided), the impotence (or collusion) of the state when it comes to Rao Anwar … all these and more are points on which the majority of Pakistanis support the PTM, regardless of ethnicity or political affiliation.

Some issues have been addressed in part, as Pashteen confirms, but major demands remain unaddressed and the pace is slow. Had these demands, first articulated at the peaceful Islamabad sit-in, been taken seriously we would perhaps not see the rallies being held now. But then, we tend to ignore wounds until they become gangrenous.

As the rallies and meetings were largely ignored by mainstream media — that seems to be changing — most clips and information come from social media, where the debate is ongoing. Typically, there are biases and agendas that are being reinforced and peddled but by and large the response is positive, with some important qualifications. Here we come to the controversial bits — those inconvenient things highlighted by PTM opponents to discredit the movement, and ignored by supporters in the fear that addressing them will delegitimise the PTM.

Take the demonstrably false claims regarding the APS massacre by a speaker at PTM rallies — claims devoid of proof that are sourced from a single TTP propaganda video (in other videos the TTP proudly claims the massacre). This was pointed out to Pashteen and one hopes he will consider that he has been misled, and that a position of leadership demands greater rigour.

This is important because: one, as any movement picks up pace it gathers not only adherents but also those who seek to exploit it. Second, many who fully back the PTM’s demands balk at such wild claims, and their concerns should be addressed. Supporters who ignore these for fear of damaging the cause are, in fact, doing just that: playing into the hands of those who would discredit it. With sorrow I must say that the very space that allows such views to flourish is also due to the shameful ignoring of the demands of the parents of APS victims by both military and civilian leadership for a judicial inquiry and for the report on the attack to be made public.

The greater responsibility is on us to listen to, answer and embrace the protesters but as the movement gains strength it is also incumbent on it to address the concerns of its well-wishers and focus on its legitimate goals. If this movement fails, it will be a loss for every Pakistani who prays for a justice-based system.

The writer is a journalist.

Twitter: @zarrarkhuhro

Published in Dawn, March 19th, 2018

https://www.dawn.com/news/1396199

 

[ziaulislam]

A FATA spring is going on ........people of FATA suffered immensely in the last ten years and a generation has grown up seeing the destruction and violence caused by both Talib and fauj. Back in 2009, i saw faujis giving kicks to the behinds of Mahsud passengers in Tank district for no other reason that they were Mahsuds....they asked Mahsud passengers to come out of their vehicles, gave them a boot in their buttocks and then told them that they are now free to go (Military operations in South Waziristan were going on at that time and faujis were very agitated all over Pakhtunkhwa). I saw this vulgar and unprofessional behavior by faujis and predicted back then that this policy of humiliating tribals will have its repercussions and long lasting effects.

I have seen some tweets that why PTM is protesting against fauj? that they should be rather thankful to Pakistan army for 'liberating' them from Taliban. They would have been, if Taliban were some foreign invading forces. They are not because they know that these very same Taliban were nurtured and groomed by ISI on their soil for interference in Afghanistan. Naik Muhammad Wazir, Abdullah Mahsud, Baitullah Mahsud etc were sent to Afghanistan by ISI to assist Taliban against Ahmad Shah Masud in late 90s. This Talibanized the tribal belt and the whole thing blew back when Pakistan gave up on Afghan Taliban and decided to do military operations in Waziristan in 2004 when the local Taliban refused to gave up on their Arab guests......the same people who were actually guests of CIA and ISI in Afghan Jihad and were accommodated in Waziristan by the same ISI/Army. TTP came into being and locals saw the game of "divide and rule" by ISI to weaken the TTP. Broke away factions of TTP were backed by fauj and were seen drinking tea and shaking hands with army men. This sickened a whole lot of locals. They also saw "good Taliban" being hosted on their soil for Afghanistan. They realized that the actual problem is not some mindless talib, but the manipulators and gamers from GHQ who are playing with fire and are using them like pawns on chess board. Thats why the protests are not violent, but peaceful and within confines of laws of Pakistan......they want to be merged with mainstream Pakistan because they are not protected from army in FCR......they went into the hands of ANP-walas because there was total media blackout and no one else was tolerating their grievances against the holy cow army except ANP and PkMAP.

Some one is having fits over Manzoor Pashteen's statement that Pashtuns in Army are not from them. Just like they dont own a Pashtun in TTP, they also dont own a Pashtun in ISI/Army.

Lets see how Army tackles this problem. I hope they stop playing with fire by usage of Jihadi fanatics for their purposes. They should realize that in this day and age world is very unforgiving to jihadi militants. A mujahid for Kashmir Jihad can turn into a Talib and a Talib can turn into a Daesh lunatic. Focus should be on promotion of pen and books among Pashtuns, not misusing their warrior-streak for their agendas. By now they should have learnt a lesson that a religiously fanatic Pashtun is a double edged sword, dont play with it.

Facts.... the tribal leaders themselves got complacent because of tribal relation and culture of protecting own clansmen(inherently thus some terrorists) so much that it got out of control.....older maliks lost control and younger terroists like different mehsuds we saw took control(they were in their 20s!!)

With 1000s of tribal leaders and elders killed and 10,000 of Pakistani civilians ..army came to bail them out(THERE WAS NO ARMY IN FATA WHEN TTP/TALIBAN WERE KILLING TRIBAL PEOPLES), FC( MAJORLY PUSHTOONS) FOUGHT AND SCARIFICED their lifes and now some say "hum mein sey nahi" this is treasonous to pushtoon values...

Yes the army supported militamcy in 1980s but for sake of million of pushtoon refugees who were made refugess before we started this stuff..blame the afghan elite coummnist for sor revolution not pakistan for misery...balme the infighting among northern allaince not Pakistan for misery of 1990s

Finally, How can a responsible person or pushtoon say that they dont own their own tribesmen action (TTP)? Are you really a pushtoon?

You must be living in fools land if you think military operation would mean zero displacement ...

 

[ziaulislam]

So you are spurting TOTAL BS

 

[Winchester]

The Mehsud tribe was hand in glove with the TTP. Almost all of their senior leadership and most of their foot soldiers were Mehsud. We must remember that the TTP in SW at its peak had around 10-15 k fighters.

They are lucky its not the 70's anymore and the Army doesn't want to repeat another Operation Search Light hence the initial soft approach towards militancy.

Just remember the 2007-2013 period how many died in suicide attacks and from where these attacks were planned.

Thousands of Pakistanis killed, a nuclear powered state held hostage by a single bloody tribe.

On the other hand in places like Bajaur we saw brave tribemen standing upto the Talibs even when the state was lacking in its support.

 

[Kabira]

Yes he can, he is a Pushtun, should he use Muhajir card or Punjabi card??? He is a Pushtun and rising voice for the rights of Pushtun, leave him for a sec, according to your definition, anyone who talk of Pushtun's right is on payroll of Afghanista/India???
What will you call Muslims in Indian Army??? are there no Kashmiri in Indian Army? what is your stance about them?

Using pashtun card when TTP is made up of pashtuns is oxymoron and that to mostly mehsuds. Also he says pashtuns in army are not pashtuns. Giving certificate of pashtun on basis of their deeds doesn't make any sense. If TTP targetted pashtuns only then it would make sense. Solution for FATA problems is merger with KP and army on borders. I don't think many people are against it. For time being till afghanis go back some Pak pashtuns may continue to face problems from Nadra etc Because who know how many afghanis have gotten illegal CNIC. We will get better idea once final census results are revealed next month.

 

[Haris Mansoor]

Using pashtun card when TTP is made up of pashtuns is oxymoron and that to mostly mehsuds.

Do you mean, all Pashtun, specially mehsuds are Terrorists?

 

[Haris Mansoor]

Also he says pashtuns in army are not pashtuns. Giving certificate of pashtun on basis of their deeds doesn't make any sense.

He said, "wo onke hain, humare nahi hain" in answer to question about the different point of views (ZaraHatKey @ Dawn) without any elaboration, whether he referenced to their views or them.
That sentence doesn't mean they are not Pushtoon, it mean they are not on our side.

 

[Mian Babban]

Mohsin Dawar on landmines in Waziristan

 

[Kabira]

Do you mean, all Pashtun, specially mehsuds are Terrorists?

TTP doesn't kill pashtuns for being pashtuns, TTP it self is made up of pashtuns. Though I sympathise with FATA people who have been wrongfully targeted killed in Karachi because of ethnicity in the past.

Mohsin Dawar on landmines in Waziristan

Army is planting IED in kid toys? Looks like work of TTP to target kids.