Pashtun human rights activist Manzoor Pashteen took a direct jibe at the Pakistani establishment for being responsible for the militancy the country is currently facing. He accused the military and the state of creating numerous terrorist fronts “in the name of jihad”.
Pashteen pointed a finger at the establishment during an address to the Karachi Bar Association. He said Pakhtuns did not create and raise militants, and at least an investigation should be done into who created and empowered them.
“Everyone knows who fed, trained and used militants. Neither have we created as many militant organisations as there are in the Pakhtun belt nor have we given them weapons and funds,” he said.
“At least an investigation should be done into who has created them and empowered these militant groups. If you prove even one rupee worth of corruption against me, I am ready to be hanged,” he added in a dramatic flourish.
Pashteen, who is the chairman of the Pashtun Tahafuz Movement (PTM), belongs to South Waziristan. The social movement is based in Khyber Pakhtukhwa and Balochistan provinces, which have recently witnessed a rise in militant attacks due to the re-emergence of the Pakistani Taliban or the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP).
On Friday, heavily armed TTP militants carried out an audacious attack on the office of the Karachi police chief. They stormed the five-storied building in the country’s most populous city, which was followed by an hours-long operation between police commandos and paramilitary soldiers. Three TTP militants were killed and four others, including three security personnel, also died in the attack.
In another major attack, on January 30, a Taliban suicide bomber blew himself up during afternoon prayers at a mosque in Peshawar, killing 101 people and injuring over 200. The suicide bomber disguised himself in a police uniform to sneak into the high-security zone and was riding a motorcycle with a helmet and mask on, a police official said.
The rise of the TTP is attributed to the end of a ceasefire between the militant outfit — which is believed to be close to al-Qaeda — and security forces in November last year.
The Pashtun community has time and again accused the Pakistani government of human rights violations against them and for displaying a discriminatory nature towards them. This is because the Pakistani establishment paints the community as being Taliban sympathisers.
There has been a conflicting opinion that it is because of the Pashtuns that militancy has flourished in Pakistan over a period of time. Pashteen told lawyers of the KBA that Pashtuns should not be blamed as the state is responsible for bringing about the militancy problem that Pakistan is currently facing.
Who is Manzoor Pashteen, what is the PTM?
Founded in 2014 at Dera Ismail Khan, the PTM began as a movement to remove landmines from Waziristan, which has been a war zone since the 1980s. The social movement is against war and blames the Pakistani government as well as Islamist terrorism for the destruction caused in this particular region.
Human rights activists have pointed out that the war on terrorism has served as a pretense to persecute Pashtuns due to their dominance of the Taliban, which is why they are overall branded as Islamists or militants.
The PTM rose to prominence when a 27-year-old Pashtun shopkeeper, accused of militant connections, was killed in a fake encounter by police in Karachi in January 2018. It is then that Pashteen and his friends started a protest march from Dera Ismail Khan. Many people joined the march on the way and, on reaching Islamabad in February, they organised a sit-in called ‘All Pashtun National Jirga’.
The movement, originally called Mahsud Tahafuz Movement, was founded by eight students. Its main function now is to demand an end to extra judicial killings of Pashtuns.
The group has found support from Afghanistan with former president Ashraf Ghani speaking out in favour of Pashteen’s work as a rights activist. This has led the Pakistani military to accuse the activist and the PTM of being funded by Indian and Afghan intelligence agencies. Pashteen, however, has rejected accusations of being a foreign agent controlled by India’s Research and Analysis Wing.
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