Pakistan Has Been Cracking Down on a Minority Rights Movement — Here’s What’s Happening
By: Sawera Khan
A young Afghan boy from the Pashtun tribe poses for a photograph near his home in Kabul, Afghanistan. Photo by US Air Force
Lexington — On May 1st, shots rang out in the city of Wanna, South Waziristan, Pakistan. The target, Arif Wazir, a leader in the Pashtun Tahafuz Movement (PTM), was hit by three bullets in a drive-by shooting and subsequently died from his injuries the following day in Islamabad, Pakistan.
The PTM is a non-violent movement for the rights of the Pashtun people, an ethnic group that make up 15% of the population of Pakistan and around 50% of the population of Afghanistan. Pashtuns have suffered injustice and discrimination in Pakistan since the independence of the country in 1947, from limits on teaching their language to children in schools to dealing with ethnic stereotypes and discrimination. Some are murdered simply because of their ethnicity.
In recent years, the War on Terror and Pakistan’s involvement in it have proved to be extremely devastating to Pashtuns, especially those living in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) of northwestern Pakistan. The Pakistani army has been accused of using the war on terror to displace Pashtuns in the region, carry out extrajudicial killings, leave landmines in FATA, carry out forced disappearances, and more. The rallies of the PTM are filled with cries of ‘Ye jo deshad gardi hai, iske peeche wade hai’ – “Behind these terrorists are uniforms”.
It is a widely accepted belief, in both the intelligence community and in the PTM movement, that the Pakistani army and intelligence services have ties to terrorist groups in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The PTM movement wants justice for the people that have been unjustly killed in the army’s fight against terrorism when the army is believed to have helped create these groups in the first place.
The PTM gained ground in early 2018 when a member of the Mehsud tribe of Pashtuns, Naqeebullah Mehsud, was killed in an encounter with Karachi police. The police claimed that Mehsud was associated with the Taliban, though he had no proven ties to any militant organization. Further investigations found that the police officer who was in charge of the operation, Rao Anwar, had killed 444 people in the seven years preceding the event, none of which resulted in the injury or death of any police officers.
Boy playing in Waziristan Photo by Qasim Mehmood
In response to the murder of Mehsud, the Mehsud Tahafuz Movement was started by Manzoor Pashteen, a 26-year old from South Waziristan, FATA. Pashteen’s family had been displaced multiple times during his childhood in the Pakistani army’s crackdown on terrorist groups in FATA.
While the movement was met with a blackout from the Pakistani media, its support exploded on social media. The rallies were broadcast on Facebook and its marches trended on Twitter. Pashteen’s movement gained national prominence as more and more people joined his rallies, prompting him to change the name to the Pashtun Tahafuz Movement. Families joined marches on Pakistan’s largest cities with pictures of their missing loved ones in hand, hoping that someone would recognize them.
The PTM has grown tremendously in the past 2 years but this has not come without consequences. The movement’s leaders have been arrested on numerous occasions and their rallies have been consistently interrupted.
Arif Wazir, the victim of the May 1st shooting, was one of founding members of the movement along with his cousin, Ali Wazir. In mid-March, along with other PTM leaders, they traveled from Waziristan to Kabul, Afghanistan to talk to the Pashtun population across the border and to attend President Ashraf Ghani’s inauguration. The leaders were initially prevented from leaving the country. However, an outcry on social media and intervention from Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan allowed them to cross the border at Torkham.
The PTM speakers drew a large crowd as they pleaded their case for justice in front of the Afghan population. In his talk, Arif Wazir expressed his grievances against the Pakistani government. He compared the treatment and welcome of the PTM in Afghanistan to the jailing and murder of Pashtuns in Pakistan. The leaders of the movement were also greeted with chants of “Lar ao bar yao Afghan” (Far and high, one Afghan). The slogan refers to the Pashtuns (Afghans) on both sides of the Durand Line, however it also has sentiments of a greater Afghanistan, one that encompasses all Pashtun areas including those in Pakistan. It is this sentiment that the Pakistani army and government find problematic.
Arif Wazir was arrested one month after his return from Afghanistan on hate-speech charges for spreading ‘anti-Pakistan’ speech. After spending 10 days in jail, he was finally released on bail. Just 4 days later, he was shot and killed. At the time of the writing of this article, no one has taken responsibility for the shooting. However, the PTM claims that Arif Wazir was killed by state-sponsored militants. These calls for justice have been echoed by Amnesty International South Asia and Human Rights Commission Pakistan
If Pakistan is to become a strong democratic nation, it needs to give equal rights to all of its people. Regardless of whether the PTM is preaching anti-Pakistan messages or not, until now they have been operating within the free speech guidelines of the Pakistani Constitution. In order to recover from the War on Terror, Pakistan must earn the trust of all of its citizens, of minorities and majorities, and should deliver justice to the families of those who were persecuted and killed.