 "A protest rally, on the day state authorities lifted the 17-day old curfew, from downtown city crossing Shaheed Gunj on way to Lal Chowk the nerve centre of Srinagar on Tuesday Photo: PTI")
After years of tension and exclusion, it seems Pakistan’s Pashtuns – the country’s second-largest ethnic group – have had enough. In January, a large crowd began protesting after 27-year-old shopkeeper Naqibullah Mehsud was shot dead by a police officer in Karachi.
The protesters marched from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province to Islamabad, where they staged a sit-in protest in front of the National Press Club. Although the sit-in has ended, protests have erupted elsewhere in Pakistan, and the movement has variously become known as the Pashtun Long March and the Pashtun Spring.
The protesters are demanding the arrest and punishment of Rao Anwar, the police officer who killed Naqibullah. They are further demanding an end to what they call state-imposed terrorism and militarism justified by War on Terror rhetoric. Other demands include the clearing of landmines in the tribal areas and the return of missing people who have been taken into custody by Pakistani security forces.
These demands are expressed in the language of human rights and have received the support of leading Pakistani politicians, including opposition leader Bilawal Bhutto.
Pakistani authorities claimed that Naqibullah was a member of the Pakistani Taliban. The claim was later dropped. According to Human Rights Watch, extrajudicial killings by Pakistani police are widespread, especially among marginalised groups. These include Pashtuns, more than 1m of whom are Afghan refugees.
Across the border
Pakistan’s prime minister, Shahid Khaqan Abbasi, has reportedly promised to use all available means to secure Rao Anwar’s arrest. He also vowed to build a college to be named after Naqibullah Mehsud, and clear South Waziristan of landmines.
The size and public visibility of the protest is unprecedented, but calls for Pashtun rights are not new. One protest leader, Manzoor Ahmad Pashteen from South Waziristan, is a co-founder of the Mehsud Tahafuz Movement (Mehsud Protection Movement). This movement has fought for the rights of the Pashtun Mehsud tribe in South Waziristan since 2013.
Around 25m Pashtuns live in Pakistan and around 11m in Afghanistan. In 1893, British India imposed the Durand Line, a 2,640km border between Afghanistan and today’s Pakistan. The line bolstered British territorial control on its side of the line, which divides historical Pashtun areas. Afghanistan has never officially acknowledged this border.
Whereas Pashtuns are the largest ethnic group in Afghanistan, they are economically and politically marginalised in Pakistan. The tribal area they inhabit there borders Afghanistan to the west, and it has become a major front in the War on Terror. Pakistan routinely associates Pashtuns and Afghan refugees with the Taliban and Islamist terrorism.
Us and them
The protests have come along just as Pakistan and Afghanistan’s relationship is deteriorating. In 2016, chafing at Afghanistan’s deepening relationship with India, Pakistan deported more than 500,000 Afghans. Conversely, when Afghan officials discuss the Pashtun protest, they often resort to nationalist language.
Ahmad Shah Katawazai, defence liaison at the Afghan embassy in the US, has called for Pakistani Pashtun areas to be incorporated wholesale into Afghanistan. As he writes in American newspaper The Hill:
