Peace Talks: Who speaks for the Pakistani Pakhtuns?

Crit­i­ciz­ing the on-going peace talks with Tehreek-i-Tal­iban Pak­istan (TTP), leader of the oppo­si­tion in the Upper House Sen­a­tor Aitzaz Ahsan right­ly point­ed out last Tues­day that the real stake­hold­ers are not a part of the process. The vet­er­an politi­cian also demand­ed that rep­re­sen­ta­tives of women, shia and minori­ties should also be includ­ed in the gov­ern­ment nego­ti­a­tion com­mit­tee.

Build­ing on the con­cerns expressed by the Sen­a­tor, I won­der if the peo­ple of Fed­er­al­ly Admin­is­tered Trib­al Areas (FATA) and Khy­ber Pakhtunkhwa province, who have been affect­ed the most by the erst­while ‘Afghan Jihad’ and the cur­rent ‘War on Ter­ror’, have a mean­ing­ful say in the so-called peace talks with the Tal­iban. Accord­ing to data com­piled by the South Asia Ter­ror­ism Por­tal, near­ly fifty thou­sands have been killed in ter­ror­ist vio­lence across the coun­try from 2005–2014. Out of these, 31,300 casu­al­ties have occurred only in FATA and KPK. This accounts for 63% of the total fatal­i­ties, as against only 3% (1602) in Pun­jab dur­ing the same peri­od. It is worth men­tion­ing that the fig­ure of 31,300 does not include pre-2009 data for FATA. In addi­tion, the socio-cul­tur­al fab­ric of the Pakhtun soci­ety has been destroyed. More than 700 schools in Khy­ber Pakhtunkhwa province have been either demol­ished or dam­aged since 2007. More than 600 trib­al elders have been killed, leav­ing behind a huge social void that is being filled by the mil­i­tants. Besides, Pakhtun singers, artists and actors have either been killed or forced to flee the coun­try. Shias and non- Mus­lim minori­ties who had been liv­ing peace­ful­ly in the Pakhtun areas for gen­er­a­tions have been per­se­cut­ed. The unique­ly plu­ral­is­tic out­look of Pakhtun soci­ety has been demol­ished.
On one hand, these fig­ures are a shock­ing reminder of how Pakhtuns, after being used as fod­der in a re-gion­al geo-strate­gic rival­ry, were left to fend for them­selves in try­ing to man­age the ugly out­comes of an over­ly-ambi­tious Afghan pol­i­cy. On the oth­er hand, these fig­ures are also a sharp riposte to those who equate Pakhtuns with the Tal­iban. One of the many ironies con­fronting Pash­tuns is that, despite being the main vic­tims of ter­ror­ism, their per­spec­tive is con­spic­u­ous­ly miss­ing in the nation­al and inter­na­tion­al dis­course about ter­ror­ism. Many of the so-called Af-Pak region experts are out of touch with the com­plex socio-cul­tur­al dynam­ics of Pakhtun soci­ety and, there­fore, have fos­tered a stereo­typ­i­cal under­stand­ing of the Pakhun soci­ety. For instance, there are some dis­tin­guished schol­ars and politi­cians who would lead one to believe that Tal­iban rep­re­sent a trib­al Pakhtun resis­tance move­ment. There are still oth­ers who, per­ceiv­ing sec­u­lar Pash­tun nation­al­ism to be breath­ing its last, argue that Pash­tun Islamists are grad­u­al­ly absorb­ing Pash­tun eth­nic griev­ances and are becom­ing the torch-bear­ers of Pash­tun nation­al­ism. Final­ly, there are those who pre­pos­ter­ous­ly trace the rad­i­cal­iza­tion of Pash­tun soci­ety to what they per­ceive as the inher­ent­ly “vio­lence-prone” nature of Pash­tun cul­ture.

In real­i­ty, reli­gion has nev­er had much polit­i­cal sig­nif­i­cance in the Pash­tun soci­ety, though it has had some social rel­e­vance. In con­trast, eth­nic­i­ty, trib­al­ism and Pakhtun­wali have his­tor­i­cal­ly played a more pro­mi-nent role in shap­ing the Pakhtun polit­i­cal dis­course. This par­tial­ly explains why the free­dom strug­gle for Pak­istan with its heavy Islam­ic over­tones could not sig­nif­i­cant­ly fas­ci­nate the Pakhtuns. Sim­i­lar­ly in the post-colo­nial Pak­istan, the Pakhtuns, con­cerned about their dis­tinct cul­tur­al iden­ti­ty, expressed their un-ease with the over-arch­ing Islam­ic nation­al­ism of the State and strived for achiev­ing cul­tur­al recog­ni­tion in a more inclu­sive nation­al nar­ra­tive. Things began to dete­ri­o­rate when the State began mak­ing con­cert­ed efforts to ‘politi­cize’ reli­gious mil­i­tan­cy and exploit Pakhtun­wali for achiev­ing its per­ceived strate­gic inter-ests. The sub­se­quent tale of the Afghan Jihad and ‘Strate­gic Depth’ pol­i­cy is too well-known to mer­it rep­e­ti­tion. Not sur­pris­ing­ly, state patron­age of a mil­i­tant dis­course in the Pakhtun land con­tin­ued even after the chick­ens start­ed com­ing home to roost.
Com­ing back to the on-going peace talks, I can­not agree more with Aitzaz Ahsan when he com­ment­ed that ‘Tal­iban are nego­ti­at­ing with the Tal­iban’. One real­ly won­ders if the nego­tia­tors are even think­ing about con­sid­er­ing the Pakhtun per­spec­tive. Crit­ics may ask if Pakhtuns are a polit­i­cal­ly homoge­nous group. The answer is, of course not. Broad­ly speak­ing, they are divid­ed between the left-lean­ing nation­al­ists and the right-wing Islamists. How­ev­er, Pakhtun youth is frus­trat­ed by the fact that while the plu­ral­ist and pro­gres­sive voic­es have been sti­fled, the rad­i­cal voic­es have always found more willing/sympathetic ears in the media, acad­e­mia and pol­i­cy-mak­ing cir­cles. Con­se­quent­ly, a spu­ri­ous per­cep­tion has been cre­at­ed that the Pakhtuns, espe­cial­ly the tribes­men, crave for Sharia rule and sup­port Tal­iban.
While rep­re­sen­ta­tives from the Pak­istan Tehreek-i-Insaaf, Jamaat-e-Isla­mi and Jami­at-e-Ule­ma Islam (S) are play­ing lead­ing role in the dis­course on peace talks, the Awa­mi Nation­al Par­ty (ANP)— which alone has lost more than 800 work­ers in the fight against the Tal­iban — is not a part of the process. Sim­i­lar­ly, the view­point of Pakhtun civ­il soci­ety and intel­li­gentsia has not even sur­faced in the increas­ing­ly reli­gious­ly charged debate about dia­logue with Tal­iban. Those won­der­ing about the per­spec­tive of Pakhtun civ­il soci­ety need only look at the Peshawar Dec­la­ra­tion (2009). Inter­est­ing­ly enough, the peo­ple of the war affect­ed areas have a quite dif­fer­ent take on the issue of mil­i­tan­cy than those liv­ing in the main­land Pak­istan. The peo­ple of the con­flict zone are fed up with the Taliban’s bar­bar­ian­ism but they also dis­trust the mil­i­tary. Most of them believe that the army and the Tal­iban are not ene­mies but friends. They can­not under­stand why the mil­i­tary failed in either killing or cap­tur­ing the core lead­er­ship of the mil­i­tants in all the pre­vi­ous mil­i­tary oper­a­tions in FATA? Be it peace deal or mil­i­tary oper­a­tion, the tribes­men find them­selves trapped in a lose-lose sit­u­a­tion. Par­tic­u­lar­ly per­turb­ing is the case of the anti-Tal­iban trib­al Lashkars (mili­tia) that have been fac­ing the wrath of Tal­iban for ‘sid­ing’ with the gov­ern­ment? One of the recur­rent fea­tures of the pre­vi­ous deals was that such anti-Tal­iban peo­ple were left at the mer­cy of their adver­saries in the wake of each deal. Will these peace nego­ti­a­tions be any dif­fer­ent? A big ‘No’, at least from the Taliban’s stand­point whose blood­thirsty intent was clear­ly revealed by their recent killing of the Chief of Mashokhel Qua­mi Lashkar, Pir Israr Shah, along with his 7 rel­a­tives.

For peace talks to suc­ceed, the gov­ern­ment must take on board the Pakhtun civ­il soci­ety and trib­al elders. The self-delu­sion­al dis­tinc­tion between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ Tal­iban must be abol­ished. Besides, ces­sa­tion of hos­til­i­ties against anti-Tal­iban Lashkars, Shias and oth­er minori­ties should be made a fun­da­men­tal part of any would-be agree­ment. More­over, Tal­iban owe an apol­o­gy to the peo­ple of Pak­istan in gen­er­al and to those of FATA and Khy­ber Pakhtunkhwa in par­tic­u­lar. For ensur­ing social har­mo­ny in the trib­al areas, Tal­iban, fol­low­ing the Pakhtun­wali tra­di­tion of NANAWATE, should seek for­give­ness of the fam­i­lies of all the trib­al peo­ple they have ruth­less­ly killed. Final­ly, the rul­ing elites need to take seri­ous prac­ti­cal steps to demon­strate that they care equal­ly for the peo­ple of Khy­ber Pakhtunkhwa and FATA. Oth­er­wise, the cur­rent apa­thy is like­ly to have seri­ous impli­ca­tions for the already-frag­ile nation­al uni­ty.