Talibanisation in the light of Pashtoonwali

Hazrat Wali Kakar

Tal­iban­i­sa­tion is a total­ly alien con­cept to the doc­trine of Pash­toon­wali; the only thing that forms a link between the two is the pash­too word Tal­iban, the plur­al of the Ara­bic word Tal­ib, mean­ing “the stu­dent of a madras­sa”. The word Tal­iban is often mis­un­der­stood as being syn­ony­mous with Pash­toon, which not only does a dis­ser­vice to the peace­ful and plu­ral­is­tic cul­ture of the Pash­toon, but also maligns the very fun­da­men­tals of Pash­toon cul­ture.

Tal­iban­i­sa­tion, as a process and mind­set, was engi­neered by the estab­lish­ment of Pak­istan, spon­sored by the U.S and assist­ed by Sau­di Ara­bia and oth­er Mus­lim coun­tries to counter com­mu­nism in Afghanistan. As part of the glob­al agen­da to con­tain com­mu­nism, the waste of the Mus­lim world — crim­i­nals, killers and pris­on­ers — were gath­ered, nur­tured and trained on the ter­ri­to­ry of Pash­toons. Unfor­tu­nate­ly they were giv­en a free hand in the area, to inter­act with peo­ple and spread their views.

In this con­text it is very impor­tant to under­stand what Pash­toon­wali is. It is an un-writ­ten code and an inte­gral com­po­nent of the Pash­toons’ social fab­ric. It exer­cis­es great influ­ence on their actions and has been held sacro­sanct by them, gen­er­a­tion after gen­er­a­tion. It impos­es upon the mem­bers of Pash­toon soci­ety four chief oblig­a­tions. Nanawatey (repen­tance) is the first oblig­a­tion, which is to repent over past hos­til­i­ty or inim­i­cal atti­tudes and grant asy­lum. Tee­ga (truce) is the sec­ond oblig­a­tion, where­by a truce is declared by a Jir­ga to avoid blood­shed between two rival fac­tions. Badal is the oblig­a­tion to seek revenge by retal­i­a­tion and fourth­ly, Mel­mas­tiya (open-heart­ed hos­pi­tal­i­ty), which is one of the most noble fea­tures of Pash­toon char­ac­ter. In a broad sense, hos­pi­tal­i­ty, chival­ry, hon­esty, upright­ness, patri­o­tism, love and devo­tion for the coun­try are the essen­tial fea­tures of Pash­toon­wali.

Pash­toons and Arabs inter­act­ed for the first time in the 1970s when the Arabs first set­tled in the region of FATA. A dis­tort­ed ver­sion of ‘jihad’ was then intro­duced to the local peo­ple, with the gen­eros­i­ty and open­ness of the Pash­toon being exploit­ed to groom foot sol­diers for coun­ter­ing com­mu­nism in Afghanistan. This process had a neg­a­tive influ­ence on the age-old Pash­toon code of con­duct, which was pri­mar­i­ly based on human­i­ty, self- esteem, dig­ni­ty, respect and love.

It is thus very impor­tant not to view the Tal­iban move­ment as a ‘Pash­toon nation­al­ist move­ment’; it bor­rows much more from Arabs than from Pash­toon his­to­ry. The same Tal­iban also delib­er­ate­ly tar­get many Pash­toon tra­di­tions, such as trib­al coun­cils and cul­tur­al folk. Dur­ing Tal­iban con­trol over the region, most Pash­toon prac­tices were banned and even coer­cive mea­sures were used to curb Pash­toon­wali. Accord­ing to a recent inde­pen­dent sur­vey, there are 25,000 TTP (Tehrik e Tal­iban Pak­istan) mil­i­tants in FATA, and among them, Pun­jabis are at the top with 9,565, fol­lowed by Pash­toons, Uzbeks and Arabs. Unfor­tu­nate­ly the prob­lem of extrem­ism in Pun­jab is viewed as a com­plete­ly sep­a­rate prob­lem, and the very strong pres­ence and role of Pun­jabis in FATA is often denied.

His­to­ry speaks vol­umes about the Pash­toons as nation­al­ist, sec­u­lar, pro­gres­sive and demo­c­ra­t­ic in nature. Pri­or to 1979, most bat­tles were fought on nation­al­ist rather than reli­gious grounds. The leg­ends Sha­habud­din Ghori, Ibrahim Lod­hi, the great Sher Shah who laid the foun­da­tion of sec­u­lar­ism and reli­gious tol­er­ance in the sub-con­ti­nent, the rev­erend Ahmed Shah Abdali and the Anglo-Afghan wars tes­ti­fy to Pash­toon nation­al­ism. This of course does not mean that Pash­toons are non- reli­gious, rather they believe in coex­is­tence and respect for oth­er reli­gions.

Nation­al­ist move­ments are char­ac­ter­ized by their desire to pro­mote and pro­tect nation­al lan­guage, cul­ture and iden­ti­ty through polit­i­cal expres­sion, and to con­trol their affairs and man­age their eco­nom­ic resources with­out out­side inter­fer­ence. They may strive for auton­o­my with­in a state in order to pro­tect their iden­ti­ty, or in cer­tain cas­es, strive for an inde­pen­dent state of their own. The Tal­iban meet none of these cri­te­ria in Afghanistan or Pak­istan, and there­fore can­not be con­sid­ered a Pash­toon nation­al­ist move­ment.

They have con­scious­ly, as a mat­ter of pol­i­cy, tar­get­ed var­i­ous cul­tur­al traits of Pash­toons and are not con­cerned about the lan­guage; they pro­mote most­ly Ara­bic and inter­est­ing­ly, some­times Urdu. They do not con­cern them­selves with the eco­nom­ic resources of the area or with the polit­i­cal or admin­is­tra­tive man­i­fes­ta­tion of Pash­toon iden­ti­ty. They have killed a large num­ber of tra­di­tion­al Pash­toon elders in FATA and banned the Jir­ga as a means of dis­pute set­tle­ment in areas under their influ­ence. In short, they have sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly been elim­i­nat­ing the Pash­toon way of life.

Unde­ni­ably Pash­toons are cur­rent­ly in a mess, pass­ing through a very crit­i­cal and cru­el phase of their his­to­ry. And this is evi­denced by the num­ber of Pah­toons that are killed on a dai­ly basis in FATA, Quet­ta and Karachi. How­ev­er, root­ing out the men­ace of Tal­iban­i­sa­tion is a Her­culean task that requires unshak­able col­lec­tive com­mit­ment. It is now the prime respon­si­bil­i­ty of edu­cat­ed Pash­toons to guide their brethren. The nation­al­ists that have been sit­ting idle out of fear need to come out of hiber­na­tion and work for this cause — under these cir­cum­stances the role of elders, nation­al­ist polit­i­cal par­ties, writ­ers, poets and activists can­not be under­es­ti­mat­ed.

(The Writer is a mem­ber of youth par­lia­ment of Pak­istan and hails from Zhob, South­ern Pakhtunkhwa (Baluchistan).He is a young polit­i­cal activist with the Pakhtunkhwa Stu­dent Orga­ni­za­tion (PSO) Lahore chap­ter)

Pub­lished in The Laal­tain — April 2013 Issue