A young tribesman is leading protests against killings and abductions by Pakistans army.
Manzoor Pashteen has accused the Pakistani military of promoting militancy
Tens of thousands of Pashtuns are demanding an end to extrajudicial killings and abductions they blame on the Pakistani state - and one young man has become their spokesman. Who is Manzoor Pashteen?What looked like routine protests in Islamabad in January mushroomed into a wider movement that now threatens to upset a precarious balance ahead of general elections.Manzoor Pashteen, a charismatic, bearded tribesman in his early 30s, is the figurehead for these rare protests by people who say they were brutalised in decades of war in the border areas with Afghanistan.NGOs say thousands of people have been reported missing in border areas such as Balochistan and the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (Fata).Pakistan country profile
The Pashtun Tahaffuz Movement (PTM, Pashtun Protection Movement) is expressly peaceful, and its demands are within the limits of Pakistani law. But the pressure it has built on the countrys rulers is telling.Even army chief Qamar Javed Bajwa has become involved, calling the protests "engineered" - implying they are following a hostile foreign agenda - although they appear spontaneous.Theres been an almost total media blackout of PTM rallies, which have been attracting tens of thousands of supporters. Contrast that with the air time given on Pakistans increasingly controlled media to small bands of anti-PTM protesters. They didnt get much traction with the public and are suspected of links with the military.
Image copyright
Getty Images
Image caption
Pashteen comes from Pakistans mountainous South Waziristan region
Manzoor Pashteen speaks Pashto in his native Mehsud dialect. But unlike other young tribesmen he is educated, and can speak Urdu and English with the same ease.He says he never realised he would get such support but hes clear about what needs to change. "People were oppressed. Their life had become intolerable. Curfews and insults by the army soldiers had stripped them of their pride," he told BBC Pashtos Khudai Noor Nasr in March."They needed some sign of hope, a voice that could articulate their feelings."Since February, he and his supporters have travelled across the Pashtun heartlands, from Quetta to Peshawar, attracting huge crowds and exposing never-ending stories of misery, death and destruction.
Image copyright
AFP
Image caption
Tens of thousands of Pashtuns have taken part in protests
Many see the PTM as breaking new ground in the political landscape of a country where proxy wars have disenfranchised large populations not only in tribal areas and the north-west, but also in Balochistan, southern Sindh province and the northern areas along the border with China. Mr Pashteen has said his movement wont participate in electoral politics. But even then, one expects them to have a strong off-stage voice when elections are held this summer.Well-known lawyer and columnist Babar Sattar has written that Pashteens social consciousness may be rooted in his Pashtun identity, "but the questions he is asking are relevant for all of us".The debate triggered by the PTM is about the "coercive relationship between a citizen and the Pakistani state; (about) the character, priorities and actions of our state that are undermining... their rights to life, liberty, dignity and equality".Babar Sattar shared his article on Twitter, saying it had been turned down by The News newspaper amid a continuing official crackdown on covering the PTM. But the PTM has been successful in getting its message over through social media, with the help of a growing number of activists mostly from areas seen as marginalised.In fact, Mr Pashteen says social media came to his rescue when he was arrested after protests against the army and its intelligence service, the ISI, last year."Our house had been surrounded by the army who picked up my father and uncle and detained them at a nearby checkpost," he said in the BBC Pashto interview. "When I went there, they arrested me and put me in a room. They said protests against the army were detrimental to their morale."Soon, news of his arrest reached friends who spread the word, prompting protests in his support."So they [the military] took me out and brought me to a brigadier who said we are releasing you, but tell your friends to stop their campaign." Manzoor Pashteen was born and raised in South Waziristan, which was the earliest of the Pakistan Taliban sanctuaries in the post-9/11 period.Like many other tribal districts and parts of the north-west, the local populations freedoms and livelihoods were held hostage - either by the army or the militants, who were seen as the militarys proxies despite all the denials.
Image copyright
AFP
Image caption
Pashtun protesters say the military is behind large numbers of disappearances
The son of a school teacher, he was lucky to have easy access to education. That continued after his family left the conflict in South Waziristan in 2010.Mr Pashteen and his contemporaries were still boys when their families had to move from their villages and take refuge in faraway towns and cities like Bannu, Peshawar, Lahore and Karachi.Their political awareness was shaped by exposure to life outside Waziristan, and their experience of disempowerment when they moved back to their villages. As one former senator, Afrasiab Khatak, puts it, "the lava accumulated through all these troubles and tribulations was waiting to erupt. It was only a matter of time."That time came when a young man called Naqeebullah from South Waziristan was killed by police in an alleged "staged encounter" in Karachi on 13 January. Police said he was a militant.
Image copyright
BBC Urdu
Image caption
Naqeebullah was an aspiring model
This provided the spark for the demo outside the Islamabad press club in January.Nobody was much bothered at first, but eyebrows were raised when the numbers at the gathering began to swell. Someone brought in a shipping container on which they set up a stage with a sound system and started to make speeches, some of them extremely critical of the security establishment.After 10 days it had evolved into a wider movement for the "liberation of Pashtun people from the tyranny" of Pakistans security establishment.Pashteens rallies have turned into what one participant described as "weekend fairs at which men and women, old and young, carry portraits of their fathers, brothers, husbands or sons who were picked up by authorities and have not been seen since".People come from far and wide to the rallies, many with pictures of the missing in search of information.
Image copyright
AFP
"I only knew the conditions in my own area. But when we heard stories from other areas - from Swat, or Bajaur - we realised that it was the same all over," Manzoor Pashteen says.He relates one incident that led to protests two weeks before his arrest last October. A bomb had killed a soldier in the village of Shamkai in South Waziristan."The army clamped a curfew in the area, and ordered all people to come out of their homes," he says. "They made the women sit to one side and tortured the men one by one in front them. One epileptic boy died during torture while his mother and father were watching."Why would the army do such a thing? The BBC put these claims to the military, but received no response. Arent Pashtuns partly to blame for allowing their young people to join militant organisations?Manzoor Pashteen doesnt think so: "The Pakistani state promoted militancy. It used Islam as a motivating factor," he says.And he adds: "These are not my words. These are the words of Colonel Imam [a former ISI operative] who said he trained 95,000 youth; or the words of then army chief Pervez Musharraf, who said we trained them, we brought mujahideen from all over the world, and they were our heroes."When it suits them to bomb us, theyll bomb us; when it suits them to send us rations, theyll send us rations; when it suits them to set our people to kill others, they will train them and facilitate them. "Waziristan is their captured territory. It took us tribals 30 years to find out that we fought the Russians not for Islam, but for American money."
Related TopicsPakistan
