[After the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States, the tribal areas — particularly South Waziristan, where Mr. Mehsud was from, and North Waziristan — became a front line of the war on terrorism, as Al Qaeda and other groups took refuge there. Pashtuns in the tribal areas suffered both from militant attacks and from crackdowns by the army, and those who fled to other parts of Pakistan — like Karachi, in Mr. Mehsud’s case — say persecution followed them.]
By
Mehreen Zahra-Malik
 |
|
Demonstrators
in Islamabad, Pakistan, last week. The police shooting of Naqeebullah Mehsud, an
aspiring model,
was “the tipping point” for ethnic Pashtuns angry about years
of mistreatment
by the state, a Pakistani
newspaper editor said. Credit B.K. Bangash/Associated Press |
ISLAMABAD,
Pakistan — At first, the
killing last month of Naqeebullah Mehsud — an aspiring model shot by the police
in Karachi who claimed afterward that he was a Taliban militant — seemed merely
the latest in a long series of abuses carried out by the authorities against
ethnic Pashtuns in Pakistan.
But Mr. Mehsud’s case has proved different.
The 27-year-old’s killing, in what appears to have been a staged gun battle,
has prompted a protest movement led by young Pashtuns from the tribal areas in
the country’s northwest, where they have long been the targets of military
operations, internal displacement, ethnic stereotyping and abductions by the
security forces.
Last week, a social media-savvy group of
young Pashtuns organized a sit-in in Islamabad, the capital, promoting it with
the hashtag #PashtunLongMarch. As of Tuesday, the demonstration’s sixth day, at
least 5,000 Pashtuns from the tribal areas and other parts of the country had
joined, and members of all major Pakistani political parties had declared their
support.
“Certainly, this kind of organized struggle
for Pashtun rights, reforms and resources has not been seen in years and
years,” said Rahimullah Yusufzai, the Peshawar-based editor of The News, a
Pakistani newspaper. “The people of the tribal areas have had pent-up feelings
of resentment and anger at their treatment by the state for decades,” he added.
“Naqeebullah’s killing was just the tipping point.”
The Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan,
which border Afghanistan, are governed under regulations dating from the era of
British colonial rule. Pakistani courts and Parliament have no jurisdiction
there; instead, they are ruled by a “political agent” appointed by the central
government. Pashtuns and others living in the tribal areas have few rights and
can be exiled, their homes and businesses razed, and members arrested en masse
over minor transgressions.
After the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the
United States, the tribal areas — particularly South Waziristan, where Mr.
Mehsud was from, and North Waziristan — became a front line of the war on
terrorism, as Al Qaeda and other groups took refuge there. Pashtuns in the
tribal areas suffered both from militant attacks and from crackdowns by the
army, and those who fled to other parts of Pakistan — like Karachi, in Mr.
Mehsud’s case — say persecution followed them.
“Thousands of young Pashtun boys have
disappeared in the last decade and a half, picked up from their homes and
universities and streets in the name of curbing militancy,” said Farhad Ali,
the 24-year-old vice chairman of the Fata Youth Jirga, one of the organizations
leading the Islamabad protests. “We want all these young men to be produced
before a court of law and concrete evidence presented that they have committed
any crime.”
“This is one of our major demands: Stop this
stereotyping of Pashtuns as militants,” Mr. Ali said. “Stop imposing curfew in
our areas every time there is any untoward event in another part of the
country. Let us live in peace, please.”
The demonstrators, who have set up tents
outside the National Press Club in Islamabad, are also demanding the arrest of
Rao Anwar, a Karachi police commander who has been accused of killing Mr.
Mehsud and who is now on the run.
They also say they want the army to clear
land mines from the tribal areas, particularly the South Waziristan district.
Mr. Ali said that since 2009, more than 35 people had been killed by land mines
in South Waziristan.
“I wanted to do something with my life, I
wanted to become someone, but look at me,” said Islam Zeb, from South
Waziristan, who took part in the Islamabad protest. Mr. Zeb said he had been
blinded in a land mine blast that cost his brother his hand.
“If a soldier is wounded in a land mine
explosion, entire families are arrested, people disappear without a trace,” Mr.
Zeb added.
The Pakistani Army’s media wing denied that
the army had ever laid mines in the tribal areas, saying that militants had
done so. But it said that the army would send 10 demining teams to South
Waziristan immediately.
Other officials were also quick to assure the
demonstrators that they had been heard. Tariq Fazal Chaudhry, a government
minister who met with protest leaders, said the government fully supported
their demands. But he declined to say when they would be met.
Manan Ahmed Asif, a professor of history at
Columbia University, called the tribal areas “a geography outside the laws of
the nation,” where both militant groups and the army had found that “violence
could be meted out with little regard to its inhabitants.”
At least 70 percent of the region’s five
million people live in poverty, the literacy rate is just 10 percent for women
and 36 percent for men, and the infant mortality rate is the nation’s highest.
For years, Pakistani militants have used the lawless area to initiate assaults
against Pakistan’s government and against United States-led forces in
Afghanistan.
Since 2001, the Pakistani military has
launched 10 operations against militant strongholds in the region, most
recently in 2013 in North Waziristan. The offensives have displaced almost two
million people, according to figures from the United Nations refugee agency and
the Geneva-based Internal Displacement Monitoring Center, as homes, schools and
hospitals have been turned into hide-outs by militants and meager civic amenities
have been destroyed.
The Pakistani Army says it is now spending
millions to repatriate displaced people, rebuild infrastructure and earn
residents’ good will. But many residents still view the soldiers as occupiers,
and militants continue to pose a threat.
Parliament is considering a proposal to merge
the war-torn and neglected tribal areas with the adjoining province of
Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa. That would allow the people in the tribal areas to become
full citizens of Pakistan for the first time. But the plan has become a
divisive issue among those favoring reform, with some political parties
opposing a merger and calling for the tribal areas to become a separate
province instead.
Simbal Khan, a security analyst and
nonresident fellow at a think tank, the Center for International Strategic
Studies, in Islamabad, said she was skeptical that the protests would lead to
real change for Pashtuns.
“All this movement you see, it is
pre-election mobilization,” Ms. Khan said, referring to national elections
scheduled for July.
“It doesn’t portend to become a genuine
Pashtun uprising,” she added. “Political parties and other groups want to pick
up issues that resonate with the public, and this march provides them a
platform. This is just politicking.”
