[Pakistan’s security forces enjoy widespread public popularity and are often praised for restoring security to the northwest region, after years of terrorist attacks and the two-year occupation of the bucolic Swat Valley by local Taliban fanatics who beat, bullied and hanged people in public.]
By
Haq Nawaz Khan and Pamela Constable
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Activists
with the Pashtun Protection Movement protest the arrest of their
members and leaders in Karachi, Pakistan, in February.
(Rizwan Tabassum/AFP/Getty Images)
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PESHAWAR,
Pakistan — A deadly
confrontation between Pakistani army troops and ethnic Pashtun protesters in a
remote tribal region this weekend left at least three civilians dead, sparking
a nationwide furor and marking a dangerous turning point in the growing
conflict between the military and the country’s largest ethnic minority.
The incident Sunday came after months of
rising antagonism between the military and the Pashtun Protection Movement,
known as the PTM, which has been crusading since last year against alleged
abuses of civilians during the extended military campaign against Islamist militants.
The group’s leaders have been arrested at mass rallies and warned by the army
to back off their anti-military crusade.
Military officials and Pashtun nationalist
leaders, including a member of Parliament, gave sharply different accounts of
the clash near a military post in North Waziristan, a tribal area near the
Afghan border where the army has long battled armed extremists.
According to statements from the military
press department, a mob of angry protesters attacked the army post after
surrounding it and demanding the release of a man it described as a “suspected
terrorist facilitator.” It said the troops tried to use “maximum restraint” but
faced “direct firing” and responded with force, leaving three “attackers” dead.
Ten protesters and five soldiers were injured, the department said.
But Mohsin Dawar, a national legislator from
the PTM who participated in the protest and fled when the violence erupted,
said in an online video posted from an unknown location Monday that he had seen
12 people dead and scores injured. He said that the crowd had been noisy but
nonviolent and that the troops had fired “directly” into the rally. A second
legislator, Ali Wazir, was arrested at the scene.
“The people were peacefully protesting
against the torturing of their women by the security forces in a recent raid,”
Dawar said. The group had come in a convoy of vehicles and crossed a military
checkpoint. When he and Wazir arrived, Dawar said, the unarmed protesters began
“chanting emotional slogans,” and troops “started firing straight at the
protesters. . . . The military is lying.”
The conflicting accounts were difficult to
verify because the military has since cut telephone and Internet service in the
area and imposed a curfew in the tribal region’s central town.
Reports of Pakistani troops shooting unarmed
protesters drew condemnation from domestic opposition leaders. Amnesty
International, the London-based rights group, said in a statement that the
government should immediately order an investigation. If the army killed
protesters with live ammunition, Amnesty said, it would be a “serious violation
of international law.”
But government officials condemned the
protest leaders for inciting violence. The federal communication minister,
Murad Saeed, said in a speech to Parliament that the protest was peaceful until
an unnamed legislator arrived and urged people to attack the army post. He also
criticized Dawar by name, accusing him of collaborating with the Afghan
intelligence service.
Pakistan’s security forces enjoy widespread
public popularity and are often praised for restoring security to the northwest
region, after years of terrorist attacks and the two-year occupation of the
bucolic Swat Valley by local Taliban fanatics who beat, bullied and hanged
people in public.
Pashtuns constitute about 15 percent of Pakistanis
and dominate the volatile northwest, where some have violently challenged the
state and others have borne the brunt of military pressure. The PTM’s
charismatic young leader, Manzoor Pashteen, has awakened national Pashtun anger
with fiery speeches that denounce the army as the true source of terrorism.
More than any other ethnic minority, Pashtuns
possess significant numbers and potential political clout, both in the
mountainous tribal northwest and the teeming port city of Karachi 700 miles
south, making their challenge to the armed forces a serious threat.
In a tweet Monday, Pashteen said the army had
been using social media to “create the atmosphere” for its “cowardly attack” on
the protesters. He said his movement would continue its “nonviolent
constitutional struggle.”
The PTM has focused largely on individual
cases of alleged disappearances and targeted killings by security forces, as
well as other abuses. Dawar and Wazir, its national legislators, have raised
issues of military abuse repeatedly in Parliament. Mainstream Pashtun political
groups have kept a wary distance from the more radical PTM.
Constable reported from Kabul.
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