The images of the fall of Kabul will forever represent one of America’s biggest diplomatic failures: Americans occupying the airport in Kabul, focusing on evacuating their own while terrified Afghans cling to the departing C-17 aircraft.Virtually every American news channel has been focused on the fate of hundreds of thousands of Afghans who risked their lives to support the U.S. ...

Benjamin Gilmour’s feature film Jirga remedies maladies of guilt with bravery and redemption.   It is fairly cathartic when a war movie takes us far beyond the horror of bullets, bomb and blood into the other sides of the war—emotional incumbrances on the individuals.  With such a characteristic aplomb, Jirga film unveils the depth of the heartache and guilt of an ...

Pashtuns’ Uprising: The Art of Resistances To put it simply and bluntly, James C. Scott, (an anthropologist and political critic on nations-state) discusses four forms of resistance, that’s how an individual constructs and re-constructs itself in dealing with dominant and subordinate “power-relation” in his excellent book “Domination and the Art of Resistance”. His four forms of resistance can be seen ...

After years of suppression and victimization, the long suffering Pashtuns—second largest ethnic population in Pakistan have finally found a voice and move against state sponsored terrorism and oppression. In January, thousands of ethnic Pashtuns from Tribal Region (FATA), accompanied by Pashtuns from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Baluchistan marched toward Islamabad, after the killing of Naqib Mahsud, an inspiring model from South ...

LAHORE, Pakistan — On Jan. 13, the police in Karachi, Pakistan, claimedto have killed four militants suspected of having links to the Islamic State. Rao Anwar, the officer leading the operation, said that the men had opened fire on the police and were killed in the gunfight. Pictures of the dead circulated on social media and were broadcast on Pakistani television networks. Family ...

The struggle against violence that we confront in the post 9/11 world cannot be effectively and expediently won if we do not shatter the clout of toxic masculinity Very few people have written on the Pashtun long march. The marchers had not only gathered in Islamabad against post-9/11 politics and the security regime in the country but also to reject ...

Last month, the grievances of millions of ethnic Pashtuns echoed in Pakistan’s capital as thousands participated in a 10-day sit-in to demand rights and an end to unlawful killings, impunity, harassment, racial profiling, and landmines. The protest has become a mass mobilization for what its young leaders say is an attempt to change security policies that have turned their homeland in the northwestern Federally ...

MANZOOR AHMAD PASHTEEN: Our journey began in pitch darkness. I came of age at a time when my family and our entire community, the Mehsud (locally called Maseed) tribe, was forced to leave our South Waziristan homeland during a massive military offensive in 2009. Everyone I know among the estimated half a million Mehsuds has lost at least one loved ...

A heart that cries for Kashmir, will cry for Burhan Wani but not for Naqeeb or Mashaal. If the British drawn borders could be challenged by the Bangladesh, why not the Pashtuns in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, FATA, and Baluchistan. Pashtuns, when asked in urban cities of Pakistan reply raises eyebrows. So you are from FATA? Baluchistan? KPK? First and foremost where ...

It has been a week that thousands of Pashtuns man, women, youth have gathered outside the press club in Islamabad highlighting human rights violations against their community. The march began with demand ‘justice for Naqibullah’ A young Pashtun shopkeeper killed in a fake police encounter on January 13 in the financial heart of Pakistan, Karachi and claimed that he was ...