Lahore: “We are asking state institutions to act in accordance the country’s constitution. Is that an anti-state demand?” Manzoor Pashteen, a leader of the Pashtun Tahafuz Movement, asked a gathering of students from various colleges and universities of the city on Tuesday. “If that is so, then are the constitution and the laws drafted under it also anti-state?” he followed ...

When the military operation was launched in Waziristan in 2003, its implications started telling its side effects. In 2005, the situation was if you had spoken against the Taliban your dead body would have been thrown away. And that too, beheaded. Your hands cut off. Your face defaced. Your ears severed. If someone used to dare speak against the military ...

Protests in Pakistan’s tribal areas signal the rise of a younger, more educated, and technologically savvy generation. The protests, mostly by youth, in northwestern Pakistan since early February are a clear and visible indication of decades-old resentment among locals against a system based on repression, injustice, suppression of free speech, and widespread corruption in the country’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas ...

SWAT-PASHTUNKHWA: Hundreds of Pashtun masses in Swat district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa staged a big demonstration in Khwazakhela against the security forces of Pakistan, calling on Islamabad to quit its military installations and to put an end to the ongoing brutalities, inhuman treatment with residents on military check-posts and also to the human rights violations by the security forces in the ...

Angry Pashtun tribesmen chanting anti-Taliban and freedom slogans torched the office of the Taliban in Pakistan’s northwestern province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, in response to the Jan. 3 police killing of Naqeebullah Mehsud, an inspiring Pashtun model, during a raid of what police said was a “terrorist hideout.” Mehsud’s death sparked a protest by young Pashtuns from throughout the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province and tribal areas along the Durand Line, ...

I recently visited Miramshah and my village, Darpa Khel — after many years, owing to militancy followed by Operation Zarb-i-Azb. Much has been written on the miseries of the tribesmen during militancy and displacement. Here, I examine what their lives look like after returning home. December in this part is dry and dusty. Trees denuded and grass lifeless; it paints ...

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 ...

KABUL: Political Adviser to President and CEO of High Peace Council, Dr. Akram Khpalwak has termed the ongoing Pashtun public uprising in Pakistan of high value for long-lasting peace in the region. Commenting on Pashtun Long March in Islamabad and peaceful protests on the other side of the so-called Durand Line, Khpalwak said people have to gear up their individual ...

PESHAWAR: Ajmal Khattak, the veteran Pashtun politician, poet, writer and former president of Awami National Party, died in penury on 7 February 2010, after six decades of unremitting political struggle in Pakistan for the political and economic autonomy of the Pashtun people, sliced off by the British-Indian Empire in 1893 from Afghanistan. Ajmal Khattak was politically active during his student ...

The Chief of Awami National Party, Asfandyar Wali Khan and Pakhtunkhwa Milli Awami Party head, Mahmood Khan Achakzai openly announced their parties support to the Pashtun long march in Islamabad. Following the extra judicial killing of Naqeeb Mahsood on 13 January in a fake police encounter in Karachi—capital city of Sindh province, Pashtuns—across the board started peaceful protests across the ...