When Azam Khan Hoti was expelled from the Awami National Party (ANP) in April this year, he had vowed to expose the party leadership. It took him six months to fulfil his promise. He has alleged that the main party leadership, Asfandyar Wali Khan and Senator Afrasiab Khattak have been involved in short-selling “Pashtun blood” to the US through a bargain that eventually led the party duo to compromise on the party’s original agenda dating back to Bacha Khan that ordained not only a non-violent resistance against the nondemocratic and anti-secular forces but to secure a paramount place for the Pashtuns through moral cleansing. Asfandyar and Afrasiab are alleged to have received $ 35 million from the US. What did the US get in return for this hefty amount is something that Azam Hoti is unable to explain. This he wants the Pakistan government to investigate. The ANP leadership is reading this act of Hoti as revenge to malign the party that had turned him out due to his undisciplined stance against the party leadership. ANP’s crushing defeat in the May 2013 general elections triggered Hoti’s anger against Asfandyar Wali, who he demanded should not only resign as chief of the party but keep himself away from the party to save it from further deterioration. Such a serious attackon the party leader was swiftly checkmated and Hoti was expelled. The recent spate of anger, whereby Asfandyar and Afrasiab are being labelled as US pawns is being read more as a family feud that had not gone away even over decades when Azam Hoti’s sister Begum Nasim Wali Khan, instead of being rewarded for her tireless efforts to keep the party alive in the shape of the National Democratic Party after Khan Abdul Wali Khan’s National Awami Party (NAP) was banned in Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s reign, was sidelined once the party rebounded in the political arena after 1977. Such family/clan rivalries are not unheard of in Pashtun society and their revival at any given moment is not a surprise for those who understand that culture and the specific history of this family. However, the allegation that brings the US at the centre of the entire issue makes the whole story rather controversial and something that would die out without helping Hoti earn any brownie points.
It is no secret that the ANP’s performance during its tenure in 2008-13 had been poor and it did little in spite of being in power in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) to alleviate the province’s woes from the abyss of ignorance it had fallen into due to terrorism, of which the party itself was the foremost victimism. The ANP government, led ironically by Azam Hoti’s son Ameer Hoti, also stands accused of corruption. The latest development is that the younger Hoti has come out against his father’s allegation-mongering, accusing him of turning a “personal” matter into a political feud. This has served to put paid to the theory being peddled that Azam Hoti was campaigning against the ANP leadership to promote the political fortunes of his son within the party. Even if Azam Khan Hoti is rightly agitated against the party once considered to be serving the Pashtun cause, and which now has allegedly steered away from that path, his allegations, especially in the context of the US that had helped Asfandyar Wali become richer might just prove a storm in a teacup, especially since Azam Hoti admits he cannot produce any proof of his allegations. Either he nowproduces some evidence to support his statement or he might have to end up having to eat his words. The probability of this outcome seems higher. *