Daily Times

The history of the Pakhtun people is characterised by numerous foreign interventions and intra-ethnic divisions. Lack of written sources has left many details about important historical events murky.

The prevailing narrative about the Pakhtun people and their history has been shaped by successive imperial powers and, more recently, the Punjab-dominated civil-military establishment of Pakistan. This narrative projects a skewed and an outright biased image of the people. An interesting aspect of this narrative is that it not only fails to explain how the peaceful Pakhtun region transformed into an incubator of terrorism and extremism, but it also deliberately connects the issue of terrorism exclusively to Pakhtunwali.

Interventions in the Pakhtun belt, time and time again, destroyed its ethos, stymied its development and social evolution.

After his repeated failures to capture Samarkand, Zaheerud Din Babur, the founder of the Mughal dynasty and a descendent of Tamerlane and Genghis Khan, had moved eastwards and southwards. He captured Kabul in 1504 and Kandahar in 1522, and eventually the Pakhtun Lodhi dynasty (1451-1526) met its demise at the hands of Babur.

By and large, the Pakhtun belt had converted to Islam as early as 1,000 AD. The first enlightenment movement, known as Roshanya, originated in the area in the 16th century.

It was basically a Pakhtun nationalist movement tied with the moderate Sufi vision of Islam associated with the figure of Pir-Roshan (the enlightened saint).He believed in an egalitarian (classless) concept of society, focusing on uniting the Pakhtuns.

This indigenous movement of modernity in the land of Pashtuns had its detractors as well with Akhund Derweza topping the list. By some accounts, he was a propagandist and a conservative puritanical Sunni bankrolled by Mughals.

In traditional class hierarchy of Pakhtun society, the mullah was placed at the bottom and was merely a kasab-gar (service provider). This was reversed by Pakistani security establishment in response to the Saur Revolution in Afghanistan. The mullah was granted a position of power in the society by assigning him an ideological and militant role in the region

He ridiculed Pir Roshan as Pir Tareek, meaning the ‘the dark saint’. While Pir Roshan’s work ‘Khairul Bayan’ emphasised spiritualism and moderation, Derweza wrote ‘Makhzan al Islam’ that preached strict obedience to Sharia law.

In 1826, Dost Muhammad Khan of Barakzay tribe ascended the throne in Kabul after a prolonged civil war which started in 1816.Both Russia and Britain at that time were trying to enhance their influence in Afghanistan. After an unsuccessful negotiation with Dost Muhammad Khan, Governor General of India, Lord Auckland, ordered a military intervention in Afghanistan alleging that Dost Muhammad Khan was colluding with the Russians. Exiled Afghan Ruler Shah Shuja was brought in and a puppet government was installed in Kabul.

British occupation caused inflation. They came to Afghanistan with huge sums of currency which reduced the overall value of currency. Moreover, the demand for food increased which when coupled with inflation worsened the situation, especially in urban centres of Kandahar and Kabul. Ulema, who depended on a fixed stipend, were hit hard. Besides, Shah Shujah seized charitable institutions managed by the ulema to generate more tax revenue. This move was seen by the masses as contrary to Islamic law.

Consequently, tribal leaders and ulema rebelled against the Raj and jihad was declared. British eventually found their occupation of Afghanistan untenable. Akbar Khan son of Dost Khan negotiated withdrawal with the British. On January 6, 1842, 4,500 British and Indian troops with12,000 camp followers withdrew from Afghanistan. The first Anglo-Afghan war ended where it started with Dost Muhammad Khan at the throne of Afghanistan.

Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli appointed Lord Lytton as Governor Genera of India in November, 1875. Upon his arrival in India, Lord Lytton notified Sher Ali Khan who ascended the throne that he was sending a diplomatic mission to Kabul. Sher Ali Khan denied British envoy entry to Kabul. But when Russia’s General Stolyetov was granted access to Kabul, furious British waged the Second Afghan War.

Kabul was again captured by British forces. Sher Ali Khan, the emir of Afghanistan, fled the capital and died in exile in 1879. British signed a treaty at Gandamak with Yaqub Khan, son of Sher Ali Khan, recognising him as the emir of Afghanistan, while Yaqub Khan surrendered Afghanistan’s autonomy over its foreign affairs to British.

Following the Second Anglo-Afghan War, British implemented separate legal statutes and governance mechanisms for Afghanistan, the Pakhtun borderlands and the region adjacent to British India.

The nephew of Sher Ali Khan, Abdul Rahman Khan, was brought back by British from exile in Central Asia and crowned in 1880. He was an autocrat and who not only brutally suppressed dissent but agreed to the demarcation of Durand Line excluding the Pakhtun tribal territories from Afghanistan consequently dividing the heartland into two separate pieces. After the demarcation of Durand Line in 1893, British placed five Pakhtun tribal regions under direct control of central government of India, agencies (official parlance for tribal districts) were created in the following years and political officers were appointed. These regions were controlled by an oppressive legal regime called Frontier Crimes Regulation (FCR) devised by British which was later adopted by the State of Pakistan and is still the law of the land in FATA.

During the First World War, there was immense support for Ottoman Empire against the British among Afghans. But the emir of Afghanistan, Habibullah Khan, maintained neutrality throughout the war. British at that time were capable of exercising great deal of influence in foreign affairs of Afghans. Habibullah Khan was assassinated by those close to the anti-imperialist movement on February 20, 1919. Amanullah Khan succeeded his father and declared complete independence from Great Britain which sparked off the third inconclusive Anglo Afghan War in May 1919.

This month long war which had won Afghans control over their foreign affairs was limited to a series of skirmishes between Afghan Army and British Indian Army. Later, British signed a peace treaty with Afghans acknowledging Independence of Afghanistan on August 8, 1919. In the meanwhile, Afghanistan recognised the Bolshevik regime and forged a special relationship with it that lasted until USSR invaded Afghanistan in December 1979.

At Partition of British India, Kabul became one of the first governments to establish diplomatic relations with Pakistan. Pashtun Nationalist Party Khudai Khidmatgar, despite differences, moderated its stance and accepted Pakistan as fait accompli as Ghaffar Khan took oath of allegiance to Pakistan. But successive Pakistani civil and military administrations failed to establish cordial relations with Pakhtun nationalists including Ghaffar Khan who was later arrested and his political party was banned.

In 1970s, National Awami Party formed provincial governments in both Balochistan and Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (then NWFP). But these ethno-nationalist administrations were sacked by Zulfikar Ali Bhutto .The then Pakistani Premier saw NAP as his main political rivals where military establishment saw it as an active secessionist threat. So it was more of a win-win situation for both civil and military hierarchy in Pakistan.

In 1980s, after Soviet Invasion, a huge number of Arab Salafi radicals moved to Pakistan and established networks and bases on both sides of Durand Line. They got so involved in the Afghan Jihad that many of them stayed behind even after Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan. Arabs that stayed behind attracted a second wave of jihadists from Chechnya, Central Asia, Chinese Turkistan, Southeast Asia, globalising the Jihad in the 1990s.

Pakistani establishment skilfully exploited and created extremists in the Pakhtun belt to promote asymmetrical warfare against India, gain strategic depth in Afghanistan and to curtail Pakhtun nationalism which badly backfired in the later years.

In traditional class hierarchy of Pakhtun society, the mullah was placed at the bottom and was merely a kasab-gar (service provider) for Malaks and Khans whose job was to provide religious services in the village. The mullah was the lowest paid kasab-gar as compared to a lauw gar (harvester), dam (harvester), jola (weaver), tabib (healer), mistry (mason), kulal (potter). This class setting was reversed by Pakistani military establishment in response to the Saur Revolution in Afghanistan and the mullah was granted a position of power in the society by assigning him an ideological and militant role in the region.

Owing to all foreign interventions during the course of history, the Pakhtun society has underwent structural changes which brought it where it is today, from a largely peaceful borderland to an incubator of terrorism.

Pakhtuns are as prone to extremism as the Gora Sahib of Britain or the Brown Sahib of Punjab or as any other nationality may be for that matter. Had any other region been subjected to such interventions, the outcome there would have been no different.

The writer is a Political Activist and a Research Analyst based in Lahore

Published in Daily Times, December 15^th 2017.