Sushant Singh: Pakistan sees a new ‘Badshah Khan’ as Pashtun hero takes on army

By Dilip -
An annoyed Pakistan army has reacted by trying to force an undeclared media blackout of the PTM. .. Reporters Without Borders issued a statement last month, saying, “The latest subject to be placed off limits is the Pashtun (Protection) Movement, which has been organising protests in defence of Pakistan’s Pashtun minority and denouncing human rights violations by the military..”  But Pashteen and the PTM have got around this through social media, with the nervous army unable to counter them on Twitter, Facebook and WhatsApp, platforms beyond its direct control.

DRAWING comparisons to Badshah Khan, a young and charismatic Pashtun leader is giving the jitters to the powerful Pakistan army. A trained veterinarian, who is never seen without his trademark “Mazari hat” or “Pashteen hat”, 26-year-old Manzoor Pashteen has been drawing huge crowds across Pakistan for the past three months with his non-violent Pashtun Tahafuz Movement (PTM), as he takes on the army. "He is basically saying that I am a Pashtun and I am fighting for the rights of the Pashtun people. The PTM is getting a lot of support. Any person who has suffered due to terrorism or militancy or operations by security forces, anyone who has been mistreated at a check-point, they all support the PTM. They have had some big public meetings all over Pakistan,” says veteran journalist Rahimullah Yusuzai. 

The PTM started off as a conversation among student leaders at Gomal University in Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) province in 2014. It was then called the Mehsud Tahafuz Movement, and was confined to South Waziristan, the area in which the Mehsud tribe lives. As Mehsud tribesmen from FATA (Federally Administered Tribal Areas) call themselves Pashteen, Manzoor draws his surname from there.

Ali Wazir: What Does the Pashtun Tahafuz Movement Want? // Memphis Barker: 'Are you with the tyrants?' Pakistani Che risks all to take on the army

The PTM remained a floundering movement until January, but gained unexpected momentum following the death of Naqeebullah Mehsud, an aspiring model from Karachi who was killed by police as part of a raid on a group of militants aligned with the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan. An investigation showed that Mehsud had no ties to the terror group. Following Mehsud’s death, the PTM held a series of rallies throughout the country, called the ‘Pashtun Long March’, drawing more and more crowds. As part of the march, a 10-day dharna was held in Islamabad, where provocative slogans were raised against the army, the most popular being “Ye jo dehshatgardi hai, iske peeche wardi hai (Behind this terror, there is the uniform)”.

Marvi Sirmed, an Islamabad-based journalist with The Daily Times, who attended the Islamabad dharna of the PTM, says, “Manzoor Pashteen is a new Pashtun hero. After Badshah Khan, he is the second Pashtun who has mass appeal among Pashtuns and non-Pashtuns.” The PTM originally had five main demands, including Abolition of Frontier Crimes Regulation in FATA, release of missing persons and an end to extra judicial killings, stopping humiliation at security checkpoints and removal of landmines in FATA. Some of these demands have been partially met by the army but the PTM has now expanded its agenda. It now wants international guarantors for any agreement with the government, and trial and arrest of former dictator Pervez Musharraf… read more:
http://indianexpress.com/article/world/pakistan-sees-a-new-badshah-khan-as-pashtun-hero-takes-on-army-5184753/


Popular posts from this blog

Third degree torture used on Maruti workers: Rights body

By Dilip -
The People’s Union for Democratic Rights on Tuesday alleged that third degree torture methods were used by the Gurgaon Criminal Investigation Agency while interrogating workers of Maruti Suzuki India Limited’s Manesar plant who are accused of involvement in the killing of an HR manager and the violent attack at the plant on July 18. The PUDR alleged that the Gurgaon CIA investigation “did not seem” to be directed at solving the crime or probing the involvement of the arrested workers in the incidents and crimes recorded in the FIR but instead was based on their involvement in trade union activities. Grave doubts  “The use of third degree torture in police custody, and the securing of arrestees’ signatures on blank papers by the police, gives rise to grave doubts regarding the ability of such an investigation in effectively identifying or arresting those guilty. The police and the State seem keener to reassure Maruti Suzuki Ltd. and ensure that production continues,” the ...
Read more

Haruki Murakami: On seeing the 100% perfect girl one beautiful April morning

By Dilip -
According to Murakami, “1Q84” is just an amplification of one of his most popular short stories,   which (in its English version) is five pages long. “Basically, it’s the same,” he told me. “A boy meets a girl. They have separated and are looking for each other. It’s a simple story. I just made it long.” One beautiful April morning, on a narrow side street in Tokyo's fashionable Harujuku neighborhood, I walked past the 100% perfect girl. Tell you the truth, she's not that good-looking. She doesn't stand out in any way. Her clothes are nothing special. The back of her hair is still bent out of shape from sleep. She isn't young, either - must be near thirty, not even close to a "girl," properly speaking. But still, I know from fifty yards away: She's the 100% perfect girl for me. The moment I see her, there's a rumbling in my chest, and my mouth is as dry as a desert..." read the story: http://www.youmightfindyourself.com/post/22131227...
Read more

Albert Camus's lecture 'The Human Crisis', New York, March 1946. 'No cause justifies the murder of innocents'

By Dilip -
The morning after a great historical crisis, you feel as sad and sick as after a heavy night. But there is no aspirin for historical hangovers .. The world is no longer divided into the just or unjust, but into masters and slaves. He who is right is he who enslaves.  Albert Camus     La crise de l'homme : THE HUMAN CRISIS   (Text read by Viggo Mortensen on March 28 2016)   Ladies and Gentlemen: when I was invited to give a series of lectures in the United States of America, I felt some doubt and hesitation. I am really not old enough to give lectures, and I am more at ease with the process of thinking than I am making categorical statements... since I don't feel I have any claim on what is generally called the truth. I shared this reservation and was very politely told that my personal opinion didn't matter. What mattered was that I'd be able to offer some facts about France so that my listeners could form their own opinions. It was then suggested...
Read more

The Almond Trees by Albert Camus (1940)

By Dilip -
Image
'Do you know', Napoleon once said to Fontanes, 'what astounds me most about the world?  The impotence of force to establish anything.  There are only two powers in the world: the sword and the mind.  In the end, the sword is always conquered by the mind' Conquerors, you see, are sometimes melancholy.  They have to pay some price for so much vainglory. But what a hundred years ago was true of the sword is no longer true today of the tank. Conquerors have made progress, and the dismal silence of places without intelligence has been established for years at a time in a lacerated Europe. At the time of the hideous wars of Flanders, Dutch painters could still perhaps paint the cockerels in their farmyards. The Hundred Years War has likewise been forgotten, and yet the prayers of Silesian mystics still linger in some hearts. But today, things have changed; the painter and the monk have been drafted - we are one with the world.  The mind has lost that regal certai...
Read more

Etel Adnan - To Be In A Time Of War

By Dilip -
NB: Etel Adnan, writer, poet, artist and musician was born in 1925 and raised in Beirut, Lebanon. Her mother was a Greek from Smyrna, her father, a high ranking Ottoman officer born in Damascus. This prose poem is the final chapter of her book  In the Heart of the Heart of Another Country .  Read more about her here  - DS To Be In A Time Of War To say nothing, do nothing, mark time, to bend, to straighten up, to blame oneself, to stand, to go toward the window, to change one’s mind in the process, to return to one’s chair, to stand again, to go to the bathroom, to close the door, to then open the door, to go to the kitchen, to not eat nor drink, to return to the table, to be bored, to take a few steps on the rug, to come close to the chimney, to look at it, to find it dull, to turn left until the main door, to come back to the room, to hesitate, to go on, just a bit, a trifle, to stop, to pull the right side of the curtain, then the other side, ...
Read more

After the Truth Shower

By Dilip -
Dear Readers Thank you for reading my blog for the past eleven years. (This is a link to the new one) During this time it has had nearly 1.7 million hits; and I have posted over 9500 posts covering a variety of themes. From July 11 to 19, 2022, my blog was withdrawn by the Blogger administration on account of what its machinery suspected to be 'Impersonation'. It took over a week and the efforts of several well-wishers to get it back online I thank them all for their kindness and goodwill  My blog has always been - and remains - non-commercial. I have used it for academic purposes; and to foster a culture of debate and informed commentary in civil society. Because it contains a large amount of material gathered and collated for over a decade, I cannot afford to lose its contents. I hope it will remain undisturbed now and function as an archive. However, I have decided to use a new blog on WordPress as a platform for my newest comments and posts The new blog is titled After the...
Read more

James Gilligan on Shame, Guilt and Violence

By Dilip -
Shame, Guilt, and Violence / James Gilligan During the past 35 years I have used prisons and prison mental hospitals as "laboratories" in which to investigate the causes and prevention of the various forms of violence and the relationships between these forms and to what I will call (with a nod to William James) "the varieties of moral experience." In the course of that work, I have been struck by the frequency with which I received the same answer when I asked prisoners, or mental patients, why they assaulted or even killed someone. Time after time, they would reply "because he disrespected me" or "he disrespected my visitor [or wife, mother, sister, girl-friend, daughter, etc.]." In fact, they used that phrase so often that they abbreviated it into the slang phrase, "He dis'ed me." Whenever people use a word so often that they abbreviate it, it is clearly central to their moral and emotional vocabulary. But even when they did n...
Read more