ANP Shouldn't Be Allowed To Revive Its Old Pashtunistan Agenda

A billboard in 2008 on Pakistani soil showing the map of independent Pashtunistan. ANP denied any involvement. [Picture courtesy of Online News Agency-Nov. 2008]

ANP, a party whose founders opposed the independence of Pakistan, is once again pushing its shady agenda through a manufactured crisis over the renaming Pakistan's NWFP province.  By doing this, the party is trying to sow seeds of doubt in the minds of Pakistani Pashtuns, who are an integral part of the Pakistani state and one of its main pillars.

One of the heroes of the Pakistan Independence Movement had actually proposed the name Afghania for the province. So respect for the Pashtun identity, which makes the larger Pakistani identity, has always been there. But the manner in which ANP is whipping up linguistic sentiments, coupled with a daring attempt within the Parliament to change the constitution to give provinces unprecedented freedoms, indicates something bigger is happening than just renaming a province and revising the constitution.

A few months after ANP came to power in 2008, billboards showing the map of 'Greater Pashtunistan' mysteriously appeared in some parts of Pakistan's northwestern province. 'Greater Pashtunistan' is supposed to replace a disintegrated Pakistan, according to the proponents of this theory.

The ANP denied any link to the billboards at the time.

But whoever was behind that billboard knew there was a lot of talk going on in official and informal circles in the United States about the concept of Pashtunistan.  This was probably part of a larger psy-ops program that aimed at pressuring Pakistan to align itself more with the US agenda.

Starting sometime in 2007, the US media and think-tanks launched a campaign for independent Pashtunistan and independent Balochistan. This campaigned has slowed but has not completely ended.  Washington DC was the venue for several seminars attended by advocates of this theory. The origin of these theories is India, where analysts with links to the Indian security establishment have been advocating the breakup of Pakistan on linguistic basis, feeding on real grievances created by a failed bureaucratic and political ruling system. Indian officials have always bragged privately to their foreign guests about how they successfully used this method to cut Pakistan to size in 1971. [Click here to read how Indian analysts introduced the idea of breaking up Pakistan along linguistic lines to Washington after 9/11].

Blatant anti-Pakistanism in the US media has gradually decreased during the past year, mostly because US officials are now showing respect to Pakistan to gain its support to avert a defeat in Afghanistan.  Much credit for this change also goes to the Pakistani military establishment and to the army chief. 

But it is not completely over. While Pakistan has friends in Washington and others agree they need Pakistan, the anti-Pakistan elements in the US establishment took their latest 'seminar' on Pakistani Balochistan to Bangkok, apparently because such an event on Thai soil won't draw attention to its US backers. 

There is a lot of circumstantial evidence that lends credibility to the theory that ANP's rise to power was part of the secret understandings that former President Musharraf agreed to with the Bush administration in 2006 and 2007 on the shape of future government in Pakistan.

Now three pro-US parties [ANP, PPPP, MQM] are running the show in Pakistan. PPPP has been busy enacting the American agenda of containing Pakistan's military and intelligence from within. This has failed. MQM is campaigning for a bill on provincial autonomy that will effectively end Pakistan as a strong country and turn its provinces into semi-independent states that can secede anytime they choose. This will bring Pakistan one step closer to the fate of Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union. 

As for ANP, instead of improving services and governance, the party is creating language-based hatred and divisions in Pakistan under the guise of renaming NWFP, which is a nonissue. Pakistanis are suffering a massive energy shortage and a general decline in the quality of life across the nation while these failed politicians are wasting time on creating ethnic- and linguistic-based divisions among Pakistanis.

The above is probably the most accurate context for understanding the latest political crisis in Pakistan over renaming a province and over passing a radical plan for changes in the constitution that would weaken the Pakistani state.

Pakistan will continue to suffer this type of instability as long as some of its political parties continue to work on foreign agendas, and as long as Pakistan's people and the armed forces tolerate foreign governments creating and maintaining proxies at the highest levels in Islamabad.

Beautiful Pakistani Pashto

One of the most beautiful Pakistani Pashto music songs ever. We salute our brothers & sisters in NWFP & Tribal Belt. We bleed for you. May Pakistan rise again because of your great sacrifices & those of all Pakistanis.

Pak Army Abuse? Seen Worse, Thanks!

BBC has released a video showing alleged Pakistani army cruelty against throat-slitters.  Unfortunately, this video is being used to generate hatred among Pakistanis and stir ethnic conflict. Since the American occupation of Afghanistan, Pakistan and its military have been championing the rights of the Pashtun, who are proud Pakistanis and a majority in Afghanistan.  The terrorists in the video are not Pashtun. They are not even Taliban.  They are throat-slitters.  Feel sorry for them?  Let me show you videos of them butchering innocent Pashtuns and other Pakistanis.

By Asher Khan

Wednesday, 7 October 2009.

WWW.AHMEDQURAISHI.COM

SWAT, Pakistan—In the latest attempt to baffle Pakistani nation, BBC has posted a story apparently showing Pakistan Army ‘abusing’ suspected Taliban associates caught in Swat.  A video that had been posted on Facebook is produced as clinching evidence that the Pakistan Army is involved in human rights abuses in the region.

The footage shows an officer in Pakistani army battle uniform interrogating several suspects who had been arrested for firing on troops and sheltering known terrorists.  When the suspects refuse to reveal information, they are beaten with belts, fists and what appear to be small whips.  After an initial round of punishment, the officer tells a suspect that this is “soft treatment” and unless the suspect tells all, the officer says he will have to administer “hard punishment."  At least one of the suspects being interrogated admits to having fired upon Pakistan Army soldiers in Pushto, while the officer can also be heard telling the soldiers to go easy with the beatings.

Physical abuse of prisoners during interrogation is extremely common in not only Pakistan’s police stations but worldwide, and this video, even if it's true, proves how mild the ‘punishment’ given out to these TTP-sympathizers was considering what these barbarians did to our captured, unarmed soldiers and innocent civilians. What has been termed as abuse is much benign if compared with the interrogation techniques employed by other armed forces of the world, not to mention Indian forces who keenly pluck nails out after severe torture just on the slightest suspicion, not charges against such criminals.

Lets rewind back to earlier this year when videos of TTP terrorists slitting throats of innocent civilians and Army soldiers were doing the rounds and had kept the nation completely terrified. Grilling terror suspects back then using whips and belts did indeed appear to be quite soft, as a form of punishment, compared to knives and AK-47s, which were the terrorists’ preferred tools.

There’s an important distinction to be made here. Pakistani Taliban, or the TTP (Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan) as they’re better known, are NOT related to the original Afghan Taliban. Mullah Omar, the Afghan Taliban leader has repeatedly distanced himself from TTP due to the latter’s insistence on attacking Pakistani Muslims, including Frontier Corps personnel, soldiers, mosques, bazaars, often slaughtering civilians without discrimination.

In the not so distant past, TTP’s had also famously blackmailed Kashmiri Mujahideen groups threatening to assassinate their leaders including the Jama’at-ud-Dawa chief Hafiz Saeed, unless they stopped fighting Indian forces in Kashmir and started attacking Pakistani targets instead. One wonders whose battle are these terrorists fighting? In June 2008, TTP was also responsible of massacring 28 members of the Lashkar-e-Taiba at a jirga in Mohmand agency, and holding over 90 Lashkar militants as hostages.

The TTP has led a violent campaign slaughtering innocent civilians and soldiers of Pakistan army, often filming and releasing gruesome videos of its leaders slitting throats of captured ‘prisoners’ in an attempt to demoralize the nation.

Here it is also important to keep in mind the backdrop of recent events. In the following video, TTP spokesperson Muslim Khan is openly announcing that those whose throats were slit deserved it: LINK

This is the news report of TTP Taliban killing 5 Tableeghi Jamaat activists while issuing warning to journalists. LINK

After the successful army operation against the TTP terrorists in Swat, local residents had expressed relief as normalcy returned. In some areas locals formed their own Lashkar’s to beat back TTP attempts to retake lost territory. Here’s an Al-Jazeera Report on these patriotic lashkars: LINK

In another 4 part series (the first two parts may not work, watch the last 2), which shows various military incidents, interviews with captured FC soldiers, and some ghastly ‘punishments’ by the TTP, which seems to be an integral part of their videos. LINK

Here is a video made by sky news TV on the terror of TTP where they are taking pride in training innocent civilians and pushing them on a trail that leads straight to death for themselves and above all massive destruction for their country and its image. LINK

Not only these, there are countless of such videos where a mockery was made out of our nation’s agony by these criminals of Islam and Pakistan.

This article was first published at the blog TTP Terrorists Are NOT Taliban

Pakistanis, Not IDPs

Pakistani television commentators and anchors are acting like a herd of sheep. Half a million Pakistanis are homeless. Our media calls them “Internally Displaced Persons” [IDPs] or “tribal refugees”, as if they are some ‘thing’ and not our fellow citizens. We Pakistanis must not let the U.S. and British media numb us into using such terms about our own people. The mistakes of the American and British occupation commanders and soldiers in Afghanistan have led to tragedies in our entire western region. If you can, telephone and email these newspapers and TV anchors. Tell them that you are offended as a Pakistani when they call the Pakistanis in our tribal belt as ‘IDPs’ or ‘Pashtun refugees’. Tell them they must be called ‘Pakistanis in our tribal belt.’ Let’s not compromise on showing compassion to those Pakistanis whose lives have been destroyed because of America’s cruel and unjust war.

Pakistan Is Betraying Its Proud Tribesmen

This picture saddened me no end. The proud tribesmen of Pakistan, those who beat the English and the Russians and fought their way to liberate half of the Indian occupied Kashmir are now facing an American conspiracy and a Pakistani complacency.

America’s Afghan blunders have resulted in expelling the proud Pakistani tribesmen from their homes and turned almost half a million of them into refugees in their own country.

If this wasn’t enough, here comes Pakistan to treat them as animals in the ‘tent cities’ built for them near Peshawar. And then come the Americans and the Indians to spread literature encouraging the Pashtun to demand a separate homeland called Pashtunistan.

For a year and a half, we at AhmedQuraishi.com and PakNationalists Group have been explaining to Pakistanis, with original reporting and informed analysis, how Pakistan’s tribal belt was peaceful until 2005, and how ‘non-state actors’ in Washington DC have used the Afghan soil to create, arm and sustain insurgencies inside Pakistan that run from the Chinese-built Gwadar port in the south to the Chinese border in the north. The suicide bombings, the attacks and the destabilization is punishment for Pakistan for supporting the Afghan Taliban in Afghanistan and for insisting to stick to Kashmir against the wishes of India, Washington’s new regional slave-soldier.

The anti-Pakistan insurgencies hide behind the covered faces of the so-called Pakistani Taliban who receive money and weapons from Afghanistan.

Now the Americans want to expand the process of more and more Pakistani tribesmen leaving their homes and escaping deeper inside Pakistan. The suspicion is that Washington wants to create a buffer zone between the U.S.-occupied Afghanistan and Pakistan, a zone inhabited by no one. All Pakistani tribes pushed out. The strategy is working. The number of these Pakistanis who have become refugees inside their own country is nearing half a million.

Pakistani media and journalists are playing an unfortunate role in helping the Americans by focusing on failed Pakistani politicians and their power games that are diverting the attention of the Pakistani public opinion from the important issue of the plight of these brave Pakistani tribesmen and how our government is silently abetting the Americans in humiliating them.

I wrote recently in The News that Pakistan needs a Putin, a Pakistani nationalist who loves his homeland and his people and who is ruthless enough to do what’s right for all of us and for the homeland and liberate it from the clutches of the stooges of the Americans and the Brits. I hope he comes before it’s too late.