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Imran Khan, chief of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), speaks a lot about the war on terror and the role of Pakhtun tribes on both sides of the Durand Line in this war. On the internet, for example, there are numerous YouTube clips in which he elaborates his point of view. I have randomly selected one of the clips to deconstruct his argument, narrative and discourse, which are all misleading, marred by factual errors or perhaps wilful lies, and anti-people. Also, this deconstruction is important because Imran Khan’s views are an extension of the stereotypes about the Pakhtun tribes constructed, prompted and propagated by the British colonial and Pakistani establishment. This also includes the stereotypes that dehumanise the tribal people. Due to widespread illiteracy, the Pakhtun could not deconstruct the stereotypes. Rich and educated Pakhtuns, a few exceptions apart, never took upon themselves the moral responsibility to question the narrative and discourse by the ‘others’. The Pakhtun nationalist political parties never developed, not that they could not, but they did not due to a lack of foresightedness, the organisational capacity to have functioning think tanks in place to interact with the intelligentsia and the media around the world to disseminate information and question any misleading ideas about society that they — not the PTI with youth support base in Punjab — truly represent, especially in terms of belongingness to the indigenous soil, culture, history and traditions.
This is the YouTube clip from which I take Imran Khan’s narrative, discourse and argument regarding the Pakhtun and the war on terror: Imran Khan explains "War of Terror" and "Pakistani Taliban" - YouTube (title: ‘Imran Khan explains ‘War of Terror’ and ‘Pakistani Taliban’).
In summary, Khan says this: “You can win a war against terrorism if you win hearts and minds of the people among whom the terrorists operate. You can win the war when the people consider them terrorists. You can never win the war when the people consider them freedom fighters. The Taliban are the popular Pakhtun freedom fighters. Upon the US’s behest, the Pakistan Army is killing its own people with F-16s and gunship helicopters. The bombs cannot differentiate between terrorists and innocent civilians. Usually the terrorists are too clever to be caught by the bombs, including bombs from the US drones. So they get away with the bombing, but innocent people are killed. Consequently, there is a popular backlash. In lieu of the US money, the Pakistan Army entered Waziristan in 2004 to catch 800 al Qaeda men. This ended causing collateral damage, including large scale human displacement. This was reciprocated by the tribal society by a backlash in the form of multiple suicide attacks on the state institutions and society in Pakistan, including attacks on the Pakistan Army. The Pakistan Army has no will to fight its own people. Soldiers of the army began to surrender in droves to a handful of the Taliban. The army was forced to negotiate peace with the Taliban. All political parties in the ruling alliance of Pakistan, including the Pakhtun nationalist ANP, want negotiated peace settlement with the Taliban. But the US government has a one-window operation with President Asif Ali Zardari, before they had the same with President Musharraf, whereby the Americans put pressure to send the Pakistan Army to the tribal areas to fight against our own people. What is happening in FATA is not religious extremism. It is radicalisation. People whose children are dying in the war of, not on, terror, how are they not going to be radicalised. Unless the US and NATO forces withdraw from Afghanistan, there is no chance of peace in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The reason is very simple. The Pakhtun have successfully resisted against the conquerors of the world, including Alexander the Great, the Mongolians, the Mughals, the British and the Russian. The Pakhtun tribes fight against each other but whenever an invader comes, they are all together. This time they are united against the US and NATO forces. What you see now is not the Taliban or al Qaeda. It is Pakhtun nationalism.”
It is factually wrong that the Pakistan Army entered Waziristan in 2004. The army had already entered South Waziristan in 2002 when it conducted a fake military operation near Azam Warsak, ostensibly against the al Qaeda militants and al Qaeda-led Taliban. According to the local people, the Taliban were tipped off by the army officers before the operation to vacate the area, which they did, but nevertheless the operation was conducted. Actually the operation was to humiliate and discredit the tribal leaders who were not taken into confidence before the operation. All those widely respectable tribal leaders were anti-Taliban, most of whom were killed one after the other in mysterious targeted killings from 2003 onwards. This operation and the later operations and the so-called peace deals with the Taliban were meant to tear apart the tribal socio-political order led by the tribal leaders and replace it with a Taliban order so as to provide safe havens to al Qaeda and al Qaeda-led Taliban for cross-borders attacks on the US and NATO forces in Afghanistan.
Within days and weeks of the UN-mandated US attack on al Qaeda and Taliban positions in Afghanistan, the militants came to South Waziristan, where the well-known cleric Maulana Noor Muhammad, famous in Waziristan for his deep longstanding links with the military establishment of Pakistan, was announcing in mosques that all Pakhtuns must stand up to welcome and protect their great guest, Osama bin Laden. This immediately prompted voices of dissent from within Waziristan, most of which were silenced through targeted killings and the remaining silenced through fear of targeted killings. Who in South Waziristan can forget Farooq Yargul Khel, a widely respected tribal leader in Wana, who in response to Maulana Noor Muhammad’s call for hospitality to Osama bin Laden, publicly announced that “Osama or his dad, as long as I am alive no militants can enter Wana bazaar.” Indeed, as long as he lived no militants could dare to enter Wana bazaar. Farooq Yargul Khel was the first anti-Taliban tribal leader in FATA who was target killed in 2003.
The point that I wish to make is that Imran Khan is fabricating stories, or at least distorting facts, whereby he minuses the indigenous tribal resistance to the Taliban in his zeal for painting the Taliban as Pakhtun nationalists. His ideas are uncritically accepted by his urban supporters who have no clue about how FATA was ‘won’ by the Taliban. Imran Khan may win the next elections with the support of the military establishment whose strategic agenda he is religiously promoting, but he must remember that — as told to me by several tribesmen across FATA — ‘tribal memory dies very hard’. This implies that the tribal people will never forget what al Qaeda and the Taliban did to them. Imran Khan must remember how he might go down in the tribal memory: standing with the assassins of those sons of the tribal soil who gave their lives in resistance to the Taliban and al Qaeda.
Imran Khan narrates that the suicide attacks in Pakistan are a ‘backlash’ from the people of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), in response to the Pakistan Army operations and the US drone attacks in the region. On several occasions he has also claimed that the attacks were tribal revenge in line with the code of Pakhtunwali. In other words, Imran Khan is saying that terrorism in Pakistan is terrorism by Pakhtun culture. This narrative is not just far from the truth but also a blatant lie, or otherwise Imran Khan has no idea about the ground reality in FATA since 9/11.
An overwhelming majority of the US drone attacks since 2004 to this date have been in the areas of the Ahmadzai Wazir, Utmanzai Wazir and Dawar tribes in South and North Waziristan. Going by Imran Khan’s argument, most ‘innocent’ casualties in the drone attacks must be from these three tribes and thus ‘backlashers’ from these tribes are rocking Pakistan with terrorist attacks. But there are no Wazir and Dawar Taliban or non-Taliban ordinary people from these tribes who have been involved in any attacks inside Pakistan!
Those who are involved in deadly attacks inside Pakistan are al Qaeda foreigners — Uzbeks, Arabs etc — the Punjabis and the Pakhtuns from other areas including terrorists from the Mehsud tribe. Now, in Pakhtun tribal culture, the loyalty and sympathy of an individual go to his own tribe, clan or even sub-clan. How is it possible that Mehsud or other Pakhtun tribesmen are taking revenge for the ‘innocent casualties’ in the Wazir and Dawar tribes, whereas the latter tribes refrain from revenge? How is this explainable in Pakhtunwali? It becomes even more ridiculous when one thinks of the Punjabi, Arab and Uzbek militants attacking the state and society in Pakistan for revenge in line with Pakhtunwali for the ‘innocent’ civilian casualties amongst the Dawar and the two Wazir tribes of Waziristan!
Also, it must be remembered that, in the tribal context, revenge is closely linked with honour. Revenge is publicly taken to restore honour. Honour is personal and tribal. This implies that the person or tribe (sub-tribe, clan or sub-clan) whose honour has been violated must restore it by taking revenge with his/its own hands. No other person, tribe, sub-tribe, clan or sub-clan can take revenge for them to restore their honour. In this tribal context it looks hilariously non-serious to think of other Pakhtun tribesmen or other ethnic groups, such as the Punjabis, Arabs etc taking revenge to restore the honour of the Wazir and Dawar tribes!
The Ahmadzai Wazir, Utmanzai Wazir and Dawar tribesmen and women are overpowered by the ISI-Taliban-al Qaeda trio. The Taliban among these three tribes are the ‘good’ Taliban, the ones who carry out attacks on US and NATO forces in Afghanistan but refrain from committing terrorism in Pakistan. This is precisely the reason — their attacks inside Afghanistan — behind why their area is repeatedly attacked by US drones. The Taliban fighters and commanders from these three tribes are a tiny minority within their own homeland. The majority of the militants in their area are the Punjabis, al Qaeda foreigners and also Pakhtuns from other areas on both sides of the Durand Line, including the Mehsud militants, who were not eliminated by Pakistan in Operation Rah-e-Nijat but simply relocated to the Wazir areas in Waziristan.
The whole idea that suicide attacks in Pakistan are a tribal backlash is baseless. Let us not forget that the suicide bombers involved in the many attacks in Pakistan are teenage children. But teenage children do not take revenge on tribal society. One may argue that childhood ends in the tribal area before the modern legal age limit — 18 years. This may be true in many respects but, strictly in terms of revenge in line with Pakhtunwali, the norm is that revenge is taken by mature, adult men rather than youngsters under 18 years of age. There are rare exceptions when women and young people under 18 have taken revenge but this is only an exception. The norm is that mature adult men over 18 years of age take revenge.
Looking at the large number of young children under 18 who are used in suicide attacks, one is constrained to conclude that most of the ‘innocent’ casualties of the drone strikes are survived by no adult men over 18 years of age to take revenge! But this again is a hilarious idea especially given the fact — known to people who know the ground realities of the tribal areas — that the tribal families have been forced to offer a child and that children are also kidnapped to be trained as suicide bombers.
Above all, revenge may be imperative in the tribal context but pragmatism is even more imperative. In the tribal context, which is a bottom-up egalitarian culture, the notion of revenge successfully works as a deterrence and is rarely put into practice. The war on terror with so many powerful state and non-state external actors involved is a radically different context in which the idea of revenge has neither deterrence nor practical value in terms of settling scores with perceived enemies. This is precisely the reason why none of the tribal families of over 1,000 tribal leaders, who have been target killed since 2003 due to their anti-Taliban stance, have been involved in violent acts of revenge despite the fact that the families hold the ISI responsible for the killings of relatives and tribal leaders. These families can rightly be called pillars of Pakhtunwali in FATA. If these families have refrained from violent acts of revenge, the ordinary tribesmen are even less likely to commit violence for revenge. This explains why hundreds of thousands of tribesmen have preferred to live and work in degrading conditions during the displacement caused by the Pakistan Army operations rather than joining the Taliban who offer lucrative salaries. The elders of the Kala Khel tribe — in response to the deadly Taliban attack on their school children — requested the chief justice of Pakistan (CJP) to take revenge from the Taliban to give them justice. There are countless other examples of this kind in FATA.
The suicide bombings that have struck Pakistan are part and parcel of the strategic calculus of the Pakistani security establishment and the al Qaeda jihadi ideology, which has nothing to do with the tribal culture or sufferings of the tribal people in the war on terror.
(To be continued)
This is the YouTube clip from which I take Imran Khan’s narrative, discourse and argument regarding the Pakhtun and the war on terror: Imran Khan explains "War of Terror" and "Pakistani Taliban" - YouTube (title: ‘Imran Khan explains ‘War of Terror’ and ‘Pakistani Taliban’).
In summary, Khan says this: “You can win a war against terrorism if you win hearts and minds of the people among whom the terrorists operate. You can win the war when the people consider them terrorists. You can never win the war when the people consider them freedom fighters. The Taliban are the popular Pakhtun freedom fighters. Upon the US’s behest, the Pakistan Army is killing its own people with F-16s and gunship helicopters. The bombs cannot differentiate between terrorists and innocent civilians. Usually the terrorists are too clever to be caught by the bombs, including bombs from the US drones. So they get away with the bombing, but innocent people are killed. Consequently, there is a popular backlash. In lieu of the US money, the Pakistan Army entered Waziristan in 2004 to catch 800 al Qaeda men. This ended causing collateral damage, including large scale human displacement. This was reciprocated by the tribal society by a backlash in the form of multiple suicide attacks on the state institutions and society in Pakistan, including attacks on the Pakistan Army. The Pakistan Army has no will to fight its own people. Soldiers of the army began to surrender in droves to a handful of the Taliban. The army was forced to negotiate peace with the Taliban. All political parties in the ruling alliance of Pakistan, including the Pakhtun nationalist ANP, want negotiated peace settlement with the Taliban. But the US government has a one-window operation with President Asif Ali Zardari, before they had the same with President Musharraf, whereby the Americans put pressure to send the Pakistan Army to the tribal areas to fight against our own people. What is happening in FATA is not religious extremism. It is radicalisation. People whose children are dying in the war of, not on, terror, how are they not going to be radicalised. Unless the US and NATO forces withdraw from Afghanistan, there is no chance of peace in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The reason is very simple. The Pakhtun have successfully resisted against the conquerors of the world, including Alexander the Great, the Mongolians, the Mughals, the British and the Russian. The Pakhtun tribes fight against each other but whenever an invader comes, they are all together. This time they are united against the US and NATO forces. What you see now is not the Taliban or al Qaeda. It is Pakhtun nationalism.”
It is factually wrong that the Pakistan Army entered Waziristan in 2004. The army had already entered South Waziristan in 2002 when it conducted a fake military operation near Azam Warsak, ostensibly against the al Qaeda militants and al Qaeda-led Taliban. According to the local people, the Taliban were tipped off by the army officers before the operation to vacate the area, which they did, but nevertheless the operation was conducted. Actually the operation was to humiliate and discredit the tribal leaders who were not taken into confidence before the operation. All those widely respectable tribal leaders were anti-Taliban, most of whom were killed one after the other in mysterious targeted killings from 2003 onwards. This operation and the later operations and the so-called peace deals with the Taliban were meant to tear apart the tribal socio-political order led by the tribal leaders and replace it with a Taliban order so as to provide safe havens to al Qaeda and al Qaeda-led Taliban for cross-borders attacks on the US and NATO forces in Afghanistan.
Within days and weeks of the UN-mandated US attack on al Qaeda and Taliban positions in Afghanistan, the militants came to South Waziristan, where the well-known cleric Maulana Noor Muhammad, famous in Waziristan for his deep longstanding links with the military establishment of Pakistan, was announcing in mosques that all Pakhtuns must stand up to welcome and protect their great guest, Osama bin Laden. This immediately prompted voices of dissent from within Waziristan, most of which were silenced through targeted killings and the remaining silenced through fear of targeted killings. Who in South Waziristan can forget Farooq Yargul Khel, a widely respected tribal leader in Wana, who in response to Maulana Noor Muhammad’s call for hospitality to Osama bin Laden, publicly announced that “Osama or his dad, as long as I am alive no militants can enter Wana bazaar.” Indeed, as long as he lived no militants could dare to enter Wana bazaar. Farooq Yargul Khel was the first anti-Taliban tribal leader in FATA who was target killed in 2003.
The point that I wish to make is that Imran Khan is fabricating stories, or at least distorting facts, whereby he minuses the indigenous tribal resistance to the Taliban in his zeal for painting the Taliban as Pakhtun nationalists. His ideas are uncritically accepted by his urban supporters who have no clue about how FATA was ‘won’ by the Taliban. Imran Khan may win the next elections with the support of the military establishment whose strategic agenda he is religiously promoting, but he must remember that — as told to me by several tribesmen across FATA — ‘tribal memory dies very hard’. This implies that the tribal people will never forget what al Qaeda and the Taliban did to them. Imran Khan must remember how he might go down in the tribal memory: standing with the assassins of those sons of the tribal soil who gave their lives in resistance to the Taliban and al Qaeda.
Imran Khan narrates that the suicide attacks in Pakistan are a ‘backlash’ from the people of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), in response to the Pakistan Army operations and the US drone attacks in the region. On several occasions he has also claimed that the attacks were tribal revenge in line with the code of Pakhtunwali. In other words, Imran Khan is saying that terrorism in Pakistan is terrorism by Pakhtun culture. This narrative is not just far from the truth but also a blatant lie, or otherwise Imran Khan has no idea about the ground reality in FATA since 9/11.
An overwhelming majority of the US drone attacks since 2004 to this date have been in the areas of the Ahmadzai Wazir, Utmanzai Wazir and Dawar tribes in South and North Waziristan. Going by Imran Khan’s argument, most ‘innocent’ casualties in the drone attacks must be from these three tribes and thus ‘backlashers’ from these tribes are rocking Pakistan with terrorist attacks. But there are no Wazir and Dawar Taliban or non-Taliban ordinary people from these tribes who have been involved in any attacks inside Pakistan!
Those who are involved in deadly attacks inside Pakistan are al Qaeda foreigners — Uzbeks, Arabs etc — the Punjabis and the Pakhtuns from other areas including terrorists from the Mehsud tribe. Now, in Pakhtun tribal culture, the loyalty and sympathy of an individual go to his own tribe, clan or even sub-clan. How is it possible that Mehsud or other Pakhtun tribesmen are taking revenge for the ‘innocent casualties’ in the Wazir and Dawar tribes, whereas the latter tribes refrain from revenge? How is this explainable in Pakhtunwali? It becomes even more ridiculous when one thinks of the Punjabi, Arab and Uzbek militants attacking the state and society in Pakistan for revenge in line with Pakhtunwali for the ‘innocent’ civilian casualties amongst the Dawar and the two Wazir tribes of Waziristan!
Also, it must be remembered that, in the tribal context, revenge is closely linked with honour. Revenge is publicly taken to restore honour. Honour is personal and tribal. This implies that the person or tribe (sub-tribe, clan or sub-clan) whose honour has been violated must restore it by taking revenge with his/its own hands. No other person, tribe, sub-tribe, clan or sub-clan can take revenge for them to restore their honour. In this tribal context it looks hilariously non-serious to think of other Pakhtun tribesmen or other ethnic groups, such as the Punjabis, Arabs etc taking revenge to restore the honour of the Wazir and Dawar tribes!
The Ahmadzai Wazir, Utmanzai Wazir and Dawar tribesmen and women are overpowered by the ISI-Taliban-al Qaeda trio. The Taliban among these three tribes are the ‘good’ Taliban, the ones who carry out attacks on US and NATO forces in Afghanistan but refrain from committing terrorism in Pakistan. This is precisely the reason — their attacks inside Afghanistan — behind why their area is repeatedly attacked by US drones. The Taliban fighters and commanders from these three tribes are a tiny minority within their own homeland. The majority of the militants in their area are the Punjabis, al Qaeda foreigners and also Pakhtuns from other areas on both sides of the Durand Line, including the Mehsud militants, who were not eliminated by Pakistan in Operation Rah-e-Nijat but simply relocated to the Wazir areas in Waziristan.
The whole idea that suicide attacks in Pakistan are a tribal backlash is baseless. Let us not forget that the suicide bombers involved in the many attacks in Pakistan are teenage children. But teenage children do not take revenge on tribal society. One may argue that childhood ends in the tribal area before the modern legal age limit — 18 years. This may be true in many respects but, strictly in terms of revenge in line with Pakhtunwali, the norm is that revenge is taken by mature, adult men rather than youngsters under 18 years of age. There are rare exceptions when women and young people under 18 have taken revenge but this is only an exception. The norm is that mature adult men over 18 years of age take revenge.
Looking at the large number of young children under 18 who are used in suicide attacks, one is constrained to conclude that most of the ‘innocent’ casualties of the drone strikes are survived by no adult men over 18 years of age to take revenge! But this again is a hilarious idea especially given the fact — known to people who know the ground realities of the tribal areas — that the tribal families have been forced to offer a child and that children are also kidnapped to be trained as suicide bombers.
Above all, revenge may be imperative in the tribal context but pragmatism is even more imperative. In the tribal context, which is a bottom-up egalitarian culture, the notion of revenge successfully works as a deterrence and is rarely put into practice. The war on terror with so many powerful state and non-state external actors involved is a radically different context in which the idea of revenge has neither deterrence nor practical value in terms of settling scores with perceived enemies. This is precisely the reason why none of the tribal families of over 1,000 tribal leaders, who have been target killed since 2003 due to their anti-Taliban stance, have been involved in violent acts of revenge despite the fact that the families hold the ISI responsible for the killings of relatives and tribal leaders. These families can rightly be called pillars of Pakhtunwali in FATA. If these families have refrained from violent acts of revenge, the ordinary tribesmen are even less likely to commit violence for revenge. This explains why hundreds of thousands of tribesmen have preferred to live and work in degrading conditions during the displacement caused by the Pakistan Army operations rather than joining the Taliban who offer lucrative salaries. The elders of the Kala Khel tribe — in response to the deadly Taliban attack on their school children — requested the chief justice of Pakistan (CJP) to take revenge from the Taliban to give them justice. There are countless other examples of this kind in FATA.
The suicide bombings that have struck Pakistan are part and parcel of the strategic calculus of the Pakistani security establishment and the al Qaeda jihadi ideology, which has nothing to do with the tribal culture or sufferings of the tribal people in the war on terror.
(To be continued)
. It brings a little wry smile to my face.
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