For generations, the Pathans have been handed two compliments that should perhaps have made us suspicious long ago: "Pathans are very brave" and "Pathans are very devout Muslims." As a Pathan and a practising Muslim, I increasingly wonder whether we should politely return both compliments. Not because Pathans lack courage. Not because Islam matters any less to us. But because courage is not encoded in Pakhtun blood nor does any ethnicity hold a monopoly over religious devotion. Brave people and sincere believers exist in every society.
The more interesting question is therefore not whether these descriptions are true. It is: why has it been so important to keep telling Pathans that they are exceptionally brave and exceptionally religious? History provides uncomfortable clues. The stereotype of the Pakhtun as an inherently martial people did not begin with the Afghan jihad. Colonial representations routinely portrayed frontier Pathans as warriors, violent tribesmen and members of a "martial race". Academic research suggests that such ideas outlived colonialism and continued influencing state perceptions of the tribal areas.
Then came Afghanistan. By 1979, rebellion was already under way against Afghanistan's communist government. Declassified American records show Pakistan supporting Afghan insurgents before the Soviet invasion of December that year; subsequently, the US, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan built an enormous covert pipeline of money and weapons for the Afghan resistance, much of it operating through Pakistan. Resistance to foreign occupation was real, and Afghans possessed their own reasons and agency for fighting.
But geopolitics requires mobilisation, and mobilisation works best when it speaks the language people already associate with themselves. For Pathans, two buttons were particularly easy to press. You are brave; therefore, you do not retreat. You do not fear death. You are a true Muslim; therefore, when war is presented as jihad, questioning it can begin to feel like questioning one's faith. During General Zia-ul-Haq's rule, state Islamisation and the Afghan jihad became deeply intertwined.
Human beings possess agency but agency is never exercised in a vacuum. If, from childhood, a man is repeatedly told that courage defines his ethnic worth, refusing to fight carries a psychological price. If faith is added to the equation, refusal may appear simultaneously cowardly, culturally dishonourable and religiously suspect. The person may still choose. But somebody has already helped construct the menu from which he chooses. And eventually the narrative becomes self-fulfilling. This is how the Pathans have been conditioned and which has caused much of their suffering.
Afghanistan became one of the great displacement tragedies of modern history. UNHCR records that the refugee population in Pakistan and Iran reached around six million during the 1980s. War mutated into civil war, Taliban rule, international intervention, insurgency and renewed Taliban rule. On the Pakistani side, the vocabulary changed from jihad to militancy, extremism, counterterrorism and military operations. The geography changed much less. Swat, Waziristan, Bajaur and other Pakhtun areas repeatedly became theatres of conflict.
After nearly half a century, perhaps Pathans should ask a brutally simple question: What have these flattering titles of bravery and faithfulness done for us? Where is it written that our children must inherit extraordinary courage rather than ordinary childhoods? Why must the Pakhtun continuously prove that he is fearless? Why must his religious sincerity be certified through political causes chosen by others? Perhaps the most revolutionary demand Pathans can now make is surprisingly modest: the right to be ordinary.
The right to send children to school rather than to ideological battlefields. The right to admire a scientist as much, if not more, as a warrior. The right to build businesses, labs, universities and tech companies. The right to question a cleric without surrendering Islam. The right to refuse someone else's war without surrendering honour. And the right to live without constantly demonstrating that we are braver or more religious than everyone else. In a nutshell, they should be allowed to say no to "exceptionalism".
from express tribune https://ift.tt/cIx4Upf
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