Early this year in January a rather dapper looking Pashtun shopkeeper Naqeebullah Mehsud got shot to death in Karachi. Nothing out of ordinary! Just another day in office for the establishment's blue eyed boy SSP Rao Anwar of the Sindh police. He would most likely have received a medal and promotion for this kill but for the fact that the dead man was an innocent whose entire list of crimes consisted of having a wrong name and being at the wrong place at the wrong time. This also would have been ignored but there was another young man who just would not let that happen- a veterinary doctor named Manjoor Pashteen.
He had earlier midwifed now famous Pashtun Tahafuz Movement in 2014 to champion the rights of his people, specially the right to live. Common wisdom conservatively puts the number of disappearances and extra judicial killings in Pakistan in hundreds if not thousands and they have continued to rise over the years. The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) recorded 338 executions in police encounters in 2010, an alarming 50% increase from the 226 executions that took place in 2009. Investigations were launched only in 25 of the 338 cases, following protests by families of the victims.
So Manjoor has been successful in garnering nation wide support and in organising large demonstrations and protest demanding justice in this case. Establishment typically at first shielded the culprit ,helping him disappear. Hoping for the movement to die down. That did not happen and the PTM gained speed. At the same time they also moved in from the left flank and unleashed their stooges in the media that on one hand declared Manjoor variously to be a foreign spy working for NDS; a RAW agent; a CIA plant and a Khwarij ( apostate). On the other hand they blacked him out by providing zero coverage in the mainstream media.
Unfortunately for them PTM gathered steam despite all of these counter measures and is now being treated a serious threat to the State itself.
There are several regional ; religious; ethnic and linguistic groups and subgroups in the area that became Pakistan in 1947. Broadly speaking they were Punjabi; Sindhi ; Baloch; Pathan; Muhajir ( immigrants from the rest of India) and the biggest group of them all - Bengali ! Well in the only such instance in the history of the world numerical majority left the federation of Pakistan after a bloody battle; citing injustice ; discrimination and repression. It is now a new country called Bangladesh.
Muhajir community has constantly and loudly complained of the same repression, disappearances, extra judicial killings and at various forums regretted being part of Pakistan. For now the establishment has succeeded in dividing their Movement but for how long is a question?
Jiye Sindh movement has not died , just gone underground. Same litany of woes as above. So that brings us to Balochistan! Needless to say it is a very sore point with Pakistan. Their Achilles heel so to say. To put it mildly Baloch have had it , period! They are all packed and ready to walk out right at this very moment and give Pakistan a death blow.
That leaves Punjabi, considered the core of the establishment and Pathan/Pakhtun communities. Is Manjoor Pashteen important? You bet he is. Even if one disregards Pakhtun community's Afghan connections ; he is the only one standing between Pakistan's fig leaf of fighting terrorism and exposing them as a state that has used terrorism as a state policy within and outside. A discredited cabal that chooses to imprison Shakil Afridi instead of rewarding him for helping neutralize Bin Laden is on a very shaky ground. Manjoor Pashteen maybe the very last straw.
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