Some Pakistani opponents of the Pashtunistan issue challenge the central tenet of the Afghan argument that Afghanistan is the sovereign state of Pashtuns. Pakistan's rulers like President Ayub Khan, who was an ethnic Pashtun, opposed the separation of NWFP from Pakistan. He believed there was a difference between the Pakhtunistan advocated by Ghaffar Khan, who initially favored independence from both Pakistan and Afghanistan, and the Pukhtunistan promoted by Afghanistan, which sought to annex the region.
An important development in Pakistan during the Ayub period (1958-1969) was the gradual integration into Pakistani society and the military-bureaucratic establishment. It was a period of Pakistan's political history which saw a large number of ethnic Pashtuns holding high positions in the military and the bureaucracy. Ayub himself was a non-Pashto speaking ethnic Pashtun belonging to the Tarin sub-tribe of the Hazara district in the Frontier. The growing participation of Pashtuns in the Pakistani Government resulted in the erosion of the support for the Pashtunistan movement in the Province by the end of the 1960s.[21]
Many ethnic Pashtuns support the status quo in regards to Pashtun influence in Pakistan and consider the Pashtunistan movement dead. They point out various Pashtun leaders, intellectuals and cricketers (e.g. Imran Khan) who have contributed to Pakistan and the level of influence ethnic Pashtuns enjoy in Pakistan. They also point out the influence of Pashtuns in the creation of Pakistan. For example, of the four co-signatories of the pamphlet "Now or Never" calling for an independent Pakistan, three were ethnic Pashtuns from the Khyber Agency. Also, one of the senior-most leaders in the Pakistan Movement, Abdur Rab Nishtar, was a Pashtun of the Kakar tribe. He was a close confident of Muhammad Ali Jinnah, along with Liaquat Ali Khan, and was a frequent critic of the Congress establishment in the NWFP led by Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan and Khan Abdul Jabbar Khan.
Considering the fact that Pashtuns live in every province of Pakistan, and that 25 per cent of Pakistan's army - the most influential body in Pakistan - is Pashtun, many Pashtuns feel they have considerable influence in Pakistan and see it as their homeland. Karachi, rather than Kabul or even Peshawar, is the largest Pashtun city in the world, with close to 7 million Pashtuns by some estimates.[22] These pro-Pakistan Pashtuns claim to be the majority and point to democratic elections in Northwest Frontier Province as proof of this. They are highly sensitive to the idea of Pashtun separatism or Pashtunistan, which they believe would be unsustainable without deep ties to Pakistan.
Other Pashtuns residing in Pakistan feel the issue of Pashtunistan is exploitative and meant to disrupt relations between Pakistan and Afghanistan. They point to continuous and tacit support for the issue emanating from foreign countries such as during the war in Afghanistan in which the Soviet Union financially funded several campaigns to promote Pashtunistan.
Pashtun nationalists in Pakistan, however, are cognizant of the fact that Afghanistan simply wishes to annex Pashtunistan, and are weary of its support. The old claim that Pashtunistan could rely on Afghanistan instead of Pakistan has also been diminished, since Afghanistan's economy and infrastructure have been decimated. Further, many members of Afghanistan's non-Pashtun majority express hostility and antagonism towards Pashtuns, since the Taliban is primarily Pashtun. Pashtun nationalists no longer can find a reliable friend in Afghanistan, or the USSR, and their disdain for Indians (Pashtun Nationalists see Punjabi culture as oppressive, but view India as the ultimate source of those traditions) means that few are left to support Pashtunistan.]