Opinion: Taliban are Pak Army proxies, not Pashtun nationalists
Farhat Taj
Those who insist that Taliban are Pashtun nationalists claim that Pashtun tribes have historically preferred to be led by religious figures (mullahs) rather than their traditional tribal leaders in the event of a foreign invasion. They specifically refer to the Pashtun tribal resistance in FATA led by religious leaders against the colonial British-Indian government, and conclude that the present-day Taliban terrorism rooted in religious discourse is an indigenous and popular Pashtun resistance to a foreign invasion. The Taliban, we are told, are Pashtun nationalists that the world must deal with as true sons of the Pashtun soil, rather than outright terrorists who no human society could accommodate.
The way the Taliban are being associated with the Pashtun history and the current popular Pashtun will implies that there are no non-Pashtun Taliban in Pakistan Afghanistan, and that the Taliban outfits exclusively draw its leaders and foot soldiers from the Pashtun ethnic group.
Such authors also seem to imply that from the Pashtun perspective, a foreign invader always means a non-Muslim invader. Thus the entire narrative presents a homogeneous picture of the wider Pashtun society (a large complicated patchwork of tribes, sub-tribes, clans and sub-clans) that is devoid of internal dissent, contestation and ambiguity that can be expected in any human society in the world. On one hand they claim that the Pashtun are fiercely independent, and on the other hand they assume absolute unanimity of opinion among the 'fiercely independent' people in terms of their response to foreign states. This entire narrative is highly misleading.
The fact is that the Pashtun tribes have never made any distinction between a foreign Muslim and foreign non-Muslim invader and have resisted both with equal vigour. Khushal Khan Khattak, Darya Khan and Aimal Khan, all historic symbols of Pashtun nationalism, had put forward a long armed resistance to the occupation of the Pashtun land by the Muslim Mughal army led by the most 'poise' Mughal ruler of India, Aurangzeb Alamgir. Neither Khushal Khan nor Darya Khan and Aimal Khan were mullahs.
In the 19th century, foreign fanatic Indian Muslims led by Syed Ahmad Barelvi, also an Indian Islamist, came to 'Islamize' the Pashtun tribes against their wishes and their socio-cultural norms. The Yousafzai tribal leaders had a grand jirga that concluded that there was no way to get rid of the 'Indian Mujahideen' and their 'Islam' but to massacre them all. In pursuit of the jirga's decision, the Yousafzai tribesmen attacked the mujahideen killing several of them. The rest fled to the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa town of Balakot where a waiting Sikh army killed each one of them, including their leader. The Yousafzai tribal leaders were not mullahs.
The towering symbol of Pashtun nationalism Samad Khan Achakzai was not a mullah. The secular and democratic Pashtun nationalist movement led by him was linked with the Indian National Congress party's struggle against the British. The universal symbol of Pashtun nationalism, Bacha Khan, was not a mullah. He resisted the British colonial invasion of the Pashtun land in league with Mahatma Gandhi's non-violent movement against the British in India. Even the mullahs or religious leaders in FATA who put forward armed resistance to the British were basically Pashtun nationalists with religious orientations. Almost all of them had cordial relations with Samad Khan Achakzai and Bacha Khan's secular ethno-nationalist movements against the British. One of the religious leaders, Haji Turangzai, was so close to Bacha Khan that some contemporary British officers even thought that he was father-in-law of Bacha Khan, which is untrue. None of the religious leaders in FATA was known to have attacked the activities undertaken by Bacha Khan's Khudai Khidmatgar movement. They had never attacked the schools in villages and towns established by Bacha Khan. None of them was known to have attacked or even verbally opposed the traditional Pashtun decision-making body, the tribal jirga. Actually, all of them frequently consulted tribal jirgas on matters related to their resistance to the British as well as other matters. They had never attacked women, children, tribal leaders, religious scholars, mosques, weddings and funerals in their armed resistance to the British colonization. They had never banned music and dance, two prominent aspects of the Pashtun culture. In short, their attitude, actions and conduct had been totally different from those of the Taliban in Pakistan and Afghanistan today.
Those who promote such false notions about the Pashtun history also give the impression that the Pashtun struggle against foreign invasions has been devoid of any pragmatism, and that all Pashtun tribes have always been united against all invaders. The fact is that the tribes' responses to the foreign invaders have been pragmatic, including interactive cooperation with the invaders.
Minus a few eventful encounters between the British and the Afridi tribes in Darra Adam Khel - such as the Afridi snatching of the British rifles and the killing of a British officer and kidnapping of another British officer's daughter by a group of Afridi tribesmen - the tribes in Darra Adam Khel remained cooperative towards the British. Following an agreement with the tribes, the British built Kohat-pass road through the Afridi territory, a vital British link to Afghanistan. Contrary to several other tribes, the Darra Afridi tribes cooperated with the British during the 3rd Anglo-Afghan war in 1919, the third British colonial invasion of Afghanistan. Pashtun Shia tribes in Kurram even went a step further. Due to their differences with the then government of Afghanistan, they invited the British to take control of their area. The British accepted the invitation by taking over the administration of Kurram Agency in 1890. Several tribes across FATA entered in agreements with the British-Indian governments to receive allowance from the government in lieu of their cooperation with the British authorities.
Moreover, countless Pashtun tribesmen across various tribes joined the British imperial army. During the second war many of the tribal soldiers were sent by the British on war fronts in Asia and Africa. Many of them died fighting for the British. Similarly, the tribesmen also joined the Khasadar forces, the tribal police force raised by the British for assistance of the civil administration in FATA. Also, the British established two paramilitary forces, Frontier Corps and Frontier Constabulary. Both the FCs exclusively draw their ranks and files from the Pashtun tribes on the eastern side of the Durand Line. If the tribes had been so universally anti-British, as portrayed in the war on terror literature, why would the British-Indian state entrust the FCs, composed of Pashtun soldiers, to guard one of its vital buffer zones, FATA, from Russian intervention as well as 'anti-state' activities of some of the tribal people. Commenting on the relatively low numerical strength of Orakzai tribesmen in the British military, a colonial author, White King, says this in his contemporary book The Orakzai Country and Clans: "The paucity of Orakzais in the native ranks (of the military) is not due to any distaste for service, but to the fact that few regiments enlist them (Orakzai tribesmen), either because it is against the rules to do so or because their soldierly qualities are not properly appreciated... I am led to believe that there is no difficulty in recruiting Orakzais (tribesmen in the military), and more could easily be enlisted, if required (by the British-Indian government" (pp 126-127).
In short, the narrative in the media and the academia that depicts the Taliban as a manifestation of the continuation of the Pashtun history of resistance to foreign invasions contradict the history.
