Pashtun long march: A near blackout in Pak media even as activists protest

The Pashtun Tahaffuz Movement (PTM) – which came to the fore after the extrajudicial killing of a young Pashtun man at the hands of police officer Rao Anwar in Karachi earlier this year – continues to march on in Pakistan. It recently held an impressive rally in Peshawar – the Pashtun heartland – without the support of the traditional Pashtun nationalist outfit, the Awami National Party (ANP), which considers itself the political heir to ‘Frontier Gandhi’ – the late Abdul Ghaffar Khan.

The rally brought together a large number of the families of missing Pashtun men and boys, who they claim were forcibly disappeared by the Pakistan Army during and after its operations in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) – where the country’s constitutional provisions do not apply – and in the so-called “settled” areas like the Swat Valley, which is part of the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province.

The PTM’s key leader, Manzoor Pashteen, continues to capture the imagination of the Pashtuns with his unassuming demeanour, straightforward explanation of the movement’s main objectives, clear roadmap and resolve to persevere where others have faltered. His plain talk reiterates the movement’s key demands, including the release of those abducted by the army who are innocent and producing before the courts the ones who may have any charges against them.