Traditionally violence has been a key aspect of Pashtun society yet generally it is a very tolerant society. The violence that for centuries had been an inalienable part of Pashtun society was largely employed in personal enmities, family feuds and tribal warfare. It had very clear principles and parameters and used to be specific, purposive, limited and shorn of terror. Such violence was rooted in the centuries-old Pashtun cultural code known among the members of the ethnic group as Pashtunwali. Some key elements of Pashtunwali include nang (honour), Tora (valour), khegara (chivalry), melmastia (hospitality), Puth (self-esteem, pride and protection of self-respect), Wafa (loyalty to kin, soil, nation, humans) and above all badal (revenge).
Pashtunwali has been a profound and comprehensive all-encompassing modus vivendi of Pashtuns exclusively; it is not found in a similar form in other cultures or among other ethnic groups. Therefore, Pashtuns are considered to have one of the strongest cultures in terms of resistance to change. This may be considered as a great quality by Pashtuns but may in fact not be. If a culture remains inflexible for a long time, it becomes a great impediment to the progress and development of its adherents.
“Talking specifically of traditional violence in Pashtun culture and its roots in Pashtunwali, it has been the elements of nang (honour), puth (self-esteem) and above all badal (revenge) which had been motivating the violence [in Pashtun society],” says Dr. Naila Qazi, a sociologist at University of Peshawar. “Logically speaking, every human must have honour and self-esteem and it must be non-negotiable because it is very much part of the psychodynamic makeup of human nature. However, it is the interpretation of honour which is different in different cultures — what sociologists refer to as culture-relativity. For Pashtuns, the violation of one’s self-esteem through encroachment on life, liberty, property and most importantly family members’ — particularly womenfolk — is tantamount to infliction of great injustice which ought to be avenged. This has been the fundamental reason for violence that remained prevalent among Pashtuns for centuries. Noticeably, such violence remained limited and had not been widespread or indiscriminate,” argues the professor.
Transformation of violence
Since the turn of the 21st century, however, a new kind of violence has surfaced in Pashtun society which has also made many members of that society very intolerant. While earlier the violence was limited and specific to only male members of rivals and had solid causes, the new violence among Pashtuns is widespread and unlimited. Non-combatants, women, children and guests, who were not to be subjected to violence by any means, remained untouched for centuries, became victims of family enmities and disputes in this new kind of violence. Moreover, the new trend of violence was not directed at one’s rivals or enemies alone but at anyone accused of having heterodox beliefs or even someone not ready to accept ‘friendship’ (a euphemism for illicit sexual relations).
Nobel Laureate Malala Yousafzai, who was shot and injured by the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) militants in Swat in 2012; Mashal Khan who was killed by an unruly mob of fellow students in Abdul Wali Khan University, Mardan in 2017 and the less publicized case of Safoora Bibi, a madrassa teacher, killed by her three female colleagues in 2022 in Dera Ismail for acting upon a dream one of the culprits had in which she supposedly saw Safoora committed blasphemy: all these victims are examples that sufficiently establish the rise and proliferation of a strange violence in Pakistani Pashtun subculture. In many ways, the new violence violates the core principles of Pashtunwali.
Apart from the above-mentioned examples the most important indicator of this new kind of violence has been the rise of the Pakistani Pashtun Taliban in erstwhile FATA, now merged in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province through 25 Constitutional Amendment of 2018 of the Constitution of Pakistan.
The TTP itself claims that it emerged as a result of the 2001 US invasion of neighbouring Afghanistan and Pakistan’s siding with Washington in its Global War on Terror. Independent analysts have been considering the rise of the Pakistani Taliban among the Pashtuns and their trademark suicide attacks as a result of great social injustice due to which the young men were frustrated and sought to use violence as an expression of their stirred up emotions. Dr Qazi explains, “This account of analysts is partially true. Because Pashtun society has lacked a comprehensive feudal order and consequent strict hierarchical structure, what sociologists refer to as social stratification, which could result in exploitation of the peasants, which may have resulted in the rise of peasantry against the gentry as in France of the late 18th century. Then, Pashtun society has been completely bereft of an industrial base. Therefore, there can be no question of a social stratification and a class conflict which, in Karl Marx’s terms, resulted in a moneyed capitalist class [bourgeois] and a working class [proletariat].”
So either the feudal order or the capitalist order have been the two key causes of large-scale social injustice in the societies of recent centuries and led to revolutions like the French and American Revolutions of the 18th Century and the October Revolution in Russia in 1917 which resulted in the establishment of the Communist Soviet Empire. In fact, Pashtun society has been rather comprehensively a tribal society which may claim to be internally egalitarian but indeed is not. Violence traditionally in Pashtun society remained limited, purposive as the tribal order prevented and resisted injustice through a mechanism of having collective security and collective response (if one employs the term from international politics of strategic alliances between and among states). Thus if an individual member or family was subjected to injustice then the entire tribe would come to their rescue. This prevented the rivals of a feud from perpetrating violence and disputes were resolved through arbitration known as Jirga (a crude jury or council system headed by tribal elders).
The rise of the Taliban, and with them large-scale indiscriminate violent terrorism, was the result of the weakening of the traditional Pashtun tribal system. The Taliban employed Islam as their doctrine which cross-cuts tribal and ethnic bonds. The weakening of the traditional Pashtun tribal system also resulted in empowering one very important class, that of clergymen or mullahs. In the classical tribal system of Pashtuns, mullahs had a significantly marginalised role. They had only ceremonial roles during festivities and occasions like funerals and had to live by the alms offered by the community. Consequently, mullahs had a weak socioeconomic status among Pashtuns.
However, the mullahs got the opportunity to alleviate their socioeconomic conditions when the Soviet forces occupied Afghanistan. Under General Ziaul Haq, the US and Saudi-funded anti-Soviet resistance (given the name of Jihad) used mullahs to spearhead this resistance. In order to impart training to mullahs and their talib (students of Muslim seminaries or madrassas), thousands of madrassas were established in the Pashtun areas of Pakistan. These madrassas were used as training grounds and indoctrination centres. The Afghan Taliban were largely the product of these Pakistani madrassas. Later, the Afghan Taliban influenced the Pakistani Taliban to rise as a group in 2007 and to support the former as they waged an insurgency against the US-NATO forces in Afghanistan, backed by 300,000 plus Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF).
The violence perpetrated by the terrorist groups has been so terrorizing and loathsome that each and every Pashtun suffered its profound psychological consequences. For instance, the terrorist attack on Army Public School in 2014, killing around 140 schoolchildren and staff members, has had a lasting impact on Pashtuns. This has been a key reason for the formation of large-scale violent social attitudes among the Pashtuns who began to think that the only way to have their way is through indiscriminate and ruthless violence. In particular, when people saw that the state and its institutions were unable and unwilling to protect them from terrorism, they decided to resort to violence as the only means of protection. Likewise, the perpetrators of violence consider the authorities’ docility as a license to employ violence.
Historically, women, children and guests have been protected among Pashtuns and their person and property considered inviolable during any conflict or dispute. However over the last few decades, there have been innumerable reported instances of killing of women, children and even guests among Pashtuns in conflicts and disputes. This is a clear indication that a new kind of violence has enveloped Pashtun society and a clear indication of a sea change. For instance, on June 12, 2022, police in the Chota Lahore locality of Swabi district arrested a labourer named Miraman, who had killed a man’s wife and daughter over a petty dispute of delayed payment of 4,000 rupees.
Starting in the 1960s and peaking in the 1970s and the 1980s, the migration of hundreds of thousands of Pashtun men as labourers to Arab countries to earn livelihood brought Pashtun society in contact with the Arab culture in the Gulf countries. These men got socialised in the stringent ethos of Arab cultures where violence was a norm. Violent treatment of their tribal and general rivals has been an established practice in Arab cultures. This violence was quite different from what the Pashtuns experienced back home. These men brought back home not only money but also the many violent practices of their temporary abodes.
Simultaneously, the invasion of the Soviet Union in Afghanistan in 1979 and the migration of millions of Afghans to Pakistan, particularly the Pashtun-dominated regions, including Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP), erstwhile FATA and Balochistan also exposed Pakistani Pashtuns to Afghan culture. Although Afghanistan is a Pashtun-majority (42 percent) state and most of the Afghan refugees to Pakistan have mostly been Pashtuns, there are key differences in their cultural norms, among Pashtuns of Pakistan and Afghanistan. This migration of millions of Afghan refugees to Pakistan also exposed Pashtuns to another culture.
Advent of global terrorist groups
The shifting of Al Qaeda and its several affiliates to Pakistan’s Pashtun tribal lands in the aftermath of the US-NATO occupation of Afghanistan in November 2001 and the dislodging of the Afghan Taliban regime there played a great role in the rise of new violence in Pashtun society. Al Qaeda and affiliate groups like Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) were ferocious militant fighters and they only believed in violence as a means to have their way. When thousands and thousands of militants took up residence in Pakistan’s tribal areas, they not only served as a role model for local Pashtun youths but also provided money and weapons to them to wage jihad against the Pakistani state, which was in an alliance with ‘infidel’ America and the West.
The ruthless and barbarian tactics which these groups employed, particularly to kill any spies among the tribesmen suspected of working for Pakistani and US authorities, unleashed a reign of terror in these areas. This violence left a great psychological impact on the populations of these areas, particularly on the children and young men. According to social scientists, social milieu has a great bearing upon the behaviours of the inhabitants of an area. So, many people, particularly the illiterate and those not sufficiently exposed to outside world and having a narrow worldview, considered such violence by militant groups as justified and replicated the same in their personal matters.
Religious motivation
Another key factor in the rise of widespread violence in Pashtun society has been the wrong interpretation of holy texts. This has basically been due to the vested interest of a clerical class which can only profit from infusing intolerance and hatred on the basis of religion among the Pashtuns to make them violent. This has also weakened the traditional Pashtun values and ethos. An internationally acclaimed Peshawar-based Pakistani psychologist, having more than 50 years of experience of dealing with psychosocial issues of Pakistanis and Pashtuns, has an important take on this situation: “Historically, religion is predominant in Pashtun culture… except in places where religion was supported and made part of Pashtunwali. What we see today is a culture with a distorted view of religion in the form of misguided teaching and children are being trained as suicide bombers.”
Cultural contact and its effects
A fast growing population and migration, particularly from rural to urban areas, as well as contact with other cultures, particularly Arab societies, and through media, both social and mainstream media, has resulted in large-scale social complexity in Pashtun society. While some wholesome values and characteristics have been incorporated in Pashtuns as a result of this cultural contact and diffusion, it has also brought exposure to violent practices prevalent in other cultures. This interacted with the Pashtuns’ own violent means and resulted in violent practices that are widespread, indiscriminate and purposeless.
Pakistani Pashtuns reside in sizable numbers in every corner of Pakistan. Noticeably, Karachi has the largest Pashtun society not Peshawar or Kabul. Whatever violence Karachi has seen in the last four decades has something to do with rise of new violence among Pashtuns. The Taliban presence in Karachi is a case in point. Moreover, it was the Pashtun-dominated TTP which motivated the rise of the Pakistani Punjabi Taliban and the two together once held a firm grip over South Waziristan and North Waziristan as well as Swat. Thus the emergence of a new kind of violence among Pashtuns is a very serious threat to the Pakistani state and society which needs to be addressed on a war footing in order to protect the society from its pervasive negative effects.
Dr Raza Khan is an analyst in the areas of security, politics, public policy and governance having a doctoral degree and two decades of work experience with national and international organisations and diplomatic missions. He can be reached at razamzai@gmail.com
All facts and information are the sole responsibility of the writer