A Man among Men

Nations, more often than not, while such eminent personages are alive, err on the side of failing to give their due to these outstanding women and men in the various realms of human endeavor. Only after Minerva’s owl has taken to wings and humans rise above the relative darkness in which incipient consciousness struggles, over many a year, does realisation arise to correct withheld recognition. But by that time, often, unfortunately, the time to culturally and socially gain from the minds of such redeemers has receded into useless fatuity. Lighting a candle in the noon of the day neither burnishes nor helps in the diminution of somber shadows of night.

Born on 14th November 1943 in the house of Malik Hikmat Shah, Qambarkhel Afridi, in a relatively non-decrepit yet honourable abode, among the inaccessible, unrestrained, crisp and free airs of Tirah, bred in dignified surroundings, partaking of unbounded scented environs of fierce independence, he grew up to become a beacon of Pashtoon identity in the footsteps of mighty peers. He stands tall in the shadow of indomitable spirits of freedom, regional rights and egalitarianism such as Bacha Khan, Abdus Samad Khan Achakzai, Afzal Khan Bangash, Wali Khan, Afzal Khan, Attaullah Mengal, GB Bizenjo and Akbar Bugti.

Lateef Khan Afridi who, by young and old in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, the legal fraternity and everyone else in Pakistan, familiar with this humane, principled and committed stalwart, was known and respectfully addressed by his honorific sobriquet, ‘Lala’.

Freedom was in his blood and bones. As a student at the Peshawar University Law College he was rusticated for participating in 1964 in support of Fatima Jinnah during her contest in the indirectly contested presidential elections against Ayub Khan.

He began his politics as member of the Mazdoor Kissan Party upholding peasant rights. During the 1970s as a leader of Ittehad-e-Qabail he championed voting rights for tribesmen and called for merger of ex-Fatas with erstwhile NWFP.

After the ANP was twice banned, once by Yahya and then by Bhutto, in 1979 Lateef joined the Ghous Bakhsh Bizenjo-led Pakistan National Party (PNP) becoming its president for the erstwhile NWFP, now Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa. Upon its merger with the ANP in 1986, he became its Secretary General and later its Senior Vice President. From 1997 up to 1999 he remained a member of the National Assembly contesting from the NA-46 constituency of Khyber Agency.

Until he was gunned down on 16th January 2023 in the precincts of Peshawar High Court, ostensibly for reasons of family vendetta, Lateef Afridi remained a torch-bearer of progressive activism, regional rights, rule of law and human rights. He always stood in the forefront of movements for the restoration of democracy and judicial supremacy playing a yeomanry role in the pro-democracy, anti-Ayub protests and the movement for the restoration of judiciary during 2007-2009.

Five times elected as the President of Peshawar High Court Bar Association he became the President of the Supreme Court Bar Association in 2020. Yet he always remained a hero unrecompensed sans any state civil award, never seeking or craving for status, position or fame. Men who uphold torches of principled unrighteousness are often tempted with prices of their consciences. But Lateef Afridi put paid to worldly renown in favour of un-compromising commitment to integrity and unextinguishable freedom.

In a lifelong journey of a yearning for truth, justice for his peoples, he always fought all that was unrighteous, and sought to steer a path of solidarity, humanity and inclusivity. He remained a staunch believer that misguided state policies, ever since 1979, of seeking western strategic depth as a counterfoil to eastern threats, had turned the lands of the Pashtoons into ruinous battlegrounds over four decades, ushering untold blood and loss primary of Pashtoons astride the Durand Line.

He leaned towards the new, educated, youthful tribal forces represented in PTM, seeking true peace in the border regions, warning of impending dangers of this area becoming yet again a new war zone in the evolving worldwide geostrategic developments. In 2022 he joined the NDM and championed the call for an International Peace Conference to avoid this region regressing once again into another backyard of big power rivalry with disastrous consequences for the area and its peoples.

No chauvinist, he always sought bringing together of people of varied cultures and languages within an accommodative national paradigm. From one end to another he remained until his last a nationalist, one who firmly believed that in cultural, literary and linguistic diversity and unreserved accommodation lay the answer to federal unison. Only in inclusive partnership and belonging accommodation have variegated countries, he was convinced, proved to be vibrant economies and polities.

As a yearning spirit he sought to bring peace not only to his own people but the country as a whole, including all neglected minorities. He became a centre for the righteous deprived, speaking up for the forgotten ‘missing persons’, for the mother who lost a youthful son, he proffered a shawl over her head, contending free of charge court cases for the benighted poor or those deprived of justice. For nationalist causes he was a doyen, bestowing dignity and honour on undying human quest for emancipation and welfare.

On 10th March 2023 in a Commemorative Memorial Function in honour of Lateef Afridi held in Peshawar, leaders of various political parties including PTI, ANP, PMLN, JUI, PTM and NDM as well as members of civil society, legal community and intelligentsia extolling Lateef Afridi cast light on his innumerable qualities of head and heart.

Some verses from a poem, I Do Not Lament, But Celebrate, recited by the author are reproduced below:

“Gallant to the weak/Mindful shone/The fallen foe with/Brocade adorned

This man among men/Fearless treads/Wielding the sword/Of untrammeled song

A hand of succor/Puts a shawl over/A mother/Grievingly torn

Fair and boisterous/Manner his/Lateef his presence/Lateef his fame

He has no name/A metaphor of these/Mountains and vales/He became

Wazir, Mahsud, Afridi/Khattak, Yousafzai/Bangash among these/Of burning fame

A wisp of cool/Winds of Kurram/Shawal, this country/Pashtoon his domain

Lateef Afreedi/A shamla he gave/Them all/Erect and tall

Royal gait/Sikaram tall/Let’s not bereave/But celebrate”

Published in The Express Tribune, July 24^th, 2023.

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