Re: Musharraf proposes to name NWFP as ‘Khyber’
khyber is a silly name because it does not represent the province at all.....the only thing it represents is that the afghan conquerors as well as turkic ie mughals, ghori etc tend to pass this way to reach Hind
pashtunkhwa/pashtunistan are suitable names for this province. the land of the pashtuns is an apt name. the only areas of nwfp where pashtuns are not a majority is chitral or hazara. many chitralis can speak pashtu and probably 40% of hazara is pashtu speaking overall.
afghania is a better name. this land was a part of afghanistan once and the vast majority of the inhabitants who live in this area share more in common with the people to the west of the durand line than their brothers to the east of the indus. afghania is a good name quite simply because its more neutral language wise, although babur the empreror never recognised the pashtu language. instead he reognised it as afghani. you should all read babur nama for furhter clarification.
as for the hindko speakers. the vast majority of todays non-pashtun population of sarhad are descendants of immigrants. a lot of the hindko speakers in hazara are basically pashtuns. so they would not object to afghania. their culture and way of life is still based on pashtunwali.
chitralies also have more in coomon with afghans that border their province than with hindko,punjabi or urdu speakers.
if you ask hindko speakers what their orgins were you would find out that many of them were of indian extraction be that rajput, urdu or whatever. so they are not really native to the area. a very high number of them are kashmiri's too - butts, some raja's, etc... then you have qazalbash's and syeds who also have more in common with afghan/pashtuns than others and nowadays many of these speak pashtu too.
as for d i khan a significant amount of the seraiki speakers there are of pashtun extraction so why they would object to afghania or even pashtunistan i do not know.
afghania is a better name over all and if you include quetta then the changazis there will feel no objection to it too.