Re: Musharraf to Karzai: "Put your own house in order"
ANP president Asfandiyar Wali Khan calls the FATA situation a conspiracy against Pashtun nation. Read the following news.
*"Peshawar : Just days after the merger of the Pakhtoonkhawa Qaumi Party (PQP) with the Awami National party (ANP) led by Afzal Khan Lala and Asfayandar Wali Khan respectively a huge Pashtun convention in Peshawar has called for the elimination of the British-created imaginary Durand Line that has divided the Pashtu areas in Pakistan and Afghanistan for more than 100 years. *
*Speaking on the occasion after securing a unanimous show of hands for a resolution to remove the Durand Line, Asfayandar Wali Khan, the chief of the ANP, said that it was imperative to do away with the imaginery line. He said that this line had artificially seperated the Pashtu speaking people for over a century and now the time had come to eliminate it. *
*Giving the example of East and West Germany, he said that if the collapse of the controversially-erected Berlin Wall in the early 1990s has led to the creation of a unified Germany, he saw no reason why a separate state for Pakhtuns could not be created by wiping out the Durand Line. “ It's a line whose time has ended “, announced Asfander Wali Khan, who is the grandson of Khan Abdul Gafar Khan, the frontier Gandhi. *
*Extending an argument to support his claim, Asfayandar Wali Khan further went on to say that if Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf could open the Line of Control at different points to re-establish broken ties between Kashmiris separated from their kith and kin for several decades, he said the same procedure could be applied in the case of the Durand Line, created by the British. “ The Pashtu speaking people can no longer accept this imaginery division “, said Wali Khan. *
*The Durand Line is a term for the poorly marked 2,640-kilometer-long border between Afghanistan and Pakistan.After being defeated in two wars against Afghans, the British succeeded in 1893 in imposing the Durand Line dividing Afghanistan and what was then British India (now the North-West Frontier Province and Balochistan of Pakistan). The imaginary line was named after Sir Mortimer Durand, the then foreign secretary of the British Indian government. It was then agreed upon by representatives of both Afghanistan and the British Empire, but deeply resented by the Afghan Emir Abdur Rahman Khan.The border was drawn intentionally to cut through the Pashtun tribes whom the British feared and may have tried to disunite.The treaty was to stay in force for a 100-year period.This disputed land was legally to be returned to Afghanistan in 1993. *
*Asfander Wali Khan said that the philosophy of Pakhtoons revolved around the elimination of the Durand line to enable Pakhtoons living in the North West Frontier Province, Balochistan and in the tribal areas of Pakistan and Afghanistan to form a state of their own. *
*Khan also expressed his regret over the Pakistan Army's operations in the tribal areas, terming it as a “ conspiracy against the Pakhtoon nation”. If a dialogue between Pakistan and India on the Kashmir issue was possible, why could Islamabad not enter into a dialogue with Pashtun leaders to arrive at a solution to the crisis in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas or FATA, he added. *
*After Asfayandar's speech, speaker after speaker from various Pashtu and Balochi tribes endorsed the view for the creation of Pakhtunwa. They said that Pashtuns living on both sides of the Durand line would eventually merge together. *
The tribal convention organised by the ANP also demanded the restoration of peace in the tribal areas and an immediate end to army operations. The convention also demanded justified representation of tribesmen in the NWFP Assembly and the lifting of a ban on political activities in FATA. *
*A demand was also made for banning FM radio broadcasts in FATA, saying such broadcasts were fanning sectarianism in the tribal agencies. *
*The convention also condemned the killing of FATA tribal elders and urged the government to conduct an inquiry into the incidents, besides stopping miscreants from operating in the bordering areas."