Your actually forgetting for now Pakhtunkhwa does not exist and if the Government does not get its act together it may never exist.
Its not wrong to speak out against anyone being massacred but its about time people took responsibility for their own actions. Why don’t the local Pakhtuns from the FATA do the decent thing and kick out the troublemakers – or do they want them to stay? Those troublemakers come with baggage – the American military machine which quite frankly the tribals would be crushed by.
Regardless of where Ranjit Singh entered he still managed to capture the Peshawar Valley and the Afghans have never been able to take it back since. I wont go in to a debate about Pakhtuns vs Punjabi Muslims because there is a lot of dirt to be thrown at both.
I have been Balochistan so many times and quite frankly I am bored of their lame excuses cursing Punjabis, Muhajirs or Pakistan when they can’t even how most of their tribal leaders live. Where the Baloch have settled ie Balochistan, Southern Punjab, Sindh – they are some of the most extremely feudal people. A lot of feudals within Sindh and Southern Punjab belong to Baloch origin.
There are MANY Punjabi and Urdu speakers living outside of the Army’s protection. In Quetta alone there may be up to 100,000 Punjabis.
Baloch and Pashtuns have had historical conflicts and conflicts within the 1980’s and 1990’s. The Baloch resent the fact a lot of their areas are Pashtun-ized and that so many businesses even in the Baloch heartlands are owned by Pashtuns. The Government has always supported Pashtuns against Baloch. The greatest threat to Baloch culture and economics is not Punjabis but Pashtuns. If Gwadar becomes a success it wont be Punjabis flocking there but Pashtuns.
The Sardars have killed a lot of their own people and probably CRUSH rebellious people in a far more cruel way than the Army will. Given the power and influence Baloch Sardar’s have I am pretty much sure they could get away with genocide. When Bugti was killed a whole tribe of Baloch were allowed back into Dera Bugti – he had forced them to leave.
I agree with Burqaposhx on point no2 – progress can only come when people want it to come. Some tribes have taken stupid oaths to make sure things don’t change n their area. People must want change and not just mobile phones.
On point no5 – women’s rights are probably at their lowest within the Balochistan and NWFP provinces in the whole of South Asia. The Baloch are more secular and progressive but eve they can be very conservative and the honour of womenfolk sadly shows a family’s status still. This is linked to education and these 2 regions contain some of the least developed regions in Pakistan. The Islamic rights given to women are all denied even in those so called Islam-ised areas.
As much as I hate seeing Pakistan being a ghulam to American policy it does nt mean I want extremists I power. I wish to see these trouble causing extremists dealt with in the proper way. If the tribal don’t want a war on their back then they should so something to kick these people out. The tribals are either aiding the extremists or taken over and cant do much now. At this moment in time the tribals should count themselves lucky it just has the half-hearted Pakistan Army to deal with – if the militants are not brought under control – the Americans will do much more about it. If these militants were bothered about Pakistan the would not behave the way they do – issuing directives like they are the elected representatives, closing girls schools, banning people from stopping shaving, suicide bombing, attacking the state security apparatus etc. This makes them ANTI-pakistan and they should be dealt with accordingly.
It is these militants which are destroying Pakistan the most right now.
The change must come within the tribal people – it wont come from Peshawar, Islamabad or Washington.