Re: Wali Khan passes away..
To get back to the topic at hand:
Musharraf visits Wali Bagh
ISLAMABAD (Online): President Musharraf on Saturday made a short trip to Wali Bagh Charsadda to condole the death of veteran politician Wali Khan with his son ANP leader Asfand Yar Wali. Governor NWFP Khalil ur Rehman, Begum Nasim Wali Khan and other party leaders were also present on the occasion. President paid great tribute to the social and political services rendered by the late Wali Khan and said that he was a renowned politician who had always done politics on the basis of principle. President on the occasion also prayed for the eternal peace of the deceased and offered Fateha.
The NEWS in it’s recent special on the man wrote the following:
**Friends and foes
Together, they shaped the history of the country and the destiny of the nation, but together they always not were**
By Rahimullah Yusufzai
Khan Abdul Wali Khan’s life encompassed interesting and epoch-making times. Some of his contemporaries were political luminaries who impacted the lives of a large number of people in Pakistan and the region. He also left his mark on politics in the area. Together, they shaped the history of the country and the destiny of the nation.
His 89 long years in this world enabled Wali Khan to interact with countless important and unimportant people. Among his contemporaries in politics were Maulana Abul Ala Maudoodi, Mian Tufail Mohammad, Mufti Mahmud, Maulana Ghulam Ghous Hazarvi, Maulana Abdul Sattar Niazi, Professor Ghafoor Ahmad, Afzal Bangash, Abdul Samad Khan Achakzai, Khan Abdul Qayyum Khan, Mian Mumtaz Daultana, Sardar Shaukat Hayat, Mohammad Ali Bogra, Mushtaq Ahmad Gurmani, Maulana Abdul Hameed Khan Bhashani, Noorul Amin, Habib Jalib, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, Field Marshal Ayub Khan, Nawab of Kalabagh Amir Mohammad Khan, General Yahya Khan, Chaudhry Zahoor Elahi, Pir Pagara, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and many others.
Then there were his comrade-in-arms and colleagues who remained part of the same party or movement even if they were a little younger. Among them were the Baloch nationalists Nawab Khair Bakhsh Marri, Ghous Bakhsh Bizenjo and Sardar Attaullah Mengal and the Pakhtun lot including Arbab Sikandar Khan Khalil, Amirzada Khan, Ajmal Khattak, etc.
As Wali Khan never accepted any public office, he generally remained in opposition to most of his political contemporaries. Their relationship was, therefore, antagonistic most of the time. However, as old-fashioned politicians upholding values of our society, they seldom allowed politics to poison their social interaction. They respected each other and commanded respect.
It would be worthwhile to examine how Wali Khan’s style and ideology effected the politics of some of his contemporaries. At the same time, it would be instructive to know how his contemporaries impacted Wali Khan’s politics.
Jamaat-i-Islami (JI) founder Maulana Maudoodi and his successor Mian Tufail represented an ideology that was completely at odds with that of Wali Khan. Their Islamic agenda contrasted with Wali Khan’s nationalist and secular thoughts and their followers often confronted each other on the street and in educational institutions. The fact that both led parties known for their disciplined cadres and principled politics made them into formidable foes. The JI and ANP’s conflicting policies on Afghanistan and Kashmir also put them on the path of confrontation. It was unthinkable that the two parties would ever agree on anything.
However, the struggle for democracy provided the bond that bridged their seemingly unbridgeable differences. It often brought the JI and ANP under one roof as part of alliances transcending political frontiers. The recent JI-ANP coalition in the local government elections in the NWFP shocked those unfamiliar with the past alliances between the two parties. Critics called the alliance unnatural and opportunistic but it was neither the first time nor the last that political alliances were made or broken for transient gains rather than for ideological reasons.
**Despite his frequent anti-Punjab rhetoric, Wali Khan bonded well with some of his Punjabi contemporaries. Two of them, Sardar Shaukat Hayat and Chaudhry Zahoor Elahi, readily come to mind. They didn’t call him traitor as most politicians from Punjab did. That could be the major reason for their unusually warm relations. Sardar Shaukat Hayat’s Abbottabad-based sister Mahmooda Salim was a member of Wali Khan’s party and became legislator in the NWFP Assembly on its ticket. Chaudhry Zahoor Elahi’s political heirs, particularly son Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain, have strived to maintain those social ties. The subsequent alliance between Wali Khan’s family and Nawaz Sharif was in a way continuation of the old relationship with Punjabi politicians who were willing to respect political rivals and tolerate viewpoint different than their own. **
Wali Khan was never able to forgive Khan Qayyum, who was a follower of Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan until independence and had written a book critical of Quaid-i-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah and the Muslim League. Khan Qayyum subsequently defected to the PML to become the chief minister of NWFP and unleash a reign of terror against his former colleagues in the Khudai Khidmatgar movement. Wali Khan also suffered at his hands and the two bitterly called each other names. Khan Qayyum was at the side of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto when the latter politically victimised Wali Khan and his NAP companions.
One is tempted to think of the positive impact that friendly relationship between Wali Khan and the late Bhutto would have brought on Pakistani politics. On surface, they seemed natural allies but it so happened that they became bitter foes. Bhutto dismissed the NAP-JUI government of Sardar Attaullah Mengal in Balochistan, prompting chief minister Mufti Mahmud’s government in the NWFP to resign in protest. Not content with that, Bhutto ordered military operation against the Baloch tribes – Marri and Mengal – and drafted the Bugti chief Nawab Akbar Bugti to accomplish the task for him in the tribal hinterland of Balochistan. Wali and his Baloch and Pakhtun lieutenants were jailed on treason charges and left to rot in the Hyderabad prison. The aftermath of this unjust military action has continued to haunt politics in Pakistan, particularly in Balochistan and NWFP.
Prior to the military operation, Wali Khan and his companions had assisted Bhutto in writing the 1973 Constitution, the document that our politicians could proudly claim as their biggest achievement. Without their support, the Constitution would have lacked legitimacy because Wali and his colleagues represented the smaller provinces. Their refusal to back the Constitution not long after East Pakistan’s separation would have dealt a severe blow to the shaky federation of Pakistan.
**Sheikh Mujibur Rahman was Wali Khan’s contemporary in Pakistan until the creation of Bangladesh. The latter had advocated Sheikh Mujib’s right to form the government after the spectacular Awami League victory in the 1970 general election. In fact, Wali Khan’s was one of the saner voices in those heady days. Both Wali Khan and Sheikh Mujib wanted greater provincial autonomy and this stance brought them into confrontation with the Punjab and the military. Theirs was a relationship of respect but it failed to blossom in view of the growing distrust that Bengalis had developed about all West Pakistanis. **
The Baloch Sardars and Abdul Samad Khan Achakzai and Mufti Mahmud had been companions and allies of Wali Khan at one time or another. Achakzai walked out on him when Wali Khan befriended Khair Bakhsh Marri, Ghous Bakhsh Bizenjo and Attaullah Mengal. He felt Wali Khan had squandered a chance to unite all Pakhtuns in NWFP, Balochistan and FATA into one big province that could be named Pakhtoonkhwa or Pakhtunistan. The bitterness of that split remains to this day and Samad Achakzai’s son Mahmood Khan Achakzai still stays clear of the ANP and continues to head his own group, PMAP. As for the Baloch Sardars, they have gone their own way and split further down the line into separate Baloch-centred groups. Mufti Mahmud’s son Maulana Fazlur Rahman and Wali Khan’s political heirs are now poles apart and those unaware of the past are surprised to hear that the JUI and ANP, or NAP as it was then called, were once allies.
I’m bad, you’re good.