On June 8, dozens of demonstrators stood in front of the Pakistani consulate in Frankfurt. Many of them wore red Mazari caps, once popular only in northern Afghanistan, especially in the city of Mazar-e-Sharif.
The credit for making the cap famous across the world should perhaps go to Manzoor Ahmed Pashteen, 26, from Waziristan. Mr. Pashteen, who is leading the Pashtun Tahafuz Movement (PTM), has taken his battle for Pashtun rights to other countries, including Germany.
The protesters outside the Frankfurt consulate were mostly ethnic Pashtuns, from not only Pakistan but also Afghanistan. However, there also were some Sindhis and Balochs, expressing their solidarity with Mr. Pashteen’s movement and their anger against Islamabad’s politics against minorities, especially in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) that have seen many military operations and CIA drone strikes.
“We have gathered to talk about these issues. Our people on both sides of the Durand Line [the name of the official border between Afghanistan and Pakistan] will not tolerate Pakistan’s politics any more,” said Jawed Aziz, 31, who arrived from Stuttgart and has relatives in both countries.
“Pashtuns are being oppressed for decades. We want to gain as much attention as possible, this is just the beginning,” he said. Similar gatherings and demonstrations took place in several European cities. The red Mazari cap was omnipresent.
Poor and underdeveloped
Pakistan’s Pashtun-dominated areas are known to be poor, underdeveloped and haunted by war, violence and extremism. Pashtun activists, journalists and other civilians are regularly abducted and murdered by Pakistani security forces. One of them was Naqibullah Mehsud, an aspiring model from Waziristan killed in Karachi in January this year. Authorities claimed that Mehsud and three other murdered Pashtun men were “Islamic State (IS)-linked terrorists”. Mehsud’s killing ignited the current wave of protests and made hundreds of thousands of Pashtuns march across Pakistan for their basic human rights.
Pakistan’s establishment is not happy with this development. For example, the charismatic Mr. Pashteen himself has already been smeared as a “foreign agent”, who is funded by India’s and Afghanistan’s intelligence services. On the other hand, many supporters of the PTM believe that the establishment’s ties with several militant groups in the tribal areas are an open secret.
A few days ago when Ali Wazir, one of the PTM leaders close to Mr. Pashteen, survived an assassination attempt, it was said that his attackers fled to a local military base. While the government claimed that paramilitary forces intervened in clashes in Wana, Waziristan, where Mr. Wazir was present, locals told news agencies that former members of Taliban-linked groups were the culprits and described them as “good Taliban” since the government is tolerating or supporting them.
“Our people need education, and that’s the reason why I have come to this place to protest. Being born in the Pashtun tribal areas means that you face violence from your very first day. Instead of becoming educated, you learn how to use a gun or how to smuggle drugs,” said Abdul Rahman Lakanwal, 35, an Afghan journalist living in Germany at the moment. “These events are also connected with the situation of Pashtuns in Afghanistan. We are bleeding in both countries and this has to stop,” he said.
Emran Feroz is a freelance journalist based in Stuttgart, Germany.
