Pashtunistan

The maximum borders of Pashtunistan.

Pashtunistan (Template:Lang-ps) or Pakhtunistan (meaning land of the Pashtuns or Pakhtuns) is the name of a region that is inhabited by the Pashtun people since ancient time. It has been designated for the future sovereign state by some since the late 1940s when India was partitioned and Pakistan created. Pashtun nationalists believe this historic homeland was divided in 1893 by the Durand Line, a disputed and poorly-marked border between British India (now Pakistan) and Afghanistan.

The Pashtuns are the largest ethnic group in Afghanistan the second largest in Pakistan third They are concentrated mainly in the south and east of Afghanistan but also exist in northern and western parts of the country as the minority group. In Pakistan they inhabit mainly the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP); Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) region; Mianwali District; Attock District as well as parts of Balochistan and Gilgit-Baltistan in the north. The main language spoken in the delineated Pashtunistan region is Pashto.

History

The ancient name of Pashtunistan during 500 B.C. was recorded as Arachosia and inhabited by a people called the Pactyans.

www.pashtunistan.net The Pashtunistan area was called Pashtunkhwa or Pakhtunkhwa (Pakhtun Quarter, according to H. W. Bellew) or Paktika (according to Herodotus) and mentioned by many Pashto poets in their verses as Pakhtunkhwa since the 11th century.

The famous couplet of Ahmad Shah Durrani (Ahmad Shah Abdali) speaks of the association the people have with the region,

Da Dili takht herauma cheh rayad krhm, Zma da khkule Pukhtunkhwa da ghre saroona.

Translation: "I forget the throne of Delhi when I recall, The mountain peaks of my beautiful Pukhtunkhwa."

Despite sharing a common language and believing in a common ancestry, Pashtuns have rarely been united, and did not achieve unity until the 18th century. Another early Pashtun nationalist was the Pashtun "warrior-poet" Khushal Khan Khattak who was imprisoned by the Mughal emperor Aurangzeb for trying to incite the Pashtuns to rebel against the rule of the Mughals. The last Afghan empire (see Durrani Empire) of Ahmad Shah Durrani, which was established in 1747 and encompassed the Pashtun areas, united the Pashtuns until conflicts with the encroaching British Empire and the Ranjit Singh's Sikh kingdom both of whom were beaten back by the Pashtuns, led to the eventual dismemberment of the old Durrani Empire.

Following the decline of the Durrani Empire, the Pashtun domains began to shrink as they lost control of the regions (some parts only) now in Pakistan to the Sikhs, Balochis, and ultimately the British. The British arrived in the middle of the 19th century, and the Pashtunistan region became an area of importance for both the British and the Russians. The Anglo-Afghan wars were fought as part of the overall imperialistic Great Game that was waged between the Russian Empire and the British, and the Afghans found their territories greatly diminished as a result of border adjustments made as a result of British peace terms. During the reign of the Afghan "Iron" Amir Abdur Rahman, in the late 19th century, the Afghans gave up nearly half of the Pashtun territories to the British. The British finalized the agreement as part of their permanent political border with Afghanistan.

In 1905, the North-West Frontier Province was created and roughly corresponded to Pashtun majority regions within the British domain and seemed to indicate the permanence of the border from the British point of view. The Federally Administered Tribal Areas was created to further placate the Pashtun tribesmen who never fully accepted British rule and were prone to rebellions, while Peshawar was directly administered as part of a British protectorate state with full integration into the federal rule of law.

Afghanistan before the 1893 controversial Durand Line border

During World War I, the Afghan government was contacted by the Ottoman Turkey and Germany, through the Niedermayer-Hentig Mission, to join the Central Allies on behalf of the Caliph in a Jihad; some revolutionaries and Afghan leaders including a brother of the Amir named Nasrullah Khan were in favour of the delegation and wanted the Amir to declare Jihad.

That delegation included Kazim Bey, a Turk minister and special envoy of the last Sultan of Turkish Usmania dynasty — Muhammad V (known as Mohammad Khamis).

Kazim Bey carried a firman from the Khalifa in Persian. It was addressed to "the residents of Pathanistan." It said that when the British were defeated, "His Majesty the Khalifa, in agreement with allied States, will acquire guarantee for independence of the united state of Pathanistan and will provide every kind of assistance to it. Thereafter, I will not allow any interference in the country of Pathanistan." (Ahmad Chagharzai; 1989; PP: 138-139). However the efforts failed and the Afghan Amir Habibullah Khan maintained Afghanistan's neutrality throughout World War I (for more information see ).

Similarly, during the Cripps mission, and Cabinet Mission, the Afghan government made repeated attempts to ensure that any debate about the Independence of India must include Afghanistan's role in the future of the North-West Frontier Province. The British government wavered between reassuring the Afghan to the rejection of their role and insistence that NWFP was an integral part of British India.

The Khudai Khidmatgar were a non-violent group, and Ghaffar Khan openly claimed to have been inspired by Mahatma Gandhi. While the Red Shirts were willing to work with the Indian National Congress from a political point of view, the Pashtuns desired independence from both India and the newly created state of Pakistan following the departure of the British. When the decision for partition was announced, it included the condition of a referendum being held in the North West Frontier Province because it was ruled by the Khudai Khidmatgar-backed Congress government of Dr. Khan Sahib.

They inhabitants of the province were given two choices, both of which they did not want from the beginning: the choice to join either India or Pakistan, with whom they had nothing in common including language, culture, temperament, history. On 21 June 1947, Khudai Khidmatgar leaders met under the presidency of Amir Mohammad Khan at Bannu and believed that a referendum was inevitable and that the participants would declare that Pukhtuns did not accept India or Pakistan and announced a boycott of the referendum. The inhabitants of the North_West Frontier Province voted for joining Pakistan. So many different article has been written about pashtunistan that it become difficult to know what is what but all we do know is that pashtun and balochi wants their own land back and khorsahan is the new idea coming to pass. Thus it would now be very difficult to stop balochi and pashtun getting their land back. It is better for pakistan to give them their land back otherwise they may join soon Israel and India to put an end to pakistan altogether

Post partition

The Afghan government became the only government to oppose the entry of Pakistan into the United Nations, which was a few months later reversed by the Afghan government.

In July 1949, the Afghan Parliament declared that "it does not recognize the imaginary Durand or any similar Line." It formally cancelled all agreements with the British governments.

Afghan backed fighters crossed the Durand Line from Afghanistan to openly combat the Pakistani military between 1950 to 1955, and diplomatic relations were briefly severed during this tense period. Relations were resumed in 1951, but the issue remained unresolved. A constant propaganda war was waged between the two governments, while there was evidence to suggest that the Afghan government intentionally or unintentionally was encouraging secessionist activities in Pakistan, besides Afghanistan many Congress party leaders felt a sense of obligation to their former compatriots in the Khudai Khidmatgar movement.

As the Cold War progressed, Pakistan formally joined the Baghdad pact and CENTO because of its underlying security needs in relation to larger India. The Soviets had established closer ties to Afghanistan in 1955 and during a state visit by Soviet Premier Nikolay A. Bulganin, the USSR declared that it supported the right to self-determination of Pashtunistan, with the belief that any state would either be ruled by its Afghan allies, or be socialist in nature.

However despite the controversy, Afghanistan and Pashtun nationalists did not exploit Pakistan's vulnerability during the nation's 1965 and 1971 wars with India, and even backed Pakistan against a largely Hindu India. Further, had Pakistan been annexed by India, nationalists would have had to fight against a much bigger country than Pakistan for their independence.

In the 1970s, the roles between Pakistan and Afghanistan reversed, despite the Pakistan government's fresh crackdown on the Baloch and Pashtun Nationalist's by the government of Zulfiqar Bhutto. The Pakistan government decided to retaliate against the Afghan government's Pakhtunistan policy by supporting Islamist opponents of the Afghan government including future Mujahidin leaders Gulbadin Hekmatyar and Ahmed Shah Masood. This operation was remarkably successful, and by 1977 the Afghan government of Sardar Daud was willing to settle all outstanding issues in exchange for a lifting of the ban on the National Awami Party and a commitment towards provincial autonomy for Pashtuns, which was already guaranteed by Pakistan's Constitution, but stripped by the Bhutto government.

The Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan and civil war in Afghanistan sidelined the issue, which remains a cause championed by small pockets of Pashtun nationalists in Afghanistan, but with diminished support. Afghanistan's non-Pashtun population, which may be 55% of the country, are incredibly weary of a Pashtun majority since many blame Pashtuns in general for the excesses of the Taliban regime. Occasionally, the issue of the Durrand Line comes into play, but are quickly silenced by the Afghan government.

Social issues and concepts surrounding Pashtunistan

Believed to be the flag of Pashtunistan

Prominent 20th century proponents of the Pashtunistan cause have included the late Khan Wali Khan and Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan. Ghaffar Khan stated in the Pakistan Constituent Assembly in 1948 that he simply wanted "the renaming of his province as Pakhtoonistan. Like Sindh, Punjab, etc." Another name mentioned is Afghania whereas the 'A' in Choudhary Rahmat Ali Khan's theory stands for Pakistan's second letter in the Now or Never Pamphlet. However this name has failed to capture political support of any group in the province.

Khan Abdul Wali Khan, who founded his own faction of the National Awami Party, is remembered for having eloquently replied to a Pakistani critic of the Pashtunistan cause, who asked him if he considered himself a Pakistani Muslim first or a Pashtun, by stating that: "I have been a Pashtun for six thousand years, a Muslim for thirteen hundred years, and a Pakistani for twenty-five." This has become an often repeated sentence by the remaining Pashtun nationalists in Pakistan.

Pashtuns practice Pashtunwali, the indigenous culture of the Pashtuns, and this pre-Islamic identity remains significant for many Pashtuns and is one of the factors that have kept the Pashtunistan issue alive. Although the Pashtuns are separated by the Durand Line between Pakistan and Afghanistan, many Pashtuns, especially tribesmen from the FATA area, tend to ignore the border and cross back and forth with relative disregard.

Variations of the Pashtunistan claim

There are several different types of claims with regard to the Pashtunistan issue, they sometimes overlap but can be distinctively defined:

Afghanistan's claim

File:Ahmad Shah Durrani - 1747.jpg

Ahmad Shah Durrani, an ethnic Pashtun, showin in this painting being crowned as the first Emir of Afghanistan in October 1747.

Afghanistan makes its core claim on the Pashtun areas on the grounds that Afghanistan is the original home of all Pashtuns. According to historic sources Pukhtun/Afghan tribes did not appear in Peshawar Valley until after 800 AD, when the Islamic conquest of this area took place.

The Afghan governments claim can be based on two different concepts

• One is the claim aiming for the restoration of the Afghan Empire as formed by Ahmad Shah Durrani (Ahmad Shah Abdali) as it was prior to the capture of certain areas by Ranjit Singh in the early 19th century. This swathe of territory includes Kashmir, much of Pakistani Punjab (up to Jhelum river) in particular Multan and the Pashtun areas of Balochistan especially Quetta. This claim while not formally declared is often mentioned by Afghans. The territory in question also stakes claim to Balochistan, which was not formally a part of the Afghan Empire but did however did pay tribute to it during the time of Ahmad Shah Durrani. Critics claim that Ahmad Shah Abdali's empire varied at different points in time, including all of Pakistan (Panjab, SIndh, Kashmir) at one point. Some Afghans state that if the claim can extend to a return of the Afghan Empire, then all of Pakistan should be consolidated into Afghanistan. Proponents of this view are of the belief that an initial confederation between Pakistan and Afghanistan would prove beneficial to both countries while removing the political antagonism that often exists between them and also resolving the issue of Pashtun re-unification.

• The second claim is based on purely Pashtun-inhabited territory, which includes the restoration of NWFP, FATA and the Pashtun belt of Balochistan. This overlaps with the first claim as some proponents also include Balochistan in this claim. This claim has some legal basis, as the Afghan government cites three international documents as basis for it, one of which is the limited validity of the Durand Line agreement signed between the British Empire and the Afghan government. The Durand border agreement demarcated the area between Pakistan and Afghanistan. Afghanistan unsuccessfully argued that the agreement should have been valid for only 100 years. Later, international tribunal and courts found that the Durand Treaty never specified any time frame, and that Pakistan was the true heir and successor state of these regions which were handed over to the Colonial British.

The agreements cited by the Afghan government as proof of their claim over the Pashtun tribes are:

a) Article 11 of the Anglo-Afghan Treaty of 1921, which states: the two contracting parties, being mutually satisfied themselves each regarding the goodwill of the other and especially regarding their benevolent intentions towards the tribes residing close to their respective boundaries, hereby undertake to inform each other of any future military operations which may appear necessary for the maintenance of order among the Frontier tribes residing within their respective spheres before the commencement of such operations. b) Supplementary letter to the Anglo-Afghan treaty of 1921: As the conditions of the Frontier tribes of the two governments are of interest to the Government of Afghanistan. I inform you that the British government entertains feelings of goodwill towards all the Frontier tribes and has every intention of treating them generously, provided they abstain from outrages against the people of India

Advocates of Independent Pashtunistan

Some Pashtun Nationalists believe the Pashtun people are within their rights to form their own State. They believe that either NWFP and FATA with the Pashtun areas of Balochistan along with south and eastern Pashtun areas of Afghanistan should be granted independence forming a new state possibly separate from Pakistanand India called Pashtunistan/Pakhtunistan. They base this on the claim that the 1947 referendum was illegitimate because (i) The option of independence or joining Afghanistan was not given. (ii) The legitimacy of it is doubtful as it was not based on adult franchise but of a limited electoral college of approximately half a million and still polled barely 51% (iii) The NWFP provincial Assembly in 1947 was the only provincial Assembly deprived of the right to decide which choice it would have preferred. As such they argue that the decision to join Pakistan was illegal, and not just illegitimate, which would be more likely under common law.

In the early 1950s, the Soviet Union through Afghanistan supported Pashtun ambitions for the creation of an independent Pashtunistan (also called Pakhtunistan) in the border areas of West Pakistan. Several border clashes and ruptures of diplomatic relations between Afghanistan and Pakistan ensued. The movement was never able to gain popular support considering that Pashtuns in Pakistan were always better off than their counterparts in Afghanistan. Furthermore, an independent Pashtunistan would likely suffer economic and political hardship as Pashtuns in Pakistan have successfully integrated and have a disproportionately high representation in the government, bureaucracy, military and more importantly business. Critics claim, that advocates of Pashtunistan will likely worsen the economic status of the community. Pashtuns also dominate the vital transport trade in Pakistan along with many other commercial and business ventures in many of it urban cities not located in the Pashtunkwa regions.

Pashtunistan advocates also questioned Afghan support for their cause, since it was largely known that Afghanistan did not wish to ever see an independent Pashtunistan, but aimed to annex it. Also, Afghanistan never showed willingness to allow its own Pashtun majority regions to join an independent Pashtunistan.

Advocates of Pashtunistan within Pakistan and the renaming NWFP Pakhtunkhwa

Pashtun nationalism in the form of the previous theories is quite weak at present, the Pashtun presence within Pakistan's ruling establishment is quite significant, they are represented in the Armed forces, civil service, political system and in business both nationally and provincially. Pakistan's former Prime Ministers, Ayub Khan, was Pashtuns , while Yahya Khan associated himself with Pashtun culture, despite being of Persian Afghan heritage. There is support, however, to rename NWFP as Pakhtunkhwa (translates as Pashtun quarter). Begum Nasim Wali Khan (the wife of Khan Abdul Wali Khan) declared in an interview: "I want an identity.. I want the name to change so that Pathans may be identified on the map of Pakistan... [Pakhtunkhwa was] the 3000 year old name of this area: the name used by Ahmed Shah Abdali who said he forgot everything including the throne of Delhi but not Pakthunkhwa". Notable is the fact that she referred to the desire to be recognized on the map of Pakistan, and not separated from it.

In fact the renaming issue is an emotive one which often crosses party lines. While not all supporters of a renaming agree on the name Pakhtunkhwa, some prefer Pashtunistan/Pakhtunistan, still others prefer the name ‘’Abasin’’, or ‘’Afghania’’, which they base on the word A in Pakistan which as explained by the man who named Pakistan, Choudhary Rahmat Ali in his book, "North West Frontier Province - is semantically non-descript and socially wrongful. It is non-descript because it merely indicates their geographical situation as a province of old 'British India' [which no longer exists]. It is wrongful because it suppresses the social entity of these people. In fact, it suppresses that entity so completely that when composing the name 'Pakistan' for our homelands, I had to call the North West Frontier Province the Afghan Province."

The belief in NWFP that the Pashtuns get an unfair deal from the Pakistani government which is based on the failure to honor Hydro royalty agreements, refusal to allow the renaming of the province, refusal to grant provincial autonomy, perceived discrimination by other ethnic groups (to be more precise Pashtun Nationalists often target Punjabis) towards Pashtuns, and their language and culture, and the fact that the after the Baloch many of the regions of official poverty in Pakistan are in the Pashtun belts.

Pakistan's Resistance to the Pakhtunkhwa name

Further information: Pakhtunkhwa

The Pakistani government has officially left the renaming issue to the NWFP government, and has indicated its willingness to respect the wishes of the NWFP government. However, until 2007, no elected NWFP government had ever pressed the issue - perhaps because much of the nationalist grievance would be resolved, and nationalists parties would lose a strong rallying call.

Pakistani Pashtun claim

Still other ethnic Pashtuns support the status quo in regards to Pashtun influence in Pakistan and consider the Pashtunistan movement dead. They point out various Pashtun leaders, intellectuals and cricketers (e.g. Imran Khan) who have contributed to Pakistan and the level of influence ethnic Pashtuns enjoy in Pakistan. They also point out the influence of Pashtuns in the creation of Pakistan. For example, of the 4 co-signatories of the pamphlet "Now or Never" calling for an independent Pakistan, 3 were ethnic Pashtuns from the Khyber Agency. The Khyber Agency was also instrumental in the creation of Pakistan. Also, one of the senior-most leaders in the Pakistan movement, Abdul Rab Nishtar, was a Pashtun of the Kakar tribe. He was a close confident of Muhammad Ali Jinnah, along with Liaquat Ali Khan, and was a frequent critic of the Congress establishment in the NWFP led by Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan and Dr. Khan Sahib. Pashtuns also rose up spontaneously in the invasion of Kashmir, with the aim of integrating Muslim Kashmir into Pakistan, and "saving" its inhabitants from Hindu-dominated India.

Considering the fact that Pashtuns live in every province of Pakistan, and that the Pakistan Army - the most influential body in Pakistan - is made up of 25% Pashtuns, many Pashtuns feel they have considerable influence in Pakistan and see it as their homeland. It is also worth noting that Karachi, not Kabul, or even Peshawar, is the largest Pashtun city in the world. These pro-Pakistan Pashtuns claim to be the majority and point to democratic elections in Northwest Frontier Province as proof of this. They are highly sensitive to the idea of Pashtun separatism or Pashtunistan, which they believe would be unsustainable without deep ties to Pakistan.

Other Pashtuns residing in Pakistan, feel the issue of Pashtunistan is exploitative and meant to disrupt relations between Pakistan and Afghanistan. They point to continuous and tacit support for the issue emanating from foreign countries such as during the war in Afghanistan in which the Soviet Union financially funded several campaigns to promote Pashtunistan. More recently, India has been accused of encouraging dissent and propaganda by fostering negative perceptions between Afghanistan and Pakistan in its continued attempts to extend its influence into the region and with an eye to undermine Pakistan. Some among these Pakistani Pashtuns consider the two countries as part of a single unit and advocate the formation of a confederation. Such a confederation, they argue, would resolve the issue of Pashtunistan and improve the prospects of both Afghanistan and Pakistan as a competitive country internationally.

Pashtun nationalists in Pakistan, however, are cognizant of the fact that Afghanistan simply wishes to annex Pashtunistan, and are weary of its support. The old claim that Pashtunistan could rely on Afghanistan instead of Pakistan has also been diminished, since Afghanistan's economy and infrastructure have been decimated. Further, many members of Afghanistan's non-Pashtun majority express hostility and antagonism towards Pashtuns, since the Taliban was primarily Pashtun. Pashtun nationalists no longer can find a reliable friend in Afghanistan, or the USSR, and their disdain for Indians (Pashtun Nationalists see Punjabi culture as oppressive, but view India as the ultimate source of those traditions) means that few are left to support Pashtunistan.

Criticism of the Pashtunistan concept

Ayub Khan, President of Pakistan from 1958 to 1969, was a non-Pashto-speaker from the Tareen tribe of Abbottabad.

Some Pakistani opponents of the Pashtunistan issue challenge the central tenet of the Afghan argument that Afghanistan is the sovereign state of Pashtuns. Pakistan's rulers like President Ayub Khan, who was an ethnic Pashtun, opposed the separation of NWFP from Pakistan. He believed there was a difference between the Pakhtunistan advocated by Ghaffar Khan, who initially favored independence from both Pakistan and Afghanistan, and the Pukhtunistan promoted by Afghanistan, which sought to annex the region.

An important development in Pakistan during the Ayub period (1958-1969) was the gradual integration into Pakistani society and the military-bureaucratic establishment. It was a period of Pakistan's political history which saw a large number of ethnic Pashtuns holding high positions in the military and the bureaucracy. Ayub himself was a non-Pashto speaking ethnic Pashtun belonging to the Tarin sub-tribe of the Hazara district in the Frontier. The growing participation of Pashtuns in the the Pakistani Government resulted in the erosion of the support for the Pashtunistan movement in the Province by the end of the 1960s.

— Rizwan Hussain, 2005

Afghanistan's non-Pashtun minority is also concerned that if Afghanistan extends its sovereignty to NWFP, the well-established Persian Afghan business communities in Lahore, Islamabad, Multan, and Karachi would be expelled, thus depriving Afghanistan of a vital source of currency via remittance. Pashtun nationalists themselves recognizes the geopolitical shifts that have occurred since their initial call for independence. Namely: Afghanistan is now in ruins, Soviet support was eliminated with the fall of the USSR, and Iran has become a Shiite theocracy that would likely be apathetic to the idea of another Sunni state in the region (although the Shah himself was an ardent supporter of Pakistan, and never indicated support for Pashtunistan). Pashtun nationalists also recognize that since their calls for independence 50 years ago, Pashtuns have become well-integrated into Pakistan, with Urdu bilingualism being almost ubiquitous, and huge migrations of Pashtuns to Karachi and Lahore.

Critics challenge the argument that Pashtuns are discriminated favourably in Pakistan's power matrix. They cite the facts that there are more than double the number of Pashtuns in Pakistan than in Afghanistan so in fact Pakistan is their natural home. In addition, critics argue Pashtuns in Pakistan, are disproportionately over-represented in Pakistan's power structure, particularly the Army. They have served at all levels of the Federal government, in sports and other fields. They are also well represented as far as in the business community. Further, the NWFPs minority community strongly bolsters the NWFP economy, and any move to antagonize them would rob NWFP of its entrepreneurial Hindko, and Persian minorities.

Pashtuns have one of the highest birth rates in Pakistan, and their representation in the country is expected to increase considerably over the next few decades, further increasing their representation in the country. Pashtuns in Pakistan have migrated heavily to other provinces within Pakistan, with the city of Karachi in the province of Sindh now having the largest urban population of Pashtuns in the world (estimated at four million). There are also sizeable Pashtun populations in Lahore (one to two million) and in Islamabad/Rawalpindi. Pashtuns virtually dominate the transport industry in the whole of Pakistan and are actively involved in business and trade throughout the country but particularly in areas outside of the traditional Pukhtunkwa areas.

Demographics of the Pashtun population

According to Demographics of Afghanistan, Pashtuns constitute 42% of Afghanistan's population Afghanistan's 2005 population was 29,928,987. The 42% of total population of Afghanistan, 29,928,987 is 12,570,000.

According to Demographics of Pakistan, Pashtuns constitute over 11.42% of Pakistan's population. Pakistan's population in 2005 was 162,400,000. The 11.42% of total population of Pakistan, 162,400,000 is 20,042,080.

Afghanistan

Total Population:29,928,987

Pashtun Population:12,570,000

Pakistan

Total Population:162,400,000

Pashtun Population:20,042,000

Discrimination argument

As cultural and historical grievances against Pakistan have dissipated over the years, nationalists have begun turning to language and economic arguments to bolster their cause. They also now state that Pakistan's other ethnic communities look down upon Pashtuns with disdain. They further resent the prevalence of Urdu and Persian words in the Pashto language, and believe that if left unchecked, Pashto will be diluted with Urdu words in Pakistan, and with Persian words in Afghanistan.

An argument by Pashtuns nationalists against remaining as part of Pakistan is that the Pakistani Government have in fact little interest in the promotion of Pashtun culture, they cite the widespread usage of Urdu and its use as the only national language of Pakistan. While there is considerable resentment towards the use of Urdu, this resentment is shared by all of Pakistan's provinces including a sizeable number of Panjabis, Siraikis, Balochis, Brahuis, Kashmiris, and Chitralis who also do not have official patronage of their language. With the exception of Urdu (Language of the Mohajir) and Sindhi (which was introduced as a provincial language in the 1970s after much protests and ethnic tension against mohajir's), no other indigenous ethnic group of Pakistan has official patronage of their maternal tongues. However, Population wise, the Punjab province at 47% dominates many aspects of social, political, and economic society.

Critics point out that in Afghanistan, though not always the case, but at current, both Dari and Pashto are official languages that are taught to students. Pashto culture is a main aspect of Afghan culture particularly in the south and east, as it is in Pakistanis NWFP and the northern part of Balochistan. Many Pakistan Pashtuns, and non Pashtuns alike, call for official patronage of Pashto language and culture (and that of other indigenous groups of Pakistan like Balochi, Saraiki, Burki, Hindko, Khowar, Shina, Burusho etc.). They government and believe that that state should do more to promote these native languages at least at the elementary level.

See also

• Pashtunization
• Durand Line
• Pakhtunkhwa
• Pashtun people
• Pashto language
• Pashtun culture
• Demographics of Pakistan
• Demographics of Afghanistan
• Separatist movements of Pakistan

External links

• In pictures: The Afghans who do not want to go to their homeland

Further reading

• Ahmed, Feroz (1998) Ethnicity and politics in Pakistan. Karachi. Oxford University Press.
• Ahmad, M.(1989) Pukhtunkhwa Kiyun Nahin by Mubarak Chagharzai; PP: 138-139
• Amin, Tahir (1988) -National Language Movements of Pakistan. Islamabad Institute of Policy Studies.
• Buzan, Barry and Rizvi, Gowher (1986), South Asian Insecurity and the Great Powers, London: Macmillan, p. 73.
• Caroe, Olaf (1983) The Pathans with an Epilogue on Russia. Oxford University Press. page 464,465