Analysis: Pashtuns Thankful, Punjabis Furious

LAHORE, PAKISTAN

JoJo A. gets up this morning to try and rally his friends and family to help Siraiki-speaking Southern Punjabis, Sindhis, and Northwestern Pashtuns suffering from the floods. While he has dozens and dozens of friends and contacts, he struggles to rally even 30 of them to help with relief efforts. Lahore, a Punjabi northern city, and the cultural capital of Pakistan, just doesn’t care about dying Pashtuns and Sindhis. They aren’t Punjabi.

When asked, Jojo isn’t sure why he’s still trying to revive Pakistan as a country anymore. But he’s still trying to help the countless Pashtuns, Sindhis and Seraikis affected by this monumental tragedy. Most others in the middle and upper classes in Lahore aren’t.

A friend in Abbotbad, Ansari, tells me, “the wealthy [Punjabis] are greedy… none of them are helping. They claim it’s the government’s responsibility.”

What is more infuriating for Punjabis is the fact that Pashtuns are thankful for aid, from anyone. In particular the USA. Because of both the monsoon rains dominating the south, and the southernly winds to the Americans’ backs, US aid has focused on the region where Pakistan’s Punjabi elites have claimed anti-American sentiment is the strongest, in the Pashtun (“Pathan”) regions of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (“The Pashtun Zone, Khyber-side Province) that border Afghanistan.

This is the region where American drones operate, and where those drones have killed  more civilians than any other military operation since the last Indo-Pak war. We were told by Islamabad (also in Punjab) that the Pashtuns resented us for the bombings, and we’d never win them over again. Apparently, we were misinformed.

US aid winning friends in flood-ravaged Pakistan

Throughout the Pashtun regions, American aid hasn’t gone unnoticed. On YouTube, you can easily find comments from residents of Abbotabad and Peshawar–the two major cities in Pakhtunkhwa–thanking and blessing Americans for their generous support.

Here are some: 

@mkg00179504: ya thats my city.Thanks america, this is not the only time US is helping. US did some great relief work in the earthquake,we dont see any of these things on our media i strongly believe they should be showing this on the TV so people can really see that in this time of need US is the only one helping us with food, medicine, money and also with choppers, my brother in law is in the PAF on choppers now a days in peshawar and he told me the same thing,US is really helping.

@ProudPeshori: I from Peshawar . All these sorties above Peshawar don’t go un-noticed. 

keep up the good work !

MunzirNaqvi: The people of Pakistan appreciate your work! Thank you!

You also see a lot of hate directed towards the Punjabis who run Pakistan:

@ProudPeshori I have all the sympathies for Pashtoons. They have been used and abused by the Punjabi army of terrorist state. These guys everyday turn up in the streets shouting death to America and burning Indian /Israeli/American flags.

Only Good Pakjabi is a dead pakjabi.

News agencies have been picking up on the heightened sense of Pashtun thankfulness to Americans for their help, as well:

BBC News – US help warms hearts of Pashtun Pakistani community.

With ‘enemies’ like these, who needs friends? – The Express Tribune.

My sources in Pakhtunkhwa and Punjab have starkly different takes on the situation. Punjabis in Lahore and Islamabad are saying that America owes Pakistan the kitchen sink in terms of aid and support, no thanks necessary. Many are praying, my sources say, for America’s defeat in Afghanistan, so that Punjabis can again use the Pashtun Taliban as a terrorist front to combat India.

My Pakhtunkhwa sources paint a wholly different picture. Quoting the ancient code of the Pashtuns, Pakhtunwali, sources are saying Pashtuns are swearing to never forget “God-fearing America” for its ongoing assistance during difficult times. Many have given up on Islamabad, and many are beginning to silently whisper it is time to leave the failed Pakistani experiment, and secede from Punjabi domination.

Whatever the truth of those matters, one thing is clear: if not Pakistanis, God is watching. So far, no Arab country–long touted as Pakistan’s financial backers–has delivered aid. Promises go unfulfilled, as Arab states have a cultural view of Pakistani institutions as incompetent and wasteful. America has been leading the battle to help Pakistan. But will the Punjabis let anyone remember?

U.S. sending more helicopters to help in Pakistan flood crisis

If you would like to help Pashtuns affected by the disaster, donate to the Edhi Foundation, AND ONLY THEM. Maulana Edhi is a devout Muslim philanthropist whose moderate stance and refusal to become an extremist has left him targetted by Punjabi hate groups, including the Pakistani Taliban. He’s an Islamic hero, and the founder of the world’s largest volunteer ambulance service. Support Edhi for Relief.

Pakistani Taliban attack mosque in Rawalpindi

‘Pindi’, as the locals call it, is an eyesore of dusty open markets and army cantonments right outside Islamabad, and her picture-perfect Margala Hills. My fondest memory of travelling there was the day my cousins picked me up from the airport for a wedding in nearby army town of Wah. 


As we sped through Pindi sometime after dawn, I looked around, and to my astonishment, “Holy s***t, where’s the army?” ”The what?” my cousin asked drearily. “The army, isn’t this a cantonment (army base) town? This is your Pentagon…” My cousin seemed alarmed at my strange fascination at where exactly the army was. “Hamza,” he said calmly, “they’re at the border.” “With Afghanistan?” I asked, with my American naïveté. ”No, with India. They’re the problem.”


That was 2003.


***
It turns out India really wasn’t that much of a problem. After a lot wrangling and persuasion by the United States, Pakistan’s army finally moved off the border with India earlier this year, and sent its regulars into the treacherous Pashtun regions in the northwest of the country. 


That has had some serious implicatications for Rawalpindi.


Most of Pindi’s leading families are army people. The city houses the Army GHQ, where the powerful military’s leadership holds court. This isn’t exactly PPP territory, and in fact Benazir Bhutto was assassinated here two years ago, some whisper with military support.


Whatever the reality of such rumors, one would think security would air-tight around Pakistan’s Pentagon. That hasn’t been the case. In October, terrorists stormed the Army’s offices here (the federal government blocked live coverage). That was barely weeks after another grizzly suicide attack on students at Islamabad’s Islamic University. 


Today, Pakistan’s terrorists grew bolder, targeting a mosque not too far, again, from GHQ. At least 17 children were amongst the 35 dead, and it is believed at least four terrorists were involved before security forces arrived, and two of the perpetrators blew themselves up. 


There are several things to point out about what is happening on the ground in Pakistan. First, there have been literally no attacks outside of the Punjab. Karachi, the country’s largest city (and traditional hub of sectarian violence) hasn’t seen anything major in terms of bombings or terrorist attacks in nearly two years. Second, most of the terror attacks we’ve seen focus on institutions where elitism is obvious; namely civil service and military installations. Third, there is a serious sophistication to these operations, beyond the capabilities of the Taliban’s fighting forces. Fourth and probably most telling: none of these attacks were carried out by outsiders: the terrorists were homegrown. And, in many cases they were Punjabis, not the ethnic Pashtun who make up the Taliban.


However, the Taliban continue to claim credit, although belatedly and only after the media makes contact with them, not the other way around. The same was true this time, with the BBC reporting almost as an afterthought that the Taliban had “later” claimed ownership of the attack. Something is rotten in the state of Denmark (well, really the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, but whatever). Again, we haven’t seen particularly sophisticated insurgent attacks by Taliban cells in Wazirstan. The Pakistani Army is currently engaged there, fighting the Taliban, whose battle plans seem to mimic those of ‘conventional’ (if you can ever call it that) rebel-insurgents.


My thoughts at this time are that some other force (no, Pakistani conspiracy theorists, not India/Israel/America/Russia/Michael Jackson) is behind the series of terror attacks. In upcoming posts, I will begin to investigate more deeply whether or not this hypothesis is correct. And if so, I’ll present who I think are the most (and least) likely suspects behind the slew of terror attacks in Pakistan

Feel freel to comment or share your viewpoint.

‘Arab News’ coverage

BBC coverage

GEO News coverage