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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.

Seamus’ thoughts on the Manhattan Mosque

Seamus Campbell heads up the Fordham University College Democrats.
That means his opinion will be the opinion of liberal lawmakers in America 20 years from now.
Read below:
http://fordhamdems.blogspot.com/2010/07/ground-zero-mosque.html
Here’s an excerpt:

“My issue with the mosque is that it is an issue. Gound Zero is in New York. New York was hit. New York should choose how to deal with it. Yes, Pennsylvania and Washington, DC were hit and both tourists and commuters from the Greater New York area were killed. I do sympathize, but just like any national tragedy, it may affect people that weren’t there, but that impact is different from those that were.”

I like Seamus’ post because it is to the point, and offers lots of anecdotal and factual information pertaining to the Manhattan Mosque crisis.
Good job, buddy.

Overcoming the hate

A Pakistani  living in the terror-prone city of Lahore, Punjab said to me today that a Jew would never prefer me to another Jew, and then went on to tell me that Jews ‘pretend’ to be good people. I realized just how deep-seated anti-Semitism is in the world today, and how I am so glad I was born an American, so that I could see beyond bigotry. 

R@@@@@@n – says:

 but little do u know that you would never be preferred over a jew by a jew

- R@@@@@@n – says:

 i have [met Jews] , and yes they have the most wow demenear ever

 so its easy to be inspired by them

But I have to stress, not all Pakistanis are anti-Semites, or support terrorism. To generalize, like I have in the past, is wrong. Hate begets hate. That is why this post is dedicated trying to honor some of those who have helped me overcome my own failings, both Pakistani and Jewish.


In 2003 I was volunteering with a political campaign when I met a friend who would change my life. Tali was a surprisingly awkward, yet gregarious orthodox Jewish girl from Silver Spring. Her intelligence and nutty humor caught me off guard, and the two of us promised to keep in touch after campaign. 


And so we did. Tali, Mitch Belkin (another political buddy) and I would get together a few times of the year (we all went to different schools), to talk religion and politics, and to try and overcome stereotypes we all had of each other. Surprisingly, neither Tali nor Mitch really had any negative stereotypes of Muslims. Both were (and still are) avid Zionists, but both came from very different religious backgrounds. Mitch is a Reform Jew, Tali is Orthodox. As the names imply, one represents a more traditional view of Jewish faith and law, and the other has a more relaxed, “reformed” take on things. Both Mitch and Tali had a profound effect on my moral thinking.


While in college, I learned first-hand of the awful crimes Pakistan had done to both non-Muslims and to its own peoples. I also noticed the extreme closed-mindedness of a lot of Pakistanis I went to school with, and I still do. But, then I met Sarah Akhtar. Sarah and I met in class as juniors in college, and struck up a close friendship. We’d often find each other awake in the middle of the night, and would go out to local diners, or even the city, while talking in French about all sorts of dorky academic topics. Sarah’s brilliance and open-minded understanding of the world as something beyond “brown people versus non-brown people” was refreshing. But Sarah, like myself was born in the states. Her family was from Pakistan a generation ago, but neither one of us affixes that word readily to “American”. We prefer to go by the country of our birth, not our parents’ countries of origin. 

Then I met Aliya Aftab, Fauzia Kasuri, and Sabby Zakir.

Aliya is an American trained Pakistani psychologist. A family friend of my mom’s, I met her for the first time last summer, when she came to the states and I took her around Washington, D.C. Aliya and I became fast friends, joking about my overweight, her lack of weight, and random (and annoying) people we both happened to know. What struck me about Aliya the most was her candor, nonchalant attitude about taboo topics, and depth of personality and personal interests. I would often lament to her the sad state affairs I find Pakistani society and culture to be in today. She often times went beyond me in criticizing Pakistan, and her fellow elites, in their failure create a more just society over 60 years.

Fauzia Kasuri, another family friend, is by far one of the most dynamic women I have ever met. Fauzia casts her own shadow in Pakistani politics, breaking with family tradition of supporting the Pakistan Muslim League, she is the Vice President for Women of the Justice Party. A powerful orator and enigmatic debater, individual, I’ve watched Fauzia claw her way out of heated discussions on Pakistani talk shows with ferocity.
She also is a fashion designer in her spare time, bringing style and chic to otherwise dour Pakistani politics.
Whenever Fauzia and I have struck up a conversation about Pakistan, her thoughtful clarity gives me hope Pakistan can yet become a stable country. Fauzia’s dedication to democratic values and justice inspire even the most cynical people, including me.

Sabby Zakir is the daughter of a Pakistani military officer, and the ebullient principal of Islamabad’s ROOTS school. Sabby spent a short stint with my family while being hosted by US government agencies to study how top performing schools run. We immediately struck up a rapport, and I spent several hours asking engaging her on foreign policy, the state of Pakistan’s languishing moral culture, and other heavy topics. The bubbly Sabby never seemed to mind how little I thought of her native Pakistan, as she seemed to believe to a great degree it was justified. Then, she showed me her school’s yearbook. Seniors bound for Yale, Freshmen writing papers on Rumi, I was astounded by the academic quality Pakistan was producing from its middle class. Furthermore, she explained that while there wasn’t much to brag about in terms of Pakistan, there was some hope. And she was behind creating it.

These three women, all of them devout Muslims (all of them  without “hijab”, the Arabic phrase referring today to a flimsy scarf many women wear as a statement of religious identity), all of them proud Pakistanis, helped me better understand that no country’s people are uniformly of one view or behavior, and that even Pakistan has a great deal of hope, even if we don’t hear of it much.

I remain deeply thankful to Tali, Mitch, Aliya, Fauzia and Mitch for the impact they made on my life, and continue to make. Here’s to you guys!