“Student unions were meant only for musical nights, strength for clashes and holding seminars, but I wanted something unique, something nobody had thought about,” is how 24-year old social activist Manzoor Pashteen explains setting up the Mehsud Tahaffuz Movement (MTM).
The MTM has been struggling for the rights of Mehsud tribes people since 2013 but it gained momentum after some tribal women were said to have been humiliated at a security check post in South Waziristan Agency in 2017.
Manzoor Pashteen
Pashteen was catapulted into the limelight last month during a protest demonstration against Rao Anwar, the SSP of Malir in Karachi who is accused of killing a Mehsud tribesman, Naqeebullah, in an faked shoot-out. He has since been on the move from Karachi to Islamabad and Peshawar to Swat as the uprising for human rights grows.
Pashteen was born in 1994 in Shahoor of Tehsil Sarwakai. He first went to Government High School Shahoor, then matriculated from Army School in Bannu and did his intermediate from Cambridge College Karak. His father, a teacher himself, was determined to ensure his children were educated.
“Only I know, and I swear, my father borrowed money for my schooling and only I know how much we have suffered,” he says. And then there is silence. “He borrowed money for my final term when we were left with nothing, not even enough to pay rent for the house we had been living in outside our home.” That was a faraway unheard of place in Dera Ismail Khan.
He was 12 when he left his village in 2005, fleeing a military offensive against militants. “I was a kid but I remember the despair, destitution and obscurity, feeling to a place I never heard about, the agony and anguish faced by our women, children and white-bearded men.”
With every passing day, things started going south. He returned home, but fled again in 2007. He went back home in 2008 but was forced to vacate his home then and again in 2009.
According to Pashteen, 1,400 men, who deterred the Taliban, were killed and made an example of for others. That dampened any ire in anyone there who had even a thought about standing against the Taliban. “If those considered to be influential failed to stand against the Taliban, what you expect from those who can’t even rent a house?”
Pashteen continued his studies and enrolled at Gomal University for a degree in Veterinary Medicine (DVM). He started to watch the student unions and joined one to stand collectively against atrocities. But he soon realized that the unions had no teeth; they were only glorified social clubs.
It was with MTM that he tried to start something different. According to Pashteen, they raised their voice against the violation of human rights, disrespect for their cultural norms, and insults to their women and buzurgs or elderly.
But those who stood by him soon parted ways owing to the threats to their families since Pashteen had been called and warned to lay off. According to Pashteen, those who called him included men from the armed forces, intelligences agencies as well as the “good Taliban”. He had brought up torture, extrajudicial killings and landmines since explosions had claimed many lives. “I had been trying my level best but had failed and the turning point was when Naqeebullah Mehsud was killed,” he says.
Then the Pashtun Long March. “I thought we would have 200 or 300 people at the maximum in our march towards Islamabad—but with every mile we travelled, we were greeted and welcomed and this is how it began,” he says. He found other people too were fed up with exactly the same violations of human rights he had brought up.
“Whatever you call it, a Pashtun Spring or something else, but this is for certain. It ends with the restoration of dignity, tranquility, harmony and peace on Pashtun soil.”
