Over the past two years, the Pashtun Tahafuz Movement (PTM) has defined an alternative future for Pakistan. It has also contributed to the state's anxiety about its own discursive and political power. The Pakistani state has used all the tools in its arsenal, ranging from censorship to arrests and intimidation. The country's military in particular has been accused by the PTM of abductions and extrajudicial killings, and has opened fire on the peaceful PTM protesters.
Upon being released on bail after having spent four weeks in prison on sedition charges, the leader of the PTM Manzoor Pashteen simply said, "Prison was a lot better than my home. Its walls were intact. No one had stolen its iron and bricks. The walls were high. No one entered it without permission and violated its sanctity as is done with our homes. There were no landmines there. It was safe as [opposed to] our homes." The PTM can't be understood without considering the violence that Pashtun lands and bodies across the country have been subjected to post September 11, 2001.
Proponents of this classical nationalism trace its lineage back to the freedom struggle against British colonialism. This form of nationalism has its shortcomings, for instance, silencing caste and class questions in Pashtun society and emphasising national discrimination. Nevertheless, historically it has had a progressive bent. The National Awami Party (NAP), the leftwing political platform active throughout the late 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, and out of which the modern political program of classical Pashtun nationalism emerged, was a mix of small and suppressed ethnic minorities in Pakistan.
However, the PTM is distinct from 'classical' Pashtun nationalism. This term has been understood to represent the community's sovereignty over land within the federal structure of the state. Still, classical Pashtun nationalism can't be reduced to a territorial claim over land and the rights of self-governance – the defining features of Pashtun nationalism are provincial autonomy, right to and recognition of language and culture and a fair share in the distribution of resources.