A Pakistani human rights group that has accused the military of widespread abuses as it battles Islamist militants in Pakistan’s rugged border region with neighbouring Afghanistan has emerged as a force among the country’s Pashtun minority, drawing tens of thousands to rallies to protest what it contends is a campaign of intimidation that includes extra-judicial killings and thousands of disappearances and detentions.
The group’s charismatic leader, 25-year-old Manzoor Pashteen, has become the face of the country’s oppressed Pashtun, charging that in the name if its “war on terror” the military has used indiscriminate force as it hunts for Taliban hideouts in the tribal regions where the Pashtun dominate, imposing collective punishments like bulldozing the homes of family members of suspected militants and punishing entire villages for extremist attacks.
The catalyst for the group’s creation was the police killing in January of Naqueebullah Mehsud, a 27-year-old ethnic Pashtun and aspiring model who was shot dead in the southern port city of Karachi, where many displaced Pashtuns have relocated after being displaced by the military operations in the tribal regions. The authorities originally said Mehsud fired first during a raid by security forces on a militant hideout, but later acknowledged he was unarmed and had been targeted simply because he was Pashtun.
Within weeks what began as a small group of about two dozen had morphed into a popular movement. Known as the Pashtun Protection Movement, it has drawn huge crowds to rallies where Mr. Pashteen leads the charge, accusing the military of detaining thousands of Pashtuns in internment camps for months or even years without charges and intimidating residents at the dozens of check points scattered throughout the tribal regions.
Residents, he said, were scared silent, too afraid to criticize the army tactics.
“Punishment is all about sending a message to keep silent,” Mr. Pashteen told The Associated Press in an interview in Peshawar, the capital of Pakistan’s Khyber Pukhtunkhwa province and home to the majority of the country’s ethnic Pashtuns. “When we began we were fed up with life, treated like we were not human. One thousand per cent we were sure we would be killed.”
Even his father pleaded with him to end his campaign against the military. “He told me that it would be trouble not just for me, but for my family,” Mr. Pashteen said.
