PUKHTUNS CONTINUE TO RESEARCH THEIR ROOTS

BY AHMED RASHID

 

Three new books published by the Central Asia Area Study Centre of Peshawar University show a remarkable resurgence in historical research at a time when investigative scholarship in other Pakistani Universities and think tanks are at their lowest ebb of credibility and on the verge of collapse.

 

In a remarkable resurgence in scholarship and research into the roots of Pakistan’s nationalities, Peshawar University has produced three path breaking books on the Pukhtuns. At a time when the government-army run think tanks in Islamabad have become little more than propaganda machines and unable to produce independent and credible scholarship acceptable at an international level and Pakistan s Universities are suffering from virtual collapse with the departure of dozens of top scholars and teachers to foreign universities, the lack of government funding and the total lack of interest in higher education shown by successive rulers and in particularly the establishment this new effort by Peshawar University is all the more remarkable.

The new books are:

·         Some Major Pukhtoon Tribes along the Pak-Afghan border, by Iftikhar Hussain.

·         Mujahideen Movement in Malakand and Mohmand Agencies (1900-1940) , by Jehanzeb Khalil.

·         The Durand Line and its Geo-strategic Importance, by Dr Azmat Hayat.

These books have been published in the past few months by the Russia-Central Asia Area Study Centre of Peshawar University under its Director Dr.Aznmat Hayat Khan with collaborative help from the Hanns-Seidel Foundation and its Islamabad head Dr Hein Kiessling. They have been meticulously edited and given extensive forwards by the scion of the former Afghan Royal Family and retired Pakistan army officer, Colonel Yahya Effendi. Extensive maps, appendices, tables and in some cases poems and tribal trees add to the readers knowledge and interest and make the books important reference points. Moreover the period they define the Pukhtun tribal wars against the British are immensely significant in giving experts and ordinary readers a greater in-depth understanding of the Afghan Jehad against the Soviet invasion, the Taliban movement in Afghanistan, the origins of the Pukhtun nationalist movement in the early years of Pakistan s history and the Islamic and nationalist movements currently underway in the NWFP. Says Effendi, The Pakhtun, a strange medley of virtues and prolifigacy, still emerges from the pages of history, as an attractive and even endearing character whether a king, or a retainer, a saint or a marauder, he has always stood a head higher than his adversaries.

Iftikhar Hussain gives a detailed read out of the major Pukhtun tribes Afridis, Shinwaris, Mohmands, Wazirs and non-Pukhtun tribes along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. His important chapter dealing with Pukthunwali the tribal code of the Pakhtuns has immense relevance today and it is perhaps the most succinct and comprehensive account published. But what one misses from the author is how this code evolved during the past few centuries and how meaningful and relevant Pukthunwali is today, as society is rapidly modernized. The fact that the Taliban today give as their main reason for not handing over Saudi terrorist Osama Bin Laden to the Americans, their Pukhtun code of hospitality demonstrates how relevant this code today is, but is that the case with all the Pakhtun tribes on the Pakistani side of the border and how does this code function today in major cities like Peshawar. Moreover how should the legal system evolve in the NWFP when it is beset with so many complications such as the British penal code, Islamic law and tribal law.

Jehanzeb Khalil draws a remarkable picture of the Frontier s resistance to British rule between 1900-1940 which he sets in an Islamic-Jehad setting. Yahya Effendi in his Forward gives the reader an overview of the evolution of these Islamic movements, something which Khalil also needed to do so to explain how jehad, anti-colonialism and the spirit of resistance had historically evolved in Pakhtun society for example why was this resistance not present amongst other Muslim nationalities in British India why only the Pakhtuns. But Khalil does give a detailed picture of how these movements evolved In the NWFP influenced by Syed Ahmad Bareliv and the influence of the Deoband madrassas in British India. Pukhtun resistance arose first against the Sikhs and then against the British. Khalil s descriptions of these movements in Malakand, Mohmand and Bajaur are extremely significant, particularly as they continue to persist today with periodic movements for the imposition of shariah in these areas and the influence of Taliban Islam.

There is fascinating detail of how effectively the Mujheddin were able to maintain a military camp in the tribal belt for something like 40 years despite the machinations of the tribal chiefs, the Afghan kings and the British. The author gives remarkable details of the audacious plan by some tribal militants who were in contact with Turkey, Iran and Russia to invade India in 1915 and forment a jehad by Indian Muslims which would throw out the British. The plan was leaked and the British took stringent measures, sending troops, arresting dozens of leaders and their supporters and cracking down hard on the tribal belt. The fact remains that the Islamic zeal, motives and aims of the early 19th century Pakhtun Islamic rebels resemble today s neo-Taliban movements in the NWFP to a remarkable extent. History is repeating itself in the Frontier and Afghanistan and Khalil does an enormous service in making the reader understand that. Little of this is known to the vast majority of Pakistanis, it is not part of our traditional history and none of this is taught in our schools which it should b

The Durand Line by Dr. Azmat Hayat will remain a classic simply because it is the best and most authoritative work on the formation of Pakistan s western frontier which has been a bone of contention for the past century. Hayat traces the history of the region which necessitated the formal partition of the expanding empires of Tasarist Russia and British India and the creation of Afghanistan as a buffer between the two empires. Afghan King Abdur Rehman under whose tenure Afghanistan s northern and western borders were drawn for the first time, remained extremely wary of both Russia and England. Thus even as he encouraged both empires to settle the borders of his country thereby ensuring that they would recognize the independent status of Afghanistan, at the same time Abdur Rehman astutely refused offers by both sides to built railway lines in Afghanistan, fearing that such a move would only facilitate invasions by one side or the other. Ironicly Abdur Rehman s fears were justified nearly a century when the Soviets used the road system they had help build in northern Afghanistan to invade Afghanistan in 1979. The author then discusses the current position on the Durand line from the Pakistan and Afghan positions and discusses the genesis of the Pukhtunistan question which bedeviled Afghan-Pakistan relations for more than 50 years.

Yet all the books suffer from lapses which could dramaticly improve the quality of future publications by the Area Centre. They are all heavily dependent on British sources and there have been few attempts to interview the descendents of the 19th century Pakhtun mullahs, chiefs and maliks involved in these conflicts to try and produce a parallel oral history of what legends, stories and facts have come down the generations which either collaborate or dispute the official British sources. The battle sites, villages, routes of travel and militant camps where major events occoured, are not visited by the scholars to give us a sense of greater immediacy, colour and depth which would give the reader a much greater sense of what has changed and what has not changed and add to the immediacy of the historical research. If these scholars had taken the trouble to travel the roads that these great lashkars traveled, before they attacked British army pickets and posts, we would have an even more vivid history.

Given the lack of written material by the Pakhtuns of the time and that most of the participants of these epic struggles are no longer alive, an oral history of their descendents conducted by these scholars would be of huge interest and give irrefutable linkages with the past. Here I am thinking of the remarkable work of such writers as Studs Terkel whose works such as Division Street America and Working provide an array of American working lives just through the simple medium of the interview. Given the lack of local written material, meaningful scholarship today in Pakistan has to be more like journalism so as to give it greater immediacy, poignancy and depth to readers who want to learn more about the present by connecting it to the past.

Unfortunately none of these books have indexes so essential if they are to become standard works of reference and maps, although plentiful need to have been especially drawn for each book so that they could better explain the terrain, the battle sites and the routes traveled by the lashkar. The book on the Durand Line needs fresh maps to show how each marker on the Line was put down and where. All the authors also needed to provide a more general historical overview of the period they cover in such detail what was happening in the rest of British India when such momentous events were taking place on the Frontier, how did these events fit in with the overall colonial history in the Sub-continent and how did these tribal movements fit in with the struggle for independence by the Muslim League and the Congress Party. All these weaknesses probably relate to the lack of funding available to the Area Centre, rather than the lack of attention by the scholars themselves. Moreover they are somewhat mitigated by the fascinating overviews written by Effendi in his Forwards to all these books.

Despite these faults, there is little doubt that these books could herald the start of something new in the intellectual desert that higher education and scholarship has become in Pakistan. Peshawar University has done a remarkable job which other Area Centres in the country s universities should learn from and emulate - that exploring the historical roots of Pakistan s nationalities brings much greater understanding of the country s present political, social and ethnic predicament.