The Pashtun factor in Pakistan's insurgency

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http://atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/SOU-02-280714.html



The Pashtun factor in Pakistan's insurgency
By Luqman Saeed
Jul 28, '14

The influx of al-Qaeda to the tribal areas of Pakistan from sanctuaries in Afghanistan brought Pashtuns as an ethnic group under the intense scrutiny of political scientists, sociologists and anthropologists. The fact that al Qaeda and the Taliban were not just able to establish themselves in the tribal areas of Pakistan but successfully initiated a bloody insurgency against the US-supported regimes in Kabul and Pakistan has led scholars seeking to explain the Islamist violence to develop diverging hypotheses, some of which maintain that Pashtun culture itself contains an element that would readily use violence as a means to win a political causes.

Since al-Qaeda and Taliban overtly push religion to justify their violence and these groups thrive in some Pashtun areas that have their own religiously charged social outlook, some scholars see Pashtun culture as largely compatible with the political values propagated by militant groups.

It is true that Pashtun regions, specifically the tribal areas and in Balochistan, which borders Afghanistan, have provided significant numbers of foot soldiers to the Taliban in Afghanistan. But the main support has come in the form of students-cum-jihadis provided by the networks of seminaries that were established with Pakistan and United States funding to support the Afghan jihad during the 1980s.

These seminaries had been the main source of accommodation and education for the children who came as refugees to Af-Pak borders during that first Afghan jihad. This was the generation that grew up in a social and political environment that was instigated by Pakistan, the United States and allies to support the holy war against the Soviet Union. This was the generation that grew up in the violent shadows of the first Afghan jihad. The tragic political fallout is a generation brought up to see violence as the only meaningful political approach.