u/Adventurous-Stand995

As above.

Read in places they aim to break KPK into 4 for example.

نن سبا د پاکستان پښتانه ځوانان جناح خپل اتل ګڼي او باچا خان ورته دښمن ښکاري. دوی په خپل پېژندګلوۍ کې سم ورک دي. زما د ژوند مقصد بس همدا دی چې د دوی سترګې خلاصې کړم.

If we are going to talk honestly about Pashtuns in Pakistan, we have to talk about what actually happened. The history is not simply one of Pashtuns becoming part of Pakistan and everything carrying on normally afterwards. There were political crackdowns, disputes over territory and language, years of conflict, displacement and ongoing arguments over development and resources. These are all part of the historical record.

Bacha Khan and the Khudai Khidmatgar movement were major political forces in the former North-West Frontier Province. After Pakistan was created, the elected government of Khan Abdul Jabbar Khan was dismissed in August 1947 even though it had a majority in the provincial assembly. Bacha Khan later took an oath of allegiance to Pakistan, but he was imprisoned and the Khudai Khidmatgar movement was suppressed. In August 1948, security forces opened fire on Khudai Khidmatgar supporters at Babrra. The exact number killed is disputed, but the massacre itself is not. And this was not something unique to Pashtuns. Sindhi, Baloch and Bengali political movements were also suppressed at different points. That does not change what happened to the Pashtun political movement.
The political demands did not stop there.

Abdul Samad Khan Achakzai spent years campaigning for Pashtun political and linguistic rights and was repeatedly imprisoned. He supported the idea of a single Pashtun province within Pakistan, bringing together the Pashtun-majority areas of the former NWFP and Balochistan. That never happened. When One Unit was abolished in 1970, the Pashtun areas of Balochistan remained part of Balochistan.

Even the name of the province tells you something. It was called the North-West Frontier Province, or NWFP, until 2010, when the 18th Amendment changed it to Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, or KP. So after decades of political campaigning, we went from one abbreviation to another. The name changed, but the wider demand for a united Pashtun province was never realised. FATA was also kept separate from KP for decades before finally being merged into the province in 2018.

Then came years of war. The former FATA became a major centre of militancy, Pakistani military operations and US drone strikes. Large numbers of people were displaced, infrastructure was damaged and civilians were caught in the middle. The consequences have not simply disappeared. In 2025, an unexploded mortar shell in Lakki Marwat killed five children and injured around a dozen other people. That is the kind of long-term damage that remains after the fighting is over.

It is also important to separate Pashtun culture from the Taliban. Pashtun culture is centuries older than the Taliban. Rahman Baba, Khushal Khan Khattak, Ghani Khan, Pashto poetry, attan, jirga traditions and a huge oral tradition all existed long before the Taliban. Pashtun identity cannot be reduced to a militant movement that appeared in the 1990s.
Language is another part of this. Pakistan's 2023 census recorded Pushto as the mother tongue of 18.15% of the country's population, while 81% of people in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa reported Pushto as their mother tongue. Urdu was the mother tongue of 9.25% nationally. There is nothing contradictory about having Urdu as the national language while giving Pashto proper recognition in Pashtun-majority areas. Article 251(3) of the Constitution allows provinces to promote and use their own languages.

The same goes for history. Bacha Khan, Achakzai, Ghani Khan and Ajmal Khattak were not figures from some foreign country. They lived and worked in what became Pakistan and were important political and cultural figures. Their place in the national story has often been limited or contested. Saying that other regional figures are also neglected does not really answer that point. It simply shows that regional histories have often been pushed into the background. They did build a statue of Ranjit Singh though 😂!

Then there are resources and development. Nobody is saying that having natural resources automatically makes a region wealthy. The actual question is whether constitutional provisions concerning provincial resources are being properly applied. Articles 158 and 161 deal with provincial interests in natural gas and hydroelectric power. At the same time, the former FATA and other Pashtun-majority areas have faced serious problems with infrastructure, education, healthcare, security and investment. Blaming all of that on “tribal culture” is far too simplistic. Decades of conflict and weak state infrastructure obviously matter.

So when you put everything together, the record is not difficult to understand. The elected Frontier government was dismissed. Bacha Khan and the Khudai Khidmatgars were suppressed. People were killed at Babrra. Pashtun political leaders such as Achakzai were repeatedly imprisoned. The demand for a united Pashtun province was never fulfilled. NWFP was eventually renamed KP in 2010, changing one abbreviation for another, while FATA remained separate until 2018. Pashtun-majority areas then endured years of militancy, military operations, displacement and drone warfare, and civilians are still dealing with unexploded ordnance today. You can argue about what these facts mean, but you cannot honestly erase the facts themselves.

Calling every Pashtun political or cultural grievance “separatism”, blaming underdevelopment on “tribal culture”, or reducing Pashtun identity to the Taliban does not change the historical record. It simply avoids it.

It supposedly seems that for some Pashtuns of Pashtunkhwa, they feel that this tiny corner of the internet is ‘hostile’ to them. I understand that sometimes we can, including myself, get carried away. I love Pashtuns. I love being around Pashtuns. I am sorry if I have offended you.

However, I made a list of questions which I wrote in response to another post which was made earlier. I thought it would be useful to share it separately. I think we should educate our brothers of Pashtunkhwa who have been swayed by Pak Studies using these questions. I urge all Pashtuns to repeatedly ask the following to any Pakistani nationalists. I think this is the way forward in changing these people’s minds; to ultimately help them think more critically.

1. Why were our elders such as Bacha Khan, Samad Achakzai and Ghani Khan imprisoned around and after the creation of Pakistan?
2. Why did the Babra Massacre happen? Can we not at least acknowledge that it was horrific and inhumane?
3. Why does the Pashtun homeland remain divided between Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, northern Balochistan, and the Pashtun areas of Attock and Mianwali in Punjab?
4. Why did it take decades to change the colonial name of our province, only for it to become another abbreviation?
5. Why were our lands subjected to foreign drone strikes? If the state had full control over its territory, why was this allowed to happen?
6. Why are landmines still scattered across our lands, continuing to take the limbs and lives of Pashtun children?
7. Why is Pashto still not properly recognised as an administrative language and medium of instruction across Pashtun areas? And why do some Pashtuns themselves choose Urdu over their own language?
8. Why have many Pashtuns allowed aspects of our own culture, including weddings and traditions, to increasingly be replaced by Punjabi and Indian influences?
9. Why are our own heroes such as Khushal Khan Khattak, Samad Achakzai, Amanullah Khan, Ajmal Khattak, Bacha Khan and Ipi Faqir not properly taught in our schools, while figures such as Major Aziz Bhatti and Ranjit Singh are given attention? Shouldn't our children know the history, heroes and struggles of their own people too?
10. Why have Pashtun areas not always received a fair share of the resources generated from their own land? The Baloch have faced an even more severe version of this issue, particularly regarding the resources of Balochistan.
11. Why do areas of Pashtunkhwa have a lower HDI than Afghanistan?

If anyone can answer these questions and provide explanations contrary to what I believe, I may even become a Pakistani nationalist myself!

Pashlishurdu.

A form of “Pashto” so heavily mixed with Urdu and English that I refuse to call it Pashto anymore. It is a phenomenon mainly displayed the Pashtuns of the Peshawar Valley.

Ji instead of هو.
Bhai instead of ورور.
Anda instead of ويه.

People in the diaspora speak better Pashto than the individuals from this region.

I think we should shame people who speak in this way. We should speak to them in proper Pashto, so they feel stupid about how cringe they sound then they speak they way they do. When they count in Urdu, we should remind them of the Pashto equivalents.

No one really knows.
No one can really say.
A supposed Islamic state, yet operates heavily on riba.
A supposed Islamic state, yet the half the country split off in 1971 following a civil war during which horrific crimes were committed against Bengalis.
So paranoid that they arrested swathes of our Mashaaran in the past 79 years.

There is no Pakistani identity. Therefore, the Pakistani state (Punjabis and Urdu speaking folk) has had to manufacture an artificial one. It essentially accounts to becoming an urban Pakistani Punjabi (i.e. Lahori). It means giving up your language and identity to become a generic Indian Muslim. At least India owns its identity.

I want to send this message out to Lar Pashtuns, especially the Pashtuns of the Peshawar Valley (I say this as someone originally from there myself and someone who hates what we have become). A significant portion of you are one of the most cucked groups of people in existence. You actively support these oppressors in the erasure of our identity. You can’t even speak a single sentence in soocha Pashto without adding some Urdu or English into it. You can’t even count in Pashto. When questioned, you state you are a ‘Pakistani’. What does this even mean? So many of your weddings are something straight out of a Bollywood movie. Absolute disgrace. This culture and language which you seem to supposedly hold so dear won’t even exist in your lands in like 50 years.

When this happens, I don’t think you should call yourself a Pashtun. Merely a Pashtun by DNA. That’s all. Then you can call yourself a Pakistani.

I’ve been trying to read more into this.
Obviously the Establishment is at major fault here.
However, I believe there are many other issues surrounding this. It goes all the way back to Khan Shaheed’s time when he was in prison and the party that he had formed allowed the chief commissioner’s province compromised of Pashtun territories to be merged into Balochistan. Since then, we’ve been stuck in a province with a name that doesn’t even represent us.
I also don’t understand the Baloch’s claim that Pashtun lands are their territory. Of course they’re free to do whatever they want on their lands but having areas like Pishin and Zhob etc. in this province makes no sense.
The Baloch’s claim to Quetta is also weak. Quetta is literally a Pashtun city.
I genuinely believe this is a major thing our nationalists should be rallying about and speaking about. The Pashtuns need to unite for us to become successful. I share the same views as Khan Shaheed in this matter and the rest of the Pashtun nation should too.

I am not trying to offend anyone. I am asking a serious question: how have we allowed our homeland to reach this point?

Why are our areas so underdeveloped? Why are Pashtun children still losing arms, legs and lives to landmines? Why are our natural resources being taken while our people remain poor?

I have spent time in the watan. I live in the diaspora, yet I took the time to learn to read and write in my own zaba. The irony is that people in the diaspora often speak better Pashto than you do.

Peshawar Valley Pashtuns especially need to look in the mirror. Why are you saying ji, bhai, chawal, anda when Pashto already has its own words? Why are you replacing your own language word by word? Are you ashamed of Pashto?

You copy Punjabi/Indian weddings and customs like jahez. Are you ashamed of Pashtun culture too?

Our children barely know figures like Samad Achakzai and Faqir Ipi, while Punjabis proudly commemorate their own history and erect statues of Ranjit Singh, despite the violence and persecution associated with his rule against Muslims.

Why have we become so passive?

Our goals should be:

• One united Pashtun province
• Pashto as the official language
• Every landmine removed
• Our own capable security forces
• Pashtun-owned export industries
• Control of our natural resources
• Pashto-medium education
• Proper teaching of Pashtun history

How can you claim you speak Pashto when you barely speak it?

You speak Pashlishurdu.

په خپله ژبه خبرې کولو باندې فخر وکړه

Stop being so cucked and finally wake up for God's sakes.