PUKHTOONS

It’s about an hour’s drive from Peshawar’s Saddar area to Charsadda’s Wali Bagh residence of Khan Abdul Wali Khan.

Wali Khan, 89, the father of Awami National Party president Asfandyar Wali and one of the senior-most politicians of our region, has been bed-ridden for about a year following nerve damage. A feeble Wali Khan speaks, though not as much and not as coherently as he used to. A visit to his residence on Tuesday provided glimpses of history, including those of pre-partition days. The main sitting room, a little distance from the hall used for big get-togethers, is a great place for those looking for clues to the history of this region. There are spacious, lush green lawns on both sides of the passage from the main entrance to the sitting room. A large number of pictures, including those of Bacha Khan, Dr Khan Saheb, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi, adorn the walls. Also on display are photographs of the late Shah of Iran, Daud Khan and Dr Najibullah of Afghanistan.

The walls of the staircase leading to Wali Khan’s bedroom upstairs are also covered with pictures of historical figures. The bedroom, however, has just family photographs.

“Who is he?”, Wali Khan enquired in Pushto from Sangeen Wali, his youngest son. “Baba, he’s a journalist from Karachi,” Sangeen replied. “Is he a Pukhtoon?” asked Wali Khan. “Baba he’s a journalist who has read your book, Facts are Sacred. He has come seeking answers to the questions arising in his mid after reading your book,” Sangeen said in English. “How are you?” Wali Khan now addressed me. We remained with him for a short while and then met again in the sitting room. On our way to the sitting room, Sangeen quipped: “Are you searching our house for history?” He then took me around showing the photographs and speaking about some of them. Wali Khan is an important witness to the British military operations in South Waziristan in August-September 1946. However, given his frail health, one did not expect him to speak at length about it or about the similarities and differences between it and the current operation against Al Qaeda and the Taliban sympathisers. He was also not to be bothered for his account of Nehru’s visit to the Tribal Areas in October 1946 or the role played by the then NWFP governor, Sir Olaf Caroe. Nor would he draw parallels between the military operations in Balochistan in the 1970s and the current upheavals in that province. According to Begum Nasim Wali Khan, he used to read newspapers regularly and follow political developments before he fell ill a year ago. The family used to discuss everything of importance.

Begum Wali Khan agreed to answer some of Daily Times’ questions on behalf of her husband, whom she married in 1954. She said the first of four volumes of Wali Khan’s work in Pushto has been translated into Urdu and sent to the publisher. The second volume is now being translated. Much of Facts are Sacred was first translated from Pushto into Urdu by Begum Wali Khan and from Urdu into English by Syeda Syedain, an Indian writer. According to Begum Wali Khan, the book was part of the four-volume Pushto work. It was written during two terms in prison, one under Field Marshal Mohammad Ayub Khan in 1969 and the other under Zulfikar Ali Bhutto in 1973. According to Wali Khan, he was handicapped by a lack of access to reference material. He also regretted the time wasted during his second imprisonment: “I was mostly in solitary confinemen—I should have devoted myself entirely to writing. But under Bhutto, even pen and paper were often not available, leaving books alone,” Wali Khan writes in the preface of his book. The Awami National Party has made all 28 chapters of this book available on its official website.

According to Begum Saheb, Wali Khan almost retired from active politics after an 1989 electoral defeat. Was that a turning point? “Almost,” Begum Wali replied. Except for participation in a rally against the Kalabagh dam, he almost stopped all political activities. “The press conference addressed by Khan Saheb at Peshawar was his las,” Begum Wali stopped to ask the servants to start the generator as the power broke down. “It happens 10 to 20 times daily,” she said when asked whether power outages were as frequent in the Charsadda area as in Karachi. “That press conference Khan Saheb addressed after the Americans landed in Afghanistan following 9/11 was his last major political activity,” she said. In that press conference, Khan Saheb said that had the US not attacked Afghanistan that country would have turned into an Arab colony since Osama bin Laden had his own well-equipped army of 16,000 people which far exceeded the number of trained soldiers in the Afghan army. Had the US not invaded Afghanistan, Osama would have occupied all of Afghanistan and turned it into an Arab colony.

When asked whether Wali Khan was indeed the recipient of a medal from some World Anti-Communism League despite the family’s relations with the communist regimes in Afghanistan, Begum said: “No, it’s not true.” According to her, Wali Khan’s anti-communism did not exceed the fact that he was not a communist himself. “He has been a nationalist throughout.”

Asked if the Pukhtoonistan slogan in the Frontier politics before independence had not been quite vague, she said Wali Khan had never used the word in his speeches or his writings. “What he strived for as a nationalist were the province’s rights within Pakistan-that was his role.” Asked about the Pushtoon nationalists’ demand for the inclusion of certain areas of Balochistan such as Quetta in the NWFP, she replied, “That is another thing-a historic fact. The lines dividing Pushtuns represent repression. They are but one people.” The British-Afghan treaty (delineation of the Durand Line) was an agreement under duress. Amir Abdul Rahman was forced to sign it behind bars. He was subjected to torture. His release came in exchange for his signatures on the treaty. Since then, no Afghan government has ratified that treaty. Not even the Mujahideen, not Hikmatyar, not even the Taliban.”

Asked whether President Hamid Karzai accepted the Durand Line, she said: “So far even Karzai has not accepted Durand Line as the permanent border. If he accepts it at a later stage, that is another thing. Anyone who calls himself a Pushtoon will never accept the Durand [Line].”

Sangeen Wali added: “The Durand Line agreement was between the British and the Afghans. But who has ratified it after the British left India? Who from Pakistan or Afghanistan has renewed it? If you cannot answer that, don’t ask her about it.” Begum Wali Khan resumed, “[Gen] Ziaul Haq himself abrogated the Durand Line. As many as 3.2 million people from Afghanistan entered Pakistan without any travel documents. 32,000 people cannot cross from one country into another without a passport.”

Asked whether or not the Pushtoonistan issue had ever been part of their family’s political agenda, she said the issue was there when talk about partitioning the sub-continent began. “When legislative assemblies of Sindh, Punjab and Bengal were asked about joining Pakistan or India, the NWFP assembly was not accorded this right. In the NWFP, a referendum was held with the option to join India or Pakistan. The Frontier government, which enjoyed a two-thirds majority in the legislature, demanded that the referendum also provide the option of an independent NWFP. That demand was rejected. “Since then, Pushtoonistan has been made the nath of our nose,” she says.