Manzur Pashteen visit to Haqqania

Two clear trends are emerging in those who are criticizing Manzur's visit to Haqqania. The first one is criticizing the move as tactically wrong but agree that there should be a reach-out to all, including the religious seminaries and the clergy. The other is making it an all-out assault on PTM and are declaring it 'ideological' betrayal. I will not be wrong to say that the second trend is sustained by the liberal class of mainland Pakistan and that I am confident that I have yet to come across a Pashtun (on my wall to say the least) who is sustaining the second trend.

Strawmen arguments are thrown and false equivalencies are established. Some are comparing it to the apologia for terrorism while others are calling it mainstreaming extremism while completely ignoring the power dynamics and the institutional structures. Manzur is not a powerbroker who you can compare with those who patronize, mainstream extremism and also he hasn't acted as an apologist for extremism. He has reached out as a tactical move to the religious clergy and still clinches to the primacy of his demands.

The charge of ideological betrayal is misplaced because this mainland liberal class was engaged with our struggle through a particular prism of their own. Their lens is that of seeing our struggle as an ideological or that of narratives, the ones that they are used to. The ones belonging to the second trend didn't accept the political nature of the struggle which is about the relationship between the state and Pashtun lands. Everything else is subsumed by this essential struggle. As they are not direct target of the kind of exploitation and violence at the hands of the state that we are, they can't accept the primacy of our causes; and instead wanted it to adjust to their own ideological prism and liberal bias.

Herein also lies the crisis of empathy. They can't empathize with the kind of reality that we live under. They impose their experience over our struggle and are unable or unwilling to see our struggle in the framework of relationship with the state. Their problem is religious extremism because they are part of the mainland and the state exploits the 'periphery' for their benefit. Our problem is first the state and then the violence imposed by the state, then the humiliation and exploitation we see at the hands of and in the mainland. The mainland doesn't need to bother about these things and thus they have to see everything with their own narrow prism. They can jump this gap of empathy by believing in primacy of the causes that we set for ourselves, otherwise, the periphery found a voice on its own and it will sustain it on its own.