Militancy as project of the state

And then there are those who come and lecture that why Pashtuns have become victims of state policies and how it is that the state is finding it easy to play them. This question in itself is wrong to ask. When a structure as powerful and as violent as a state decides to oppress and manipulate a nation you can only blame the state. You can't say that as the state has been successful in carrying out its policies so it is the people who have been oppressed are to blame. You can recount the foolishness of Pashtuns for taking the Jehad as wished by state but you also have to credit the Pashtun political struggle over the decades. Even today, out of all the reported enforced disappearances, 50 percent belongs to Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. But the people will see acts of extremism on parts of Pashtuns but will never ever raise voice for the forcibly disappeared or killed activists and leaders who have been directly taken out by the state.

I am forced to explain what I am trying to articulate by comparing the level of extremism in Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. In Punjab, Hafiz Saeed and co are able to easily recruit for themselves. The anti-shia militants all draw their ranks and file from few centers in Punjab. Violence against Ahmadis is the norm in Punjab and burning of whole colonies of minorities is not an unheard of thing in Punjab. Does this mean that people of Punjab are violent and extremists by nature? No. Never. It means that the state has allowed one kind of extremism to take hold in Punjab for serving its own policy agenda. State won't tolerate the kind of extremism and terrorism of Taliban kind in Punjab but it will enable and even back other kind of extremisms and terrorism there for the sake of few foundational myths of the state. You can't compare an individual with a group of people. When demagogues and hatemongers are allowed to influence masses, many gullible will enter into their fold.

The same is the case with Pashtun lands. I will detail in another post why Pashtun lands have been the target for the state's policy of Jehad and why the state has focused our lands for the Taliban and Jehad kind of extremism. Here the thing is that when the state unleashes all its fury and might on the kind of leadership and political struggle who opposes the state's policies then recruiting the gullible and impressionable minds for Jehad and as becomes a function of the available effort on part of the state and it's proxies. I am not presenting Pashtuns to be the 'nobel savage.' There are problems in Pashtun culture especially the bravado of outward and violent masculinity and the affinity of misogyny as prevalent in Pashtun culture with that of Arabia of medieval age. But then it is a cyclical process. The reformers and political leaders who have worked on reforming these flaws and who have tried to make Pashtuns immune to their shortcomings being exploited are systematically eradicated or silenced. In that aspect the state has become a direct part of magnifying those evil aspects of our culture and ensuring that no counter-narrative or challenge to their policies is presented. Coming up with the simplistic notion that it has something to do with Pashtuns is naive and completely miss the nature of political/state oppression.