PTM an an anti-violence movement

PTM is an anti-war movement. Its demands are articulated in terms of lego-political rights under the framework of the constitution and under the ambit of the state. It doesn't claim to correct what is wrong with the state nor it claim to eradicate the non-state violence on Pashtun lands. Its demands are from state that the state should bring an end to the war and violence on Pashtun lands. Our engagement and our frame of reference is with the state and the legal obligations of the state respectively.

The state is a super-structure under which many sub-structures operate, including political parties, religious clergy, activist groups, academia and many such other entities. The demands of PTM are not that all these entities be made accountable and be reformed but rather that the violence directly perpetrated by the state on our lands should be stopped. The sub-structures mentioned have many aspects, some of which are directly connected to the grassroots and to be effective against the violence perpetrated by the super-structure of state, the non-violent aspects of all the other sub-structures have to be made alliances with.

Narratives against this or that non-state actor or extremist faction has been the defining objective of many activist movements and intellectuals (and all respect to them for standing to the NSAs and the extremist varieties), but PTM has come with a new kind of direct activism. It is not falling prey to the reductionist and one-dimensional 'all good or all bad' fallacy of the social and political players but instead is ignoring the ideological/political stances of the players to make them vouch for the basic demands from the state. The stance is clear that PTM doesn't care that who is ideologically behind the violence and who is providing the recruitment and who is rationalizing for the violence. What matters to PTM is that it is responsibility of the state to ensure end to that violence, the rest are demoted to be concerns of the state.

It is a tunnel-vision, I agree. But when you are denied the basic right to life and dignity by a super-structure all you can want is that structure to give you the basic rights. Now, there can be parallel movements. The demands of PTM from the state under the constitution do not foreclose any other kind of activism, which may pressurize the state to take care of the extremism. There also is no intellectual dishonesty and contradiction in asking the state to give you your rights while pressurizing the state to eradicate the extremism by stopping to co-opt some institutions for sake of its own political goals. In-fact asking the state to end the violence on your land is stopping the state to use the extremism latent in some institutions.