WITH the exception of Punjabis, ethno-national groups in Pakistan retain a perception of themselves as oppressed and excluded. Bengalis, Baloch, Kashmiris, Seraikis, and many other ethnic and linguistic communities have, at one time or the other, decried and resisted oppression by the Pakistani state. Yet arguably the most curious case of all is that of the Pakhtuns whose political, economic and cultural status in Pakistan has undergone more shifts than anyone cares to consider.

It is not emphasised enough in our history books that the dominant political sentiment amongst Pakhtuns to the east of the Durand Line in 1947 was anti-partition. Playing up their link to both India and Afghanistan, the newly born Pakistani state subjected Pakhtun nationalists — whose base was the populous and wealthy Peshawar Valley — to political victimisation. At the same time, the state patronised so-called ‘tribal’ Pakhtuns who were considered loyal and easy to mobilise in defence of the country. In short, from the early years the state adopted a carrot and stick policy vis-à-vis the Pakhtuns.

Over time the separatist strand within the Pakhtun nationalist movement has been tamed, largely through systematic cooption. Particular emphasis has been placed on inducting Pakhtuns into the civil and military services. Significantly, the intelligence agencies now feature a substantial Pakhtun component, with the greatest influx taking place during and after the Afghan War in the 1980s.

Meanwhile, there has also been a deliberate policy of keeping the ‘tribal’ areas a political backwater, so as to serve absurd ‘national security’ imperatives. It is a cruel fact of history that even as this policy has spectacularly — and unsurprisingly — imploded, it is ordinary Pakhtuns from across Fata who have to suffer the consequences. Thousands have been killed and maimed and millions driven from their homes by a brutal conflict which, until relatively recently, most had internalised as an epic battle being waged against the enemies of Islam.

Of course some Pakhtuns are still prone to believing this hackneyed narrative, and while it can be argued that the state is primarily responsible for mangling Pakhtun culture beyond recognition, critical introspection is required if Pakhtun society is to move beyond both the horrific outcomes of violent conflict and the myopia of state ideology.

Truth be told, in some parts of Pakistan, Pakhtuns are synonymous with the state, notwithstanding the fact that in the dominant ethno-national narrative Punjab is the only hegemon. The brutalisation of Baloch society in recent years has featured the Frontier Corps, comprised almost exclusively of Pakhtuns. More generally Pakhtuns are economically and professionally more advanced than the Baloch in virtually all fields of life.

It is not just in Balochistan that the entrepreneurial savvy of Pakhtuns is on show. In Karachi and in other cities, towns and hamlets across the country, Pakhtuns demonstrate mobility and economic dynamism on a daily basis. History suggests that this trend is not a recent one; Pakhtuns have travelled across the length and breadth of the Indian subcontinent for hundreds of years, often assimilating into the regions they have settled in.

Yet if Pakhtuns have found wealth and power on their travels, they have also found suffering and squalor. What we were not told about the recent carnage in Islamabad’s sabzi mandi is that most of the vendors and labourers there, and many who were killed in the blast, were Pakhtuns. The living conditions in the katchi abadis they occupy are precarious and demeaning. Worst of all it is this teeming mass of poor Pakhtuns who are subjected — in Islamabad, Lahore and other urban centres — to racial profiling and political victimisation.

It is thus that the Pakhtun national question is incredibly complex, a mosaic of unbridled capital accumulation, poverty, religious militancy, death, the lure of state power and utter disempowerment. Put differently, the story of the Pakhtun nation within Pakistan is one of extremes, a dialectic of unparalleled upward mobility and just as rapid ruin.

What the future holds is impossible to predict. I doubt there will ever be consensus within the Pakhtun nation on what is necessary and sufficient for it to progress. Indeed, popular perception aside, nationalism is never a truly representative force, especially when nations are so badly divided along class and other lines.

Nevertheless progressive segments within the Pakhtun nation necessarily have a crucial role to play, not least in linking up with other progressives across the ethnic divide. Progressive Pakhtuns must also denounce the complicity of affluent Pakhtuns with the state, imperialism and the religious right. It is the nexus of these three forces that keeps Pakhtun society in crisis, that precludes the possibility of all Pakhtuns living lives of dignity.

The writer teaches at Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad.