Pashtun
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A brief history
Tilak Devasher, Oct 6, 2022: The Times of India
The former special secretary to the cabinet secretariat examines the history of the Iranian ethnic group, which is native to Pashtunistan, now included within the boundaries of Afghanistan and Pakistan, that has witnessed more invasions than any other region in the world
Pashtunistan, the land of the Pashtuns, has historically stretched roughly from the Indus River to the Hindu Kush range. It had a common government from 1747 right up to 1834, when the Sikhs tore off the part of it lying between the Indus and the foothills on the west. Today, the 2,640 km-long disputed Durand Line divides the land and the people between Pakistan, a country created in 1947, and Afghanistan, a country that started taking shape two centuries earlier in 1747.
Through most of history, the Pashtun region now included within the boundaries of Afghanistan and Pakistan had witnessed more invasions than any other in Asia, or perhaps the world. From the Aryans in about the second millennium BCE, to the Greeks, Persians, Sakas, Kushans, Hephthalites (White Huns), Arabs, Mongols, Turks, Mughals, British and Soviets, to the US, the region has perhaps seen it all. Most attempted to conquer and subdue the Pashtuns but ultimately failed. The reason was that, as all invaders found out, the Pashtun tribesmen would not be defeated. As has been well put:
You cannot defeat people who have no concept of defeat in the classical sense. They only believe in survival. They know when to fight, when to run and hide, and when to talk. Military operations against such adversaries can only have one objective: to bring them to the negotiating table. Thus, despite the use of every conceivable weapon of the time, the objective was the same — negotiations.
In medieval times, Pashtunistan was a borderland between empires that ruled from India, Iran or Central Asia. In the last two centuries, it has had the unfortunate distinction of being invaded by each of the great powers of the times: Great Britain in the 19th century, the Soviet Union in the 20th and the United States in the 21st.
Uniquely, too, each time the invasions were motivated not by any intrinsic value of Pashtunistan in terms of resources or riches but due to geostrategic reasons. For millennia, landlocked Pashtunistan, located as it was at the crossroads of Central Asia, South Asia, the Middle East and East Asia, was the transit route to the riches of India.
All through the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th, the Pashtuns became pawns in the chessboard of the Great Game between Great Britain and Russia, with Pashtunistan as a buffer state. In the latter half of the 20th century, they became the victims of the Cold War between the United States and the USSR, and were subjected to an invasion and a destructive civil war. The 21st century has seen the Pashtuns as a central factor in the ‘war on terror’ and its aftermath. At the time of writing, it again faces an uncertain future with the Taliban back in the saddle.
Not surprisingly, as Arthur Swinson puts it: “No area of comparable size has seen so much action, bloodshed, intrigue, gallantry, savagery, devotion, patience or sacrifice. Here, both virtues and vices have been bred on a heroic scale; and the centuries have passed without eroding them.”
Pashtunistan has seen great conquerors like Alexander the Great, Timur, Babur and Nadir Shah; in more modern times, soldiers, administrators and leaders like Pollock, Napier, Nicholson, Roberts, Churchill, Wavell, Lytton, Curzon, Gandhi, Nehru, Atlee, Jinnah and Mountbatten. Of the many famous names in Pashtunistan, none is more so than the Khyber Pass.
As James Spain puts it: “History hangs heavy on the Khyber and has left its mark upon its sombre stone. Ground into the dust of the pass is Persian gold, Greek iron, Tartar leather, Mogul gems, Afghan silver and British steel. All have watered it with their blood.”
Great generals like Alexander and Babar paid Afridi tribesmen guarding the Khyber to allow passage into India. Attempts to force their way, like Mughal emperor Aurangzeb did, led to the loss of thousands of lives, great expense and humiliation.
However, waves of invasions and migrations were not a one-way street. For centuries, Pashtuns had ventured out from their homeland and, as soldiers for hire, had formed empires and states. Pashtun tribal dynasties like the Khiljis, Lodhis and Suris established themselves as sultans of Delhi. Sher Shah Suri established an administration that was emulated by other rulers.
The Orakzai Pashtuns set up their own princely state of Bhopal under the Mughal Empire as did the Yusufzais in Rampur in India. In addition, Pashtun traders, landlords and farmers had circulated in 18th-century north India. In the nineteenth century, confronted by an expanding British Indian Empire, Pashtuns collaborated and resisted, as also moved onwards.
The Pashtuns have made a vital contribution in diverse spheres of life: all rulers of Afghanistan since 1747, except for a nine-month interlude in 1929 and between 1992 and 1996, have been Pashtuns. In Pakistan, Ayub Khan, a Tarin Pashtun, as also Gen Yahya Khan and Ghulam Ishaq Khan, became presidents; in India, Zakir Hussain, an Afridi Pashtun, became president. Muhammed Yusuf Khan (Dilip Kumar) and Mumtaz Jahan (Madhubala) were great Bollywood actors; Mansoor Ali Khan (Tiger Pataudi) led the Indian cricket team; the Khan brothers from Peshawar in Pakistan were champion squash players; there have been several Sufi saints like Pir Baba and the Akhund of Swat, poets like Khushal Khan Khattak, and the great advocate of non-violence, Ghaffar Khan.
The geography of the area has been both a weakness and a strength for the Pashtuns: weakness because of being located on the land route to the wealth of India and strength due to its mountainous terrain. The former attracted all manner of invaders, while the latter developed the robust character of the people, giving them the power to challenge every aggressor. Almost all invaders were to learn the hard way how difficult it was to rule over the Pashtuns.
There are about 31 million Pashtuns in Pakistan, making up about 16% of the population and the third-largest ethnic group after the Punjabis and Sindhis. There are another 15 million in Afghanistan where they are 40% of the population and the largest ethnic group, though not the majority. The city of Karachi is home to the largest Pashtun population in the world — superseding Pashtun cities such as Peshawar, Kabul, Jalalabad and Kandahar.
For a long time, much of what had been written about the Pashtuns was from the British who were involved in trying to subdue the tribes and the ethnographic material on the frontier tribes was produced not by academics but by political administrators in the form of personal accounts.
The first Briton to encounter what would become the North-West Frontier of the Raj was Mountstuart Elphinstone, an East India Company civil servant and later the governor of the Bombay Presidency. He was given the responsibility of opening relations with the Afghans.
In 1809, he met Amir Shah Shuja in the winter capital of Peshawar, marking Afghanistan’s inclusion into western politics. While in Peshawar, Elphinstone and Shah Shuja concluded a treaty of ‘eternal friendship’. The treaty was directed against the French and the Persians, as part of the grand British strategy to contain Napoleon.
With the treaty, the Afghans committed themselves to help the British if the French and Persians would attack the Indian subcontinent. Although, in the end, the treaty came to nothing, Elphinstone’s visit led to the first full western report of Afghan history and society. The book about his experiences in Peshawar, titled An Account of the Kingdom of Caubul, has retained its value to the present day.
In his book, Elphinstone equated the Pashtuns to the Highlanders of his native Scotland and his description of the Pashtun character became the gold standard for future British administrators. According to him, “their vices are revenge, envy, avarice, rapacity and obstinacy; on the other hand, they are fond of liberty, faithful to their friends, kind to their dependents, hospitable, brave, hardy, frugal, laborious, and prudent”. In 1832, a British visitor to Afghanistan was struck by the absence of prejudice against Christians. He wrote: It is a matter of agreeable surprise to anyone acquainted with Mahomedans of India, Persia and Turkey and with their religious prejudices and antipathies, to find that the people of Kabul are entirely [devoid] of them. In most countries few Mahomedans will eat with a Christian; to salute him, even in error, is deemed unfortunate and he is looked upon as unclean. Here none of these difficulties or feelings exist. The Christian is respectfully called a ‘Kitabi’ or ‘one of the Book’. However, a century of interaction with the British would change the benign attitude towards Westerners. Dr Henry Bellew, attached to the Corps of Guides as their surgeon, came to know the Yusufzais well and compiled an ethnographic study still regarded as a classic of its kind. Like Elphinstone before him, the doctor was impressed by the Pathans’ rugged individualism. He wrote:
Each tribe under its own chief is an independent commonwealth and collectively each is the other’s rival if not enemy ... Every man is pretty much his own master. Their khans and maliks only exercise authority on and exact revenues from the mixed population ... They eternally boast of their descent, their prowess in arms, and their independence, and cap all by ‘Am I not a Pakhtun?’
Excerpted with permission from ‘The Pashtuns: A Contested History’ (published by Harper Collins India)
