PESHAWAR: A faction of the Pashtun Tahafuz Movement (PTM), a Pakistani ethnic rights group, on Wednesday launched a political party, the National Democratic Movement (NDM), formally entering Pakistan’s electoral politics.
The PTM emerged after the January 2018 killing by police of Pashtun youth Naqibullah Mehsud in Karachi. Since then, the civil rights group has complained of several thousand such killings having been carried out after Pakistan joined the US-led war on terror and launched major military operations targeting Pakistani Taliban strongholds in the Pashtun majority tribal areas bordering Afghanistan. The group has been a thorn in the side of the military with frequent sit-ins and rallies denouncing alleged abuses. The military denies its accusations.
At a launch ceremony for the NDM in Peshawar, parliamentarian Mohsin Dawar, who is among the founders of the PTM, was sworn in as the chairman of the party. The movement’s founder Manzoor Pashteen has preferred to keep the PTM out of parliamentary politics, but other senior members of the group, including Afrasiab Khattak, Bushra Gohar, and Jamila Gilani, have supported Dawar to launch the party.
Manzoor Pashteen, the founder of the Pashtun Tahafuz Movement (PTM), talks to Arab News in Peshawar, Pakistan on August 31, 2020. (AN photo)
NDM had no “serious differences” with those members of the PTM who had decided not to enter formal politics, Dawar told Arab News on Wednesday.
“PTM is an apolitical force and I’ll be a supporter of its cause,” Dawar said, “but I don’t think PTM will support our party (NDM).”
Pashteen said PTM would not support or oppose the new party.
“We’ve been at loggerheads for quite some time over the future role of PTM as a force,” he said. “I’m of the firm view that the movement should stay apolitical, which can be more effective.”
Adnan Bhittani, a security analyst in Peshawar, said the political party could end up strengthening the PTM and create more political awareness in Pakistan’s Pashtun majority northwest.
“The new political party would usher an era of political awareness and multiply political activities in the region,” he said. “NDM will prove a strength for Pashteen.”
Bhittani added that the NDM would also present more electoral choices to voters in the northwestern region: “It is a good development and offering people, specifically those of tribal areas an alternate platform to exercise their democratic rights. Previously, only religious parties such as Jamiat Ulama-e-Islam-Fazl (JUI-F) were a single political force dominating there.”
