Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty February 5, 2021 Frud Bezhan Daud Khattak Families, traders, and guerrilla fighters have for generations moved freely across the porous border between Afghanistan and Pakistan. The disputed 2,670-kilometer frontier traverses some of the world’s most forbidding terrain, snaking through desolate deserts and towering mountains more than 4,000 meters high. Drawn by
By Radio Mashaal January 17, 2021 Pakistani security forces have detained and forcibly expelled a prominent ethnic Pashtun rights activist, Sanna Ejaz, from the restive province of Balochistan. Ejaz is a leader of the Pashtun Tahafuz Movement (PTM), a civil rights movement that has come under a growing government crackdown. Video footage uploaded on social media
By Radio Mashaal December 19, 2020 An anti-terrorism court in Karachi on December 19 handed over a lawmaker and Pashtun-rights leader to be held in custody for 12 days over a sedition charge that has sparked protests all over northwestern Pakistan. Lawmaker Ali Wazir was arrested in the city of Peshawar on December 16 after the
By RFE/RL’s Radio Mashaal May 2, 2020 Pashtun rights activist and political leader Sardar Arif Wazir has died of injuries sustained in a shooting attack in Pakistan’s South Waziristan tribal district. The Pashtun Tahaffuz Movement (PTM), a rights group that Wazir helped lead, confirmed to RFE/RL’s Radio Mashaal that Wazir died in Islamabad on May 2.
RFE/RL’s Radio Mashaal May 1, 2020 Unidentified gunmen have critically injured a prominent ethnic Pashtun rights activist in an attack in Pakistan’s South Waziristan tribal district. Sardar Arif Wazir, one of the leaders of the Pashtun Tahafuz Movement (PTM), was traveling by car in the city of Wanna when gunmen opened fire from another vehicle,
RFE/RL’s Radio Mashaal April 17, 2020 Pakistani police have arrested an ethnic Pashtun rights activist and charged him with hate speech after he spoke during a visit to neighboring Afghanistan. Police official Usman Wazir said Sardar Arif Wazir, a member of the Pashtun Tahafuz Movement (PTM), was arrested on April 17 in South Waziristan, a
Michael Hughes: A crackdown of Pashtun activists in Pakistan has drawn international opprobrium at an inconvenient time for Islamabad and Washington as they try to shape a public narrative to make a peace pact with the Taliban as palatable as possible. The Trump administration wants the U.S.-Taliban exit deal to be seen as a victory
By RFE/RL’s Radio Mashaal February 15, 2020 A court in Pakistan on February 15 ordered the release of a Pashtun leader, weeks after he was arrested charges including sedition. A lawyer for Manzoor Pashteen told RFE/RL’s Radio Mashaal that his client had been granted bail and ordered released. Pashteen was arrested in the northwestern city of
RFE/RL’s Radio Mashaal January 29, 2020 ISLAMABAD — Pakistan closed a key border crossing with Afghanistan for about 10 hours after mortar shells landed on Pakistani territory from across the border. Vehicles lined up on both sides of the border began moving across the Torkham crossing on the afternoon of January 29 after the gates were
By RFE/RL’s Radio Mashaal RFE/RL’s Radio Free Afghanistan January 28, 2020 ISLAMABAD/KABUL – Thousands of protesters have gathered in Pakistani and Afghan cities and towns to voice anger over the detention of an ethnic Pashtun rights activist in Pakistan. Manzoor Pashteen, the leader of a civic rights group that has criticized the Pakistani military’s operations