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Pashtunistan ()Various spellings result from different pronunciation in various Pashto dialects. See for further information. or Pakhtunistan is a historical region on the crossroads of Central Asia and South Asia, located on the Iranian Plateau, inhabited by the Pashtuns of southern and eastern Afghanistan and northwestern Pakistan, wherein Pashtun culture, the Pashto, and identity have been based. Alternative names historically used for the region include Pashtūnkhwā or Pakhtūnkhwā (پښتونخوا), Pathānistān, or simply the Pashtun Belt. (2025). 9780852297605, Encyclopædia Britannica. ISBN 9780852297605
During British Raj in 1893, Mortimer Durand drew the Durand Line, fixing the limits of the spheres of influence between the Emirate of Afghanistan and British India during the Great Game and leaving about half of historical Pashtun territory under British colonial rule; after the partition of British India, the Durand Line now forms the internationally recognized border between Afghanistan and Pakistan. The traditional Pashtun homeland stretches roughly from the areas south of the Amu Darya in Afghanistan to the areas west of the Indus River in Pakistan; it predominantly comprises the southwestern, eastern and some northern and western districts of Afghanistan, as well as most of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and northern Balochistan in Pakistan. The region is bordered by Punjab and Hazara region to the east, Balochistan to the south, Kohistan and Chitral District to the north, and Hazarajat and Tajik-inhabited territory to the west.
The 16th-century revolutionary Ormur leader Pir Roshan of Waziristan and the 17th-century "warrior-poet" Khushal Khattak assembled Pashtun armies to fight against the Mughal Empire in the region. During this time, the eastern parts of Pashtunistan were ruled by the Mughals while the western parts were ruled by Safavid Iran. Pashtunistan first gained an autonomous status in 1709, when Mirwais Hotak successfully revolted against the Safavids in Loy Kandahar. The Pashtuns later achieved unity under the leadership of Ahmad Shah Durrani, who founded the Durrani dynasty and established the Durrani Empire in 1747. In the 19th century, however, the Afghan Empire lost large parts of its eastern territory to the Sikh Empire and later the British Empire. Many famous Indian independence activists emerged from the region including Abdul Ghaffar Khan and his anti-colonial Khudai Khidmatgar movement to free the region from British control. In 1969, the autonomous princely states of Swat, Dir, Chitral, and Amb were merged into the Pakistani NWFP. In 2018, the Pashtun-majority Federally Administered Tribal Areas, formerly a federally-controlled buffer zone of Pakistan on the international border with Afghanistan, were merged into the province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (previously known as the NWFP), fully integrating the region with Pakistan proper.
The Pashtuns practice Pashtunwali, the indigenous culture of the Pashtuns, and this remains significant for many Pashtuns. Although the Pashtuns are politically separated by the Durand Line between Pakistan and Afghanistan, many Pashtun tribes from the FATA area and the adjacent regions of Afghanistan, tend to ignore the border and cross back and forth with relative ease to attend weddings, family functions and take part in the joint tribal councils known as JirgaAhmed, Feroz (1998) Ethnicity and politics in Pakistan. Karachi. Oxford University Press. Depending on the source, the ethnic Pashtuns constitute 42-60% of the population of Afghanistan. In neighboring Pakistan they constitute 18 percent of over the 241 million population, which does not include Pashtun diaspora in other Pakistani cities and provinces.
The Pashto name Pakhtunistan or Pashtunistan ( (Naskh)) evolved originally from the Indian word "Pathanistan" (Hindustani: (Nastaleeq), पठानिस्तान (Devanagari)). The concept of Pashtunistan was inspired by the term "Pakhtunkhwa". British Indian leaders, including the Khudai Khidmatgar, started using the word "Pathanistan" to refer to the region, and later, the word "Pashtunistan" became more popular.
The Pashtuns practice Pashtunwali, the indigenous culture of the Pashtuns, and this pre-Islamic identity remains significant for many Pashtuns and is one of the factors that have kept the Pashtunistan issue alive. Although the Pashtuns are politically separated by the Durand Line between Pakistan and Afghanistan, many Pashtun tribes from the FATA area and the adjacent regions of Afghanistan, tend to ignore the border and cross back and forth with relative ease to attend weddings, family functions and take part in the joint tribal councils known as JirgaAhmed, Feroz (1998) Ethnicity and politics in Pakistan. Karachi. Oxford University Press. Though this was common before the war on terror but after several military operations conducted in FATA, this cross border movement is checked via military and has become much less common in comparison to the past.
Depending on the source, the ethnic Pashtuns constitute 42-60% of the population of Afghanistan.9780160118449, Government Printing Office. . ISBN 9780160118449 In neighboring Pakistan they constitute 15.42 percent of the 200 million population, which does not include Pashtun diaspora in other Pakistani cities and provinces. In the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province of Pakistan, Pashto speakers constitute above 73 percent of the population as of 1998.
Arab Muslims arrived in the 7th century and began introducing Islam to the native Pashtun people. The Pashtunistan area later fell to the Turkic people Ghaznavids whose main capital was at Ghazni, with Lahore serving as the second power house. The Ghaznavid Empire was then taken over by the Ghorid dynasty from today's Ghor Province, Afghanistan. The army of Genghis Khan arrived in the 13th century and began destroying cities in the north while the Pashtun territory was defended by the Khalji dynasty of Delhi. In the 14th and 15th century, the Timurid dynasty was in control of the nearby cities and towns, until Babur captured Kabul in 1504.
After the death of Nader Shah in 1747 and the disintegration of his massive empire, Ahmad Shah Durrani created his own large and powerful Durrani Empire, which included all of modern-day Afghanistan, North east Iran, Sindh, Punjab, Baluchistan and Kashmir. The famous couplet by Ahmad Shah Durrani describes the association the people have with the regional city of Kandahar:
"Da Dili takht herauma cheh rayad kam zama da khkule Pukhtunkhwa da ghre saroona". Translation: "I forget the throne of Delhi when I recall the mountain peaks of my beautiful Pukhtunkhwa."
The last Durrani Empire was established in 1747 and united all the different Pashtun tribes as well as many other ethnic groups. Parts of the Pashtunistan region around Peshawar was invaded by Ranjit Singh and his Sikh Empire army in the early part of the 19th century, but a few years later they were defeated by the British Raj, the new powerful empire which reached the Pashtunistan region from the east.
Similarly, during the 1942 Cripps Mission, and 1946 Cabinet Mission to India, the Afghan government made repeated attempts to ensure that any debate about the independence of India must include Afghanistan's role in the future of the NWFP. The British government wavered between reassuring the Afghan to the rejection of their role and insistence that NWFP was an integral part of British India.Roberts, J(2003) The origins of conflict in Afghanistan. Greenwood Publishing Group, , , pp. 92-94
During World War II, the government of Nazi Germany proposed an alliance with neutral Afghanistan in order to destabilize British control over the north-west of its domain in India. In return, the Afghans sought that NWFP and the Port of Karachi would be ceded to the Kingdom of Afghanistan with German military aid, so that it could gain valuable access to the Arabian Sea. Such a plan would require annexation of NWFP, Baluchistan and Sindh provinces.
The Khudai Khidmatgars (also known as the "Red Shirts") were members of a civil rights movement. Its leader Bacha Khan claimed to have been inspired by the Indian activism Mahatma Gandhi. While the Red Shirts were willing to work with the Indian National Congress from a political point of view, the Pashtuns living in the NWFP desired independence from India. However, the Bacha Khan wanted the Pashtuns areas in British India to remain part of Akhand Bharat instead of gaining independence.
Since the late 1940s with the dissolution of British India and independence of Pakistan, some rigid Pashtun proposed merging with Afghanistan or creating Pashtunistan as a future sovereign state for the local Pashtun inhabitants of the area. At first, Afghanistan became the only government to oppose the entry of Pakistan into the United Nations in 1947, although it was reversed a few months later. On July 26, 1949, when Afghanistan–Pakistan relations were rapidly deteriorating, a loya jirga was held in Afghanistan after a military aircraft from the Pakistan Air Force bombed a village on the Afghan side of the Durand Line. As a result of this violation, the Afghan government declared that it recognized "neither the imaginary Durand nor any similar line" and that all previous Durand Line agreements were void. The Pashtunistan Issue, Craig Baxter (1997), Library of Congress Country Studies. Bacha Khan when took an oath of allegiance to Pakistan in 1948 in legislation assembly and during his speech he was asked by PM Liaquat Ali Khan about Pashtunistan to which he replied that it's just a name to the Pashtun province in Pakistan same like Punjab, Bengal, Sindh and Baluchishtan are the names of provinces of Pakistan as ethno-linguistic names, contrary to what he believed and strived for Pashtunistan an independent state. During the 1950s to the late 1960s, Pashtuns were promoted to higher positions within the Pakistani government and military, thereby integrating Pashtuns into the Pakistani state and severely weakening secessionist sentiments to the point that by the mid-1960s, popular support for an independent Pashtunistan had all but disappeared. Afghanistan and Pashtun nationalists did not exploit Pakistan's vulnerability during the nation's 1965 and 1971 wars with India, and even backed Pakistan against a largely Hindu India. Further, had Pakistan been destabilized by India, nationalists would have had to fight against a much bigger country than Pakistan for their independence.Paul Wolf. "Pashtunistan." Pakistan: Partition and Military Succession. 2004.
Sardar Daoud Khan, who was the-then prime minister of Afghanistan supported a nationalistic reunification of the Pashtuns in Pakistan with Afghanistan. He wanted Pashtun-dominated areas like Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Baloch-dominated areas like Balochistan to become part of Afghanistan. However, his policy of reunification of Pashtuns antagonized Non-Pashtuns like Tajiks, Uzbeks and Hazaras living in Afghanistan. Non-Pashtuns believed that the aim of reunification of Pashtuns areas was to increase the population of Pashtuns in Afghanistan. As a result, Daoud Khan was extremely unpopular with Non-Pashtun Afghans. with Abdul Ghaffar Khan, 1961]] Bacha Khan stated that "Daoud Khan only exploited the idea of reunification of Pashtun people to meet his own political ends". In 1960 and later in 1961, Daoud Khan made two attempts to capture Bajaur District in Khyber Pakthunkhwa, Pakistan. However, all of Daoud Khan attempts failed as the Afghan army was routed with heavy casualties. Several Afghan army soldiers were also captured by Pakistani soldiers and they were paraded in front of international media which in turn caused embarrassment for Daoud Khan. As a consequence of Daoud Khan's actions, Pakistan closed its border with Afghanistan which caused economic crisis in Afghanistan. Because of continued resentment against Daoud's autocratic rule, close ties with the Soviet Union and economic downturn caused by the blockade imposed by Pakistan, Daoud Khan was forced to resign by King Zahir Shah. Under King Zahir Shah rule, relations between Pakistan and Afghanistan improved and Pakistan opened its border with Afghanistan. However, later on in 1973, Daoud Khan seized power from King Zahir Shah in a military Coup d'état and declared himself the first president of Afghanistan. After seizing the power, the Daoud Khan's government started proxy war against Pakistan. Daoud Khan's government established several training camps for anti-Pakistani militants in Kabul and Kandahar with the aim of training and arming those militants to carry out their activities against Pakistan. On the other hand, Mirzali Khan and his followers continued their guerilla war against the Pakistani government from their base in Gurwek. The Faqir of Ipi of North Waziristan. The Express Tribune. November 15, 2010. The legendary guerilla Faqir of Ipi unremembered on his 115th anniversary. The Express Tribune. April 18, 2016. In 1960, Afghan Prime Minister Mohammed Daoud Khan sent the Afghan military across the poorly-demarcated Durand Line into the Pakistani Bajaur Agency in order to manipulate events in the region and press the Pashtunistan issue; these plans ultimately came to nothing after the Afghan troops were defeated by Pakistani irregular forces. In support of the quasi-invasion, the Afghan government engaged in an intense propaganda war via radio broadcasts.
Pakistani government decided to retaliate against the Afghan government's Pashtunistan policy by supporting Non-Pashtun opponents of the Afghan government including future Mujaheddin leaders like Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and Ahmad Shah Massoud. "Remembering Our Warriors: Babar 'the great'." Interview of Maj. Gen. (Retd.) Naseerullah Khan Babar, by A. H. Amin. Defence Journal. April 2001. Retrieved 15 April 2010. This operation was remarkably successful, and by 1977 the Afghan government of Daoud Khan was willing to settle all outstanding issues in exchange for a lifting of the ban on the National Awami Party and a commitment towards provincial autonomy for Pashtuns, which was already guaranteed by Pakistan's Constitution, but stripped by the Bhutto government when the One Unit scheme was introduced.
Bacha Khan who previously strived greatly for Pashtunistan later on in 1980 during an interview with an Indian journalist, Haroon Siddiqui said that the "idea of Pashtunistan never helped Pashtuns. In fact it was never a reality". He further said that "successive Afghanistan have exploited the idea for their own political ends". It was only towards the end of Mohammed Daoud Khan regime that he stopped talking about Pashtunistan. Later on, even Nur Muhammad Taraki also talked about the idea of Pashtunistan and caused trouble for Pakistan. He also said that "Pashtun people greatly suffered because of all this."
In 1976, the then president of Afghanistan, Sardar Mohammed Daoud Khan recognised Durand Line as international border between Pakistan and Afghanistan. He made this declaration while he was on an official visit to Islamabad, Pakistan.
Daoud would be Saur Revolution by military officers in 1978 leading to the formation of the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan which was dominated by Pashtuns who would go on to "reopen the Pashtunistan wound". In 1979 under General Secretary Nur Muhammad Taraki the Khalq in Afghanistan changed the official map to include NWFP and Balochistan as new "frontier provinces" of the DRA. The Khalqist regime also sought to make Pashto the sole language of the Afghan government and the lingua franca, they did so by undermining Dari. The Afghan anthem under the communist regime was only in Pashto and not Dari with non-Pashtuns being required to sing it in Pashto. Up until the overthrow of Dr Najibullah's Homeland Party regime in 1992, Afghan governments had favored Pashto in the media and over 50% of Afghan media was in Pashto. After 1992 with the formation of the Tajiks led Islamic State of Afghanistan, this number dropped drastically.
Following the outbreak of the Soviet-Afghan War in Afghanistan, millions of Afghan refugees fled to Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
There are more than 19 million Pashtuns in Afghanistan, constituting 48% of the population. Other sources say that up to 60% of Afghanistan's population is made up of ethnic Pashtuns, forming the largest ethnic group in that country. Pashto is one of the official languages of Afghanistan, the Afghan National Anthem is recited in Pashto language and the Pashtun dress is the national dress of Afghanistan. Since the late 19th century, the traditional Pashtunistan region has gradually expanded to the Amu Darya in the north. However, most Pashtun living in north of the Helmand River tend to speak Dari instead of Pashto.
Important government positions in Afghanistan have historically been held by Pashtuns. The Afghan Armed Forces was also traditionally dominated by Pashtuns however the fall of the Najibullah regime in 1992 led to the creation of the Tajiks dominated Islamic State of Afghanistan.
The majority of the Taliban are ethnic Pashtuns, with past Pashtun leaders such as Mullah Omar, Mohammad Rabbani and Jalaluddin Haqqani. The current leaders of the Taliban include Pashtuns such as Abdul Kabir, Hibatullah Akhundzada and Sirajuddin Haqqani.
Afghanistan makes its claim on the Pashtun areas on the ground that it served as the Pashtun seat of power since 1709 with the rise of the Hotaki dynasty followed by the establishment of the Durrani Empire. According to historic sources, Afghan tribes did not appear in Peshawar valley until after 800 AD, when the Islamic conquest of this area took place.H. G. Raverty (1898) Tarikh-e-Farishtah; Notes on Afghanistan; Peshawar District Gazetteer 1897-98.
Agreements cited by the Afghan government as proof of their claim over the Pashtun tribes include Article 11 of the Anglo-Afghan Treaty of 1921, which states: "The two contracting parties, being mutually satisfied themselves each regarding the goodwill of the other and especially regarding their benevolent intentions towards the tribes residing close to their respective boundaries, hereby undertake to inform each other of any future military operations which may appear necessary for the maintenance of order among the frontier tribes residing within their respective spheres before the commencement of such operations."Olaf Caroe. The Pathans 1981. A supplementary letter to the Anglo-Afghan Treaty of 1921 reads: "As the conditions of the Frontier tribes of the two governments are of interest to the Government of Afghanistan. I inform you that the British government entertains feelings of goodwill towards all the Frontier tribes and has every intention of treating them generously, provided they abstain from outrages against the people of India."
There was support, however, to rename North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) as Pakhtunkhwa (which translates as "area of Pashtuns"). Nasim Wali Khan (the wife of Khan Abdul Wali Khan) declared in an interview: "I want an identity. I want the name to change so that Pathans may be identified on the map of Pakistan..."
On 31 March 2010, Pakistan's Constitutional Reform Committee agreed that the province be named and recognized as Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa.BBC News Online – Pakistan debates key amendment bill Retrieved 5 April 2010Dawn News – Consensus reached on renaming NWFP Retrieved 5 April 2010 This is now the official name for the former NWFP.
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