From protests to movement

From protests to movement
Tuesday, May 04, 2010By Rahimullah Yusufzai
The campaign for creation of Hazara province is gaining momentum. The "Sooba Hazara Tehrik," or Movement for Hazara Province, was able to shut down much of Hazara division on May 2 by giving a call for a wheels-jam and shutter-down strike. While continuing to hold public meetings in different parts of Hazara to rally support for its cause, the movement's leadership is threatening to march on Islamabad as a last resort to force the government to accede to its demand. Abbottabad, the picturesque hill station known as the City of Schools, has become the nerve centre of the movement. In fact, the movement is strongest in Abbottabad district, followed, in that order, by Haripur and Mansehra. Its weakest link is Battagram, a Pashto-speaking district where most people appear uncomfortable with the idea of their area becoming part of a new province dominated by non-Pashto-speakers. They would be happy to remain part of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa after getting a new administrative division by the name of Abaseen comprising Battagram and Kohistan districts of Hazara and Shangla district of Malakand division. The proposed division of Abaseen, which is the name given locally to the River Indus passing through this area, would also include the Provincially Administered Tribal Area of Kala Dhaka, or Torghar in Pashto, which is presently part of Mansehra district. Kohistan, the fifth district in Hazara, seems divided on the issue of Hazara province. Its people would certainly support creation of Abaseen division and could eventually back Hazara province if it offers them greater political and economic benefits. The vast Kohistan district has two geographic parts, Swat Kohistan and Indus Kohistan. The main language is Kohistani, though many people are bilingual and can speak Pashto as well. One of its lawmakers, Abdul Sattar Khan of the PML-N, has moved a resolution in the provincial assembly demanding Hazara province while the others are pushing for creation of Abaseen division. The renaming of the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) as Khyber- Pakhtunkhwa provoked a strong reaction in Hazara, mostly in its Hindko-speaking areas of Abbottabad, Haripur and Mansehra. The PML-Q, defeated in Hazara in the 2008 general elections by Nawaz Sharif's PML-N, seized the opportunity and led protests against the new name of the province. It accused PML-N lawmakers from Hazara of failing to protect the identity of Hazarawals. As the protests grew, the campaign turned into a movement for Hazara province. The movement was lucky to have a leader in the person of Sardar Haider Zaman, a fatherly figure who is largely uncontroversial and could keep Hazara's often fractious politicians together. He has been contesting almost every assembly election from Abbottabad district and losing, except for a solitary win in the 1985 partyless polls when he went on to become a provincial minister. Twice he lost to Nawaz Sharif and this could be one reason for him to try and settle scores with the PML-N leader. His last and most recent public office was that of District Nazim of Abbottabad. Defying his age, Baba Haider Zaman, 80, goes about the task of organising and leading public protests. With his flowing white beard, he has been inspiring his followers, promising them a prosperous future once Hazara province comes into being. He is being helped in this cause by other leading figures of the movement such as former foreign minister and National Assembly Speaker Gohar Ayub Khan and his son Omar Ayub Khan, who served as minister of state for finance in Gen Musharraf's PML-Q government. In their speeches at public meetings, father and son come up with fantastic figures as to how Hazara would prosper by utilising its abundant forests and minerals, tapping its tourism potential and getting its share of profits from Tarbela Dam, the Ghazi-Barotha Barrage and the proposed Basha-Diamer Dam. It is another matter if, at the end of the day, there is no change in the standard of living of the majority of people and only the rich and powerful benefit from the creation of a new province after getting to rule a smaller, easily manageable administrative unit.Hazara has been more of an administrative unit than a distinct home of people of the same ethnicity. The term Hazarawal also didn't confer a cultural, ethnic or linguistic identity on its people. The late Dr Sher Bahadur Khan, in his book Tareekh-e-Hazara, writes that 1,000 Qarliq Turks in 1282 settled in the area now known as Haripur and that is how Haripur alone got the name Hazara. The place now called Abbottabad was in old times known as Rush and Mansehra as Wadi-e-Pakhal. Haripur is named after a Sikh general Hari Singh Nalwa from the court of Ranjit Singh, Abbottabad after the British official Major Abbott who administered the area and Mansehra after Man Singh. Those names haven't been changed even though they belong to the colonial era and remind one of the subjugation of our people by alien rulers.Though Hindko-speakers are in a majority in Hazara, it also has a fair share of people speaking Pashto, Gojri and Kohistani. But the chant, "Aik hi naara, Sooba Hazara" (One slogan, Hazara province) seems to be galvanising most of Hazara's population and bringing them together. The idea is catching up and the movement's leaders are so confident of success that they argue it is a matter of time before Hazara province becomes a reality. They are refusing to hold talks with the ANP-led government of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa despite numerous offers from it and would like to negotiate only with the PPP-headed federal government, and that too on the one-point agenda of Hazara province. The demand for Hazara province isn't new, but it is now that it has come to occupy centre-stage. Years ago, an Abbottabad lawyer, Asif Malik, launched the movement for Hazara province and never got any significant support. It even put up candidates in elections, only to be trounced by the mainstream parties. Asif Malik is now dead and his group is still a player, though a marginal one, in Hazara politics, but the idea he gave has caught on. Though the intensity of opposition to a Pakhtun-specific name for NWFP was understandable among Hazara's non-Pakhtun population, the strong criticism of Pakhtuns, or "Attockonpar," meaning those living beyond Attock, as exploiters was surprising. Many Pakhtuns have been critical of Punjab as the unkind big brother, and here we are faced with a situation in which non-Pakhtuns living in the Pakhtun-majority Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa complaining of exploitation at their hands. For right or wrong reasons, such feelings arise when the cake to be shared is small or there is uneven distribution of resources. The same reasons led to the alienation of the majority Bengalis and separation of East Pakistan. This is also fuelling the insurgency in Balochistan and has enabled ethnic- and region-based political parties to retain substantial followings. Things could have been different had the ruling PPP and ANP handled the situation wisely. Their insistence on renaming NWFP as Pakhtunkhwa was justified on the ground that it gave an identity to its majority Pakhtun population and this objective was achieved through a democratic process. But there was a need to consult the people not only in Hazara but also in other non-Pashto-speaking areas in the province and address their concerns as well. The issue of identity for Hazarawals was also important and this could have been tackled by prefixing "Hazara" to Pakhtunkhwa, instead of "Khyber." Nobody demanded it and yet it was added on the insistence of the PML-N. It is probably too late now to think of reconciliation on these lines because the demand for Hazara province seems to have become non-negotiable. The creation of Abaseen division, which the provincial government is promoting, may weaken the Hazara movement, but it won't be able to stop it.
The writer is resident editor of The News in Peshawar. Email: rahimyusufzai@yahoo.com

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