Journal articles on the topic 'Pashtun history'

The article examines statements on Pashtun ethnicity from the original Pashto prose texts written by the Khaṯak tribal rulers Khūshḥāl Khān (d. 1689) and Afżal Khān (d. circa 1740/41) and included in the corpus of the historiographical compilation Tārīkh-i muraṣṣa‘ (The Ornamented History). Under discussion are conceptual roots of the Pashtun ethnic identity in tribal genealogical traditions and ethical regulations (Code of Honour) of the Pashtun customary law, main hierarchal levels (national, tribal, clannish) within the ethnic consciousness of the Khaṯak chiefs, and the early development of the concept of Homeland (watan) in Pashto literature. Textual material analysed in the article with reference to similar declarations from the national and patriotic poetry of Khūshḥāl Khān suggests that towards the beginning of the 18th century Pashtun tribes in the mass well recognised themselves as one people with common ethno-cultural heritage, and national self-identification was one of the key elements in their collective consciousness that provided necessary ideological ground for the creation of the Afghan national statehood in 1747.

Indigenous knowledge and resilience are embedded in the prevailing culture of traditional societies. This study aims to investigate the Pashtun culturally embedded indigenous knowledge and resilience to climate change. The Pashtun indigenous knowledge is culturally entrenched and guides them socio-culturally to mitigate the worst impact of climate change. It is revealed Pashtun indigenous knowledge and resilience are rooted in their culture and social structure. Their folk literature, metaphors, poetry, traditions, cultural capitals, social organizations, and colonial history are key elements to understanding the different aspects of Pashtun’s traditional wisdom and resilience to climate change. Pashtun social structure (such as kinship bonds, brotherhood, and reciprocity) and cultural institutions (such as Jirga) also strengthen their resilience to bounce back from the worst impact of climate change. Indigenous knowledge, sociocultural institutions, and resilience collectively help them to face the worst impact of climate change. Pashtun have bad memories of colonial exploitation and Pakistan’s exploitative policies; hence, they do not trust state initiatives, and they rely on their traditions to counter the worst impact of climate change.

AbstractThe article surveys the views of Pashtun military-administrative elite on governance in the works of Khushḥāl Khān Khaṫak (d. 1689) and Afżal Khān Khaṫak (d. circa 1740). The texts under discussion pertain to the universal literary genre of “Mirrors for Princes”(naṣīḥat al-mulūk)and include the Khaṫak chieftains’ didactical writings in prose and verse, as well as still poorly studied documents on real politics from Afżal Khān's historiographical compilation “The Ornamented History”(Tārīkh-i muraṣṣaʿ). Rooted in the medieval Persian classics, early modern Pashto “mirrors” are distinguished by local ethnocultural peculiarities which manifest in shifting the very subject from statesmanship to chieftaincy and declaring regulations of the Pashtun unwritten Code of Honour. The study proves that the outlook and behavioural patterns of Pashtun tribal rulers stemmed from a combination, partly eclectic and contradictory, of Islamic precepts, feudal ideologies of the Mughal administrative system, and norms of the Pashtun customary law(Pashtunwali).

AbstractThis article offers a comparative examination of the literary responses of four leading early modern Pashtun authors to an armed clash in the Momand tribe in 1711. The responses include a chronicle record in prose (Afżal Khān Khaṫak) and three poems – an elegy (ʿAbd al-Raḥmān Momand), a satire (ʿAbd al-Ḥamīd Momand), and a war ode (ʿAbd al-Qādir Khaṫak). Discussed as both authentic historical documents and creative writings linked to a local social discourse, these Pashto texts enable us to reassess the intensity of everyday literary communications in Pashtun tribal areas in early modern times and append new factual material to the study of ethno-cultural processes within the Persophone oecumene. The salient stylistic and rhetoric diversity of the texts not only highlights the authors’ individual mindsets and literary techniques, but also provides an insight into a variety of social moods, political attitudes and ethics in the Pashtun traditional society.

Swat valley is an administrative district of Pakistan where Pashtuns live. Their ethnic and cultural heritage and Islamic values are mixed with the Pashtunwali, a traditional Pashtun code of conduct. The strong warrior history of Pashtuns made them vulnerable, and especially foreign terrorists tried to use this land for their interests. The Taliban insurgency in Swat started in 2007, due to which every sector of life was affected. Hence, Pakistan’s government, Pakistan's military, and different national and international NGOs put their utmost efforts until now to re-establish the lost peace at the hands of the Taliban in the beautiful valley of Swat. The central argument of this article is shaped by the study of the Pashtun’s heritage, culture, demographic history, the Taliban’s insurgency, the major destructions and the reconstruction by the government of Pakistan, and the revival of tourist sustainability in Swat. The research methodology is characterised by mixed-method research, making it a descriptive, exploratory, and observational study. However, the paper's significance is contributed by analysing the role of influential factors in the rise of militancy and providing recommendations for the future security of the Swat region.

Pashtun resistance to state authority has been interpreted in light of stereotypical colonial theories in colonial and post-colonial periods. Pashtuns were presented as marshals and wild people who resisted every kind of state authority in the colonial era. Perceptions about Pashtun’s resistance to state authority based on politically motivated stereotypes resonate in the British colonial regime. This study focuses on the stereotypes and myths associated with Pashtun's resistance to state authority in the colonial period and its effect on them in post-colonial periods. The British colonial regime faced resistance in the Pashtun indigenous society (now known as emerged districts). The findings of this study reveal that the Pashtun resistance to state authority is not part of their culture. Pashtun were against the exploitative policies of the British and it was genuine resistance. It reveals that their resistance was labelled as a normative part of their culture to legitimize the oppressive policies in this region. Moreover, in the post-colonial period, Pakistan also applied the same tactics and labelled genuine resistance as part of their culture. Stereotypes associated with Pashtun's resistance to the state should be deconstructed. References Akhtar, A. S. (2022). The checkpost state in Pakistan’s War of Terror: Centres, peripheries, and the politics of the universal. Antipode, 54(5), 1365-1385. Ali, H. & Zhibin, H. (2021). A Comparative Analysis of Mahsud and Afridi Tribe Resistance Movement Against the British 1849-1897. European Journal of Humanities and Educational Advancements, 2(9), 34-41 Arbab, S. (2019). The ecstasy and anarchy of nonviolence: The Khudai Khidmatgar resistance in the north-west frontier of British India. University of California, Los Angeles. Asif, D. M. (2024). THE COMPLEXITIES OF BIOTERRORISM: CHALLENGES AND CONSIDERATIONS. 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This article presents translations and analyses of some of the earliest known examples of Pashto literature: the poems of a figure known as Mullā Arzānī. The Pashto ghazals of Arzānī reflect a Sufi and messianic religio-cultural milieu in which Pashto is understood to be a divine language. An exploration of Arzānī’s poetry and Arzānī’s understanding of his own language use presents a strong challenge to the overly deterministic role that notions of “Pashtun identity” have played in Euro-American understandings of Pashto literature. Arzānī’s use of Pashto aimed not to express Pashtun ethnic identity. Rather, Arzānī’s ghazals position Pashto as an elite language that accords with the messianic and mystical logics of early modern Persianate cultures. Arzānī paired the cosmopolitanism of Persian and Islamic discourses with the particularity of Pashto language as a means to present Pashto as a divine and revelatory language within the messianic milieu of the Roshaniyya movement.

If we leave aside the imperial histories of those powers for which Afghanistan has been a strategic concern, Afghan historiography has tended to follow a single trajectory: the history of the Pashtuns and their principal royal clan, the Durrani. The non-Pashtun part of the human ecology of the country tends to be summed up as “other groups,” as if that 60 percent of the population only has a history in relation to the royal clan and its state. As the other essays in this roundtable argue, there are many ways to approach Afghanistan's history more inclusively than through Kabul-centric, Pashtun-dominated, top-down narratives or those that focus on the strategic concerns of superpowers. Nile Green sees a half-century gap in the historiography, between the nation-building of the 1920s and the nation-demolishing of the 1990s and beyond, and proposes the study of “subnational and transnational groups” as one way to refine our understanding of the politics of the country during that middle era. James Caron traces an imagined bond with place reflected in rural oral imagery, while Amin Tarzi approaches Afghan historiography itself as a productive field of study. Other areas hardly touched in the existing scholarship are institutional histories (judicial, educational, and fiscal), for which there is a wealth of untapped documentation; the built environment (following the seminal works of Szabo and Barfield on domestic and rural architecture and Schinasi on urban architecture); labor history (including the interconnections of work specializations and industry with ethnic groups); and the history of human bondage in the country.

This study provides a comprehensive analysis of Pashto language varieties through the framework of Ferguson’s diglossia model, focusing on Educated Standard Pashto, Regional Standard Pashto, and Prestige Standard Pashto. The research examines how these variants reflect and diverge from classical diglossic criteria. Educated Standard Pashto, which developed in the early 20th century, is characterized by its formal usage in education and media. While it exhibits features of a High form, such as a rich lexicon of paired terms and limited literacy, it does not fully meet Ferguson’s criteria due to the absence of a religious text and minimal grammatical differences from Low Pashto. Despite its prestige in formal contexts, its impact is somewhat mitigated by the low literacy rate in Afghanistan, with many illiterate speakers acquiring aspects of this variant informally through media exposure. Regional Standard Pashto, used as a common dialect among Pashtuns from various tribes, emerges in cities like Kandahar, Jalalabad, and Kabul. Each of these regional standards reflects local tribal influences and adaptations, with Kandahar and Jalalabad Pashto being shaped by their respective tribal dialects. In contrast, Kabul’s Pashto incorporates elements from multiple regional varieties and is notably influenced by Dari, the predominant language in the capital. This regional variation facilitates communication among Pashto speakers from diverse backgrounds. Prestige Standard Pashto, primarily represented by Southern Pashto, holds significant cultural and historical status due to the Durrani Confederacy’s role in Afghan history. Although its prestige is largely symbolic, reflecting Pashtun ethnic unity rather than a formalized linguistic tradition, it plays a crucial role in the standardization efforts of Educated Standard Pashto. The study shows Pashto partly aligns with Ferguson’s diglossia model, mainly through lexical differences and limited literacy, but lacks in areas like significant grammatical divergence and a central religious text. It highlights the complexities of Pashto's regional variations and the media’s role in linking High and Low Pashto.

This article examines the Khudai Khidmatgar Movement, led by Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan popularly known as Fakhr-i-Afghan Bacha khan, which played a pivotal role in social reform and political activism in colonial India. Founded in 1929, the movement adopted non-violent resistance to British rule while also addressing deep-rooted social issues within Pashtun society, such as factionalism, illiteracy, poverty, social and gender discrimination and blood feuds. Implying indegounious values, knowledge and tools, Ghaffar Khan promoted education, unity, and peaceful coexistence among his people, challenging the British narrative of Pashtuns as inherently violent. The article explores how the movement, initially focused on socio-educational reforms, evolved into a powerful force advocating for Indian independence, aligning with other non-violent movements like those led by Gandhi. Despite significant obstacles from the British and local elites, the Khudai Khidmatgar gained mass support, with over 100,000 members at its peak. The article highlights the movement’s transformative impact on Pashtun society and its contributions to the broader anti-colonial struggle, positioning it as a significant yet underappreciated chapter in South Asian history. This articles has relied on both primamry and secondary data for qualitative analysis, with most reliance on primary sorces of data collection. For this purpose, extensive interviews were conducted.

This article studies the problems of ethno-political processes in Afghanistan’s sociallife. This shock of social and political life was a manifestation of tension in the ethno-national sphere, originating in the time of the formation of the Afghan state, which was created by the Pashtun tribes with all the ensuing consequences.

In the 1940s the Afghan dynasty in Kabul and newly independent rulers in Pakistan did not meet the challenges of building enduring representative political institutions and sustainable national economies. The dynamics of post-war globalized political and economic relationships undermined perceived elements of colonial-era stability. Borderland individuals and communities buffeted by post-war uncertainties and traumas from the Partition of British-India in August 1947 often ignored or resisted state-building efforts too often seen as lacking political legitimacy or local benefit. State institutional failures of governance in the 1970s that preceded subsequent decades of regional instability were foreshadowed in the 1940s. By 1950, the working of global capital, including in the form of American corporate interests, complicated any state notions that foreign funded economic development schemes might substitute for substantial structural political and social reforms.

Swāt valley, located in the Khyber Pukhtunkhwa (KPK) province of the northern part of Pakistan, was known since the antiquity with the names of Uḍḍyāna (‘the garden’) and Suvāstu (‘the place of fine dwellings’). The Yusufuzai Pashtuns, whose penetration in the valley begun towards the 16th century, little by little replaced the probably autochthon Dardic populations who are actually confined in the northern mountainous part of the district, i.e. the Tehsils of Bahrain and Kalam. This article focuses on hydronymy and presents the first results of the toponymic project of the Swāt valley, held with the support of the Italian archaeological mission, working in Swāt since 1956 and continuing its researches under the direction of Luca Olivieri and the auspices of the ISMEO of Rome. As it is known, hydronymy is one of the most conservative branches of the toponymy: in the Swāt context, nearly all stream names are of Indo-Aryan (Dardic) origin, except names derived from the denomination of the Pashtun villages: this confirms all data provided by the archaeological excavations. This article will also provide some specific etymologies, aimed at showing the frontier position of Swāt at the border between Iranian and Indo-Aryan languages and cultures.

The Rawshani movement is the first well-documented example of supra-tribal unification and subsequent successful integration of the movement’s leaders into the alien state structures. But by no means is it an isolated phenomenon in Pashtun history. Similar pattern of religion-motivated supra-tribal unification, which should be considered as a product of historical relationships of power, remerged inter alia during more recent crises in the Afghan history. Due to the volatile nature of the Afghan state fluctuating between tribalism and ethnic pluralistic participation, military and Islamic dimensions have always been of paramount importance for state-community relations where religion, tribalism and ethnicity were often the means of state’s control of social resistance and its vehicles. In the time of crises, religion-inspired militia-type independent military formations were able to challenge the might of the state and occasionally even initiate the incipient state formation opposed to the communal institutions and those of the old regime. When this community-based military activity went beyond the scope of traditional annual cycle of violence it often acquired a supra-tribal or ethnic and regional dimension, which was legitimised by the Islamic ideology and institutions. This article offers some directions towards making a calibration tool or even identifying a pattern that may be used as an epistemological paradigm that may provide a sense of orientation and bearing in the intricacies of a complex historical interaction between Pashtun Islam, tribes and state.

Pulpit and Masjid play very pivotal and productive role in a Muslim society. It not only educates and guides Muslims in religious matters as well shapes the social attitude and role of Muslims. Moreover, it is evident by the history that Islamic State was run by the Head of the State from Masjid. Unfortunately, pulpit and Masjid have been losing sense of their actual responsibility as an agent of social cohesion, integration and reformation. The paper is an attempt of studying the current role of pulpit and Masjid regarding religious education and training, exploring the factors that have been hampering the way of realizing the dream of social reformation in contemporary Pashtun society by not allowing pulpit and Masjid to play its due role in this respect and suggesting feasible recommendation for coping with the issue. The study is based on primary data that was collected through questionnaire in District Bannu and Lakki Marwat.

MGIMO University published the second edition of the book Afghan Novels and Stories by Ye. D. Ostrovenko. Yevgeniy Dmitrievich served as Russian Ambassador to Afghanistan in 1992 and was the first ambassador to present credentials signed by the President of Russia to the head of the Afghan state. His book makes a great contribution to strengthening bilateral ties between Russia and Afghanistan, expanding the horizons of knowledge about this country, its history and culture. Candidate of Historical Sciences, Ye. D. Ostrovenko worked for many years both in Afghanistan itself and in the central apparatus of the USSR and Russian Foreign Ministries in the Afghan direction and knows Afghanistan firsthand. He saw more than fifty years of the history of relations between the USSR and Russia with Afghanistan pass before his eyes, and often participated in them personally. The book is in a rare genre combining history, including archives and other historical materials, and fiction. It revolves around personalities, yet manages to show a bigger picture of the history and politics of the country and its peoples. The book tells about a number of outstanding personalities, but special attention is drawn to the poet and warrior Khushhal Khan Khattak (XVII), the first ruler of the independent Afghan state Ahmed Shah Durrani (XVIII), statesman and diplomat Muhammad Wali Khan (late 19th – early 20th centuries). Some of the novels present unique findings of the author. So, in the process of creating the story Canal E. D. Ostrovenko relied on the experience of his practical work as a translator and his novel can be considered original historical evidence. Through the collection of short stories readers get acquainted with the peculiarities of Afghan life, learn about the difficult, and sometimes dangerous, everyday life of Russian diplomats. The new edition includes two newly published novels Pashtun scholar, devoted to M. G. Aslanov, the author of the Pashtu-Russian dictionary, and Warrior fighting with two swords. Book by E. D. Ostrovenko is written in excellent Russian and is easy to read. The author makes extensive use of classical Afghan and Iranian poetry, which arouses additional interest among specialists, including students of the Afghan languages — Pashto and Dari. The book was met with a favorable reception by the Afghans themselves, receiving a wide response and high praise from the Afghan diaspora in Moscow. It will be a useful read not only to students studying Afghanistan, but also to anyone interested in the culture of this wonderful country with its complex and multifaceted history.

With the seizure of power by the Taliban on August 15, 2021 a new page in the political history of Afghanistan had been opened. The Taliban, which for 20 years led a guerrilla war against the authorities of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan and their Western patrons, had to come out of hiding and start operating openly within the framework of a new state system. On September 7, Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid announced the formation of the government of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan. A year after these events, it seems important to trace the process of building government by the Taliban, characterize the current political system of Afghanistan and analyze the basic principles for the inclusion of certain groups in the state system. In the history of Afghanistan, the aspect of ethnicity has always been a key point that has determined one’s position in political and social system of the country. As a result of studies, the author concludes that the Taliban during its first year in power created a Pashtun-centric state, where the struggle between the main Pashtun tribal associations in relation to the foreign policy guidelines of each of them plays a decisive role in the configuration of domestic political forces. At the same time, despite the entry into the public field of the main Taliban functionaries who have taken positions in the leadership of various departments in Kabul, traditional for the Taliban hidden form of top management is preserved.

This study explores the Traditional Justice System (TJS) in Balochistan, known as Muchhi/Dewan in Brahui and Balochi and Jirga in Pashto, analyzing its history, structure, and role in delivering justice within the Baloch and Pashtun communities, and comparing it with Pakistan’s modern judicial system. Despite the introduction of a formal judicial system, TJS remains deeply trusted in rural areas, where people value its quick and culturally aligned resolutions. Historically resilient, TJS has adapted to changes, from colonial reforms to shifts in Pakistan’s legal landscape, yet challenges such as patriarchal bias and limited accountability persist. Using a mixed-methods approach, including historical analysis, case studies, fieldwork, and quantitative analysis, the study compares TJS with Pakistan’s formal judiciary, emphasizing their respective advantages and drawbacks. Findings suggest that while TJS is accessible and widely accepted, the formal system’s codified law offers procedural rigor. The study advocates for an integrated justice model that leverages both systems' strengths to improve accessibility, efficiency, and cultural relevance in Pakistan’s judicial framework. Recommendations include digitalizing court processes, expanding e-judiciary services to remote areas, and establishing community-based dispute resolution mechanisms within the formal judiciary, aiming to enhance justice delivery across diverse communities in Pakistan.

Histories of Afghanistan, Pakistan, and the North-West Frontier summarize the borderland events of 1947 and the next years as concerned with several enduring issues. The nation-states of Afghanistan and Pakistan became rivals. Each projected different, contested claims to sovereignty over border territories and populations. The Afghan government, especially Sardar Muhammad Daud, used the Pakhtunistan issue to consolidate an Afghan national identity, attract borderland Pashtuns, and extract advantages from an economically weak, politically vulnerable Pakistan. Within the tribal agencies, the government of Pakistan at first withdrew regular military units from forward bases, nominally to exhibit nation-building unity in a new country for Muslims. 1 In both countries, economic development and political integration were policy goals intended to build human capital and legitimate the nation-state, but also to maintain established internal hierarchies of authority and power. 2 By 1955 despite such efforts, borderland residents continued to negotiate relationships with state officials now recruiting signatures on documents of national loyalty. 3

Abstract Against the widespread understanding that Salafism in Pashtun religious circles owes its establishment to the close interaction with Arab representatives of that current since the resistance to the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan between 1979 and 1990, a theologically quite radical form had indigenously emerged already in the late 1940s. This current, originating in the small town of Panjpīr in Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, stands out by a rigid Salafī epistemology.

Balochistan exists in a state of conflict since the partition but, initially, the nature of the conflict was based upon the future of princely states that led to the insurgency against the federation of Pakistan in 1948, 1958, and 1963. After the emergence of Balochistan as a full province, the nature of conflict shifted towards Baloch ethnic nationalism that directed insurgencies during 1973 and 2004. The government of Pakistan claims that all the waves of insurgencies have huge foreign funding by rival states. While the concerns of major powers on re-constructing Kasghar-Gwadar Road plan 2004 (renamed as China-Pakistan Economic Corridor [CPEC] in 2013) triggered Baloch ethnic nationalism and already existed intra-provincial conflicts once again that led Pashtun-Brahui, Brahui-Baloch, and Baloch-Pashtun differences. However, a detailed briefing by Chinese Ambassador Zhao Lijian has undermined all the concerns of ethnic communities in entire Pakistan including Balochistan. However, there are still some voices for insecurity and predicted economic deprivation in the province. This study tries to describe the history of ethnic dilemma in Balochistan along with demographic structure, CPEC related projects in the province, and the rival states’ nexus for triggering ethnonational separatism and intra-provincial conflicts against Pakistan. While the issue is rising by Baloch nationalists regarding preferring the eastern, western, or central route of CPEC is being discussed in the last.

Abstract This paper retraces the history, activities, and contribution of an intellectual commune active in Quetta, Pakistan between 1950 and 1954: the ‘Laṭxāna commune’. Laṭxāna (Psht. ‘House of idleness’) is the name of a place in which Baluch, Pashtun, Urdu-speaking and Sindhi intellectuals settled in 1950. Laṭxāna’s intellectuals were in close contact with the Communist Party of Pakistan and its cultural branch, the Progressive Writers’ Association, and attempted to spread socialist or communist thought in Baluchistan. Following an agenda outlined by communist and progressive writers, they set out to develop literature in the languages of Baluchistan, launching a Baluchi literary association and a Pashto-language journal and publishing the first collections of modern Baluchi poetry. Laṭxāna’s members also promoted their outlook through journalism, and edited journals, such as Xāwar, Nawā-e waṭan and Ciltan. In 1954, the Laṭxāna intellectuals—who had so far been simple representatives of the Communists or Progressives in Baluchistan—started their own political movement. They created a political party and published a manifesto, which called for a socialist Baluchistan free from the influence of landowners and feudal leaders. Alongside ideological disagreements, the arrest of some of the commune’s prominent members finally led to the closure of Laṭxāna, but the group nevertheless had a long-lasting influence on Baluchistan’s political and intellectual landscape. In this paper, I shall discuss the commune’s literary, journalistic, and political contributions, notably through the accounts of its founding fathers, Mir Abdullah Jamaldini and Sain Kamal Khan Sherani.

The main objective of this paper is to understand the ethno- Anthropological lifestyle of Kuchi tribes of Afghanistan. Kuchi tribes is not definitively known, as their history predates written records. However, they are believed to be of Pashtun descent and have a long history in the region of Afghanistan. Kuchi tribes is deeply rooted in their nomadic lifestyle and traditional practices. They have a rich oral tradition, with storytelling and poetry playing a significant role in their culture. This paper is based on secondary data, secondary data collected through publishing and unpublished reports, newspapers, articles, journals, books and district census reports and for the analysis of these aspects we used context- analysis method. Finally, the Kuchi’s tribe of Afghanistan is in a transitional stage. They are without a doubt moving toward cutting edge values, but they did not put down their conventional values. They are not completely cut off from their conventional way of life framework and not acknowledged all the advanced of life.

Objective: To evaluate anamnestic and sociodemographic correlates of PTSD symptoms in refugees from Afghanistan.Method: Fifty Afghan refugees in the UK (mean age 37.4 years, SD=12.1; 33 men, 17 women) underwent SCID interview for PTSD, administered in their native language (Pashtun or Dari).Results: Eighteen (36.0%) reported being tortured while in Afghanistan. More than half (54.0%) of these refugees met criteria for PTSD. While the diagnosis was not significantly related to age, gender, education, and history of torture, those free of PTSD rated their present occupation in UK as more satisfactory (r=.28, p=.048).Almost a half (46.0%) of these refugees reported nightmares about the circumstances of their escape from Afghanistan.Conclusions: Although PTSD symptoms were noted in more than a half of our sample, they were related neither to history of torture nor to sociodemographic variables (age, gender, education).

Abstract Afghanistan is the country in the world with the most SALW (small arms and light weapons). Contrary to what is usually assumed, the proliferation of modern firearms in the country did not start in the 1980s, but at the end of the 19th century, when Pashtun tribes acquired modern rifles and ammunition through a variety of means, mostly through smuggling. The paper investigates the illegal arms trade from the Gulf to the north-western Indian Frontier, an area of crucial importance for British imperial strategists and the Government of India, at a time of great power rivalry and a relative decline of Britain’s global influence.

Aim: To evaluate burden of diabetes in middle age population (36-56 years) and the associated clinical and participant characteristics living in Karachi. Study design: Retrospective study. Place and duration of study: Two GP Clinics @ Karachi over a period of 6 Months from 1st September 2020 to 28th February 2021. Methodology: Three hundred and eighteen type II diabetic patients were registered. Complete history and physical examination done for all registered patients. The age, sex, occupation, address, family history of diabetes, addiction was recorded. Results: Two hundred and twenty seven (71.4%) were females. The mean age was 46.7±7.1. The burden of diabetes was significant (p <0.001) in the rural population (54.7%). There is a higher prevalence of diabetes in Pashtun population of Karachi than other Ethnicities 96 (30.2%). There is significant positive correlation in patients with poor, the median HbA1c was 8.4. Conclusion: This study determined the burden of diabetes mellitus in middle age group (36-56 years) and established its association with obesity, sedentary lifestyle and high HbA1c levels. Key words: Diabetes, Prevalence, HbA1c, Glycemic control

This article analyses the complex relationship between Pakistan and the Afghan Taliban for over twenty years. The unresolved issue of recognition of the Durand Line as the Afghan-Pakistan state border has had a negative impact on the relationship. The author notes the divided nature of Pashtun society on both sides of the Durand Line and Islamabad's desire for a loyal government in Kabul that would not be strongly influenced by Pashtun nationalist ideas. The paper explores Pakistan's policy of combining support for the Taliban with US-Pakistan relations in an asymmetric alliance. The aim of the article is to show the extent to which Islamabad's policy of trying to please both the US and Afghanistan has been successful. The author concludes that Pakistan's Afghan policy is characterised by a lack of achievement on major bilateral issues. After the Taliban came to power, Islamabad's influence over Kabul diminished, the Pakistanis failed to persuade the Taliban to comply with international requirements in governing the country, the Pak-Afghan border was not recognised, Afghanistan's contacts with India intensified, Pakistan ceased to be an indispensable partner for the US in the Afghan track and Islamabad failed to persuade Kabul to withdraw support from the extremist Taliban Movement of Pakistan. In spite of all the setbacks, Islamabad still views its former Afghan allies as the primary means of maintaining Pakistan's position in Afghanistan, hoping to convince the Afghan Taliban to accept the changed international realities.

History has rarely recorded such leaders who raised their nation from the darkness of ignorance to the light of glory. BachaKhan (Abdul Ghaffar Khan) was one of them. When the society was under the powers of lords, he gave the lesson of equality, blowing new life in the dead society.It was his struggle, his tiresome efforts, his tolerance, the devotion that he uplifted his people from serving their lords to become a respectable, educated nation. He dedicated his entire life to the service of the Pashtun nation and strongly believed that if any change had to come, it would come only through education. For this purpose, he established in various parts of the province where teachers used to teach on voluntary bases. This study highlights the hardships faced by Bacha Khan in promoting education among the pakhtoons and his struggle for the awakening of pakhtoon society.

This article uses Afghan engagement with twentieth-century international politics to reflect on the fluctuating nature of Afghan statehood and citizenship, with a particular focus on Afghanistan's political ‘revolutions’ in 1973 and 1978. By considering the ways in which Afghan leaders asserted their politics in the international sphere, some of the key concerns of the Afghan state become clear. In order to assert their authority and gain credence among international observers, Afghan leaders both drew on and rejected their state's political history, ultimately leading to a top-down reconceptualization of Afghan statehood and the citizen which relied on a territorially defined state, rather than ethnicity. Two issues especially shaped Afghan foreign engagement: a longstanding tradition of political neutrality, or bi-tarafi, and demands for international recognition of an autonomous Pashtun state in the Afghan-Pakistan borderlands. These interests frequently conflicted, but both played critical roles in prolonging regional instability. Afghan leadership ultimately latched onto, publicized, and justified contradictory definitions of Afghan statehood and citizenship that could not be reconciled.

AbstractThis article focuses on strategies of inter-ethnic conflict resolution in southwest Afghanistan under the circumstances of social changes in a tribal society. Field research was carried on in September and October 2008 in Kabul and Zaranj, the province centre of Nimruz. During ethnographic fieldwork focusing on transnational identities of the Baloch people in the Afghan-Iranian border region, I observed an informal inter-ethnic trial. The location of this trial was the town of Zaranj, the administrative centre of the south-western Afghan province of Nimruz. This province, beside Pashtun and Tajik populations, has a compact Baloch settlement area bordering the Baloch areas in Iran and Pakistan. The trial took place between my host, the chief of a Baloch cultural centre, and an Uzbek defendant. As my host was a representative of an emerging Baloch self-confidence since the decline of the Taliban regime, the trial has to be analysed in the broader socio-cultural context of the Baloch people in present-day Afghanistan. The paper first presents the sequence of events during the trial; then it deals with the social context considering some new developments in the self-conceptions of the Baloches in Afghanistan. Finally, the trial is analysed in the framework of this context.

Afghanistan, known for its ancient history and as a centre of knowledge in the past, has seen the rise of great civilizations such as Arya, Bakhtar, and Khorasan. Education in ancient Afghanistan was influenced by the Vedic religion and later the Avestan civilization until the arrival of Islam. Education in Afghanistan is recognized as a fundamental human right that plays a crucial role in alleviating poverty, addressing inequality, and fostering sustainable development. However, the Hazara people, an ethnic and religious minority in Afghanistan, have historically been deprived of this right due to cultural, linguistic, and religious differences with the dominant Pashtun population. Hazaras have faced discrimination, marginalization, and violent persecution throughout Afghan history. They have been systematically denied access to education, employment, and political representation. Despite some progress, the Hazara people continue to face barriers to accessing quality education. Hazara students also face discrimination and harassment from peers and teachers who hold negative stereotypes of them. Moreover, Hazaras have been subjected to targeted attacks by terrorist groups like the Taliban and ISIS, resulting in loss of life and injuries. Nevertheless, Hazaras demonstrated their goodwill. They actively participated in national processes such as elections, civil society strengthening, sports, and education, showcasing their commitment to the new system. This article contributes to the study of the history of education in Afghanistan which lacks adequate analysis of education among minorities in Afghanistan like the Hazara people.

The identity of Pashtuns is generally associated with the stereotypes of violence, social and cultural inferiority and terrorism, especially in the wake of 9/11. This pattern of identity has been in vogue in media discourses as well as literary works. The present study, based on a critical analysis of Bhutto’s Shadow of the Crescent Moon (2013) analyses the link between terrorism and the identity of Pashtuns. The study shows that Bhutto’s depiction of Pashtuns runs counter to that of other writers especially Khaled Husseni’s The Kite Runner (2003) and Kamila Shamsie’s A God in Every Stone (2014), and thereby offers a counter narrative to the stereotypical identity of Pashtuns. The study contends that Pashtuns are not violent and terror oriented rather its worst. The analysis is conducted under the theoretical framework of Kwame Nkrumah's Neo-Colonialism: The Last Stage of Imperialism (1965) and supported by Pashtuns’ history and Pashto folklore. The study concludes that Pashtuns are not the perpetrators of war and violence rather its worst victims.

Pakistan has a common history with the Indian Sub-continent, which has a geostrategic location and natural richness and is home to many civilizations, cultures and states. It was founded in 1947 after Britain left the region, but due to the border conflict with India, it faced many problems as conflicts occurred. The invasion of Afghanistan by the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) and the Twin Tower attacks on September 11, 2001 are two events that deeply affected Pakistan as well as neighboring Afghanistan. Pakistan had to deal with many problems after these two events, which were the main reason for the ongoing active problems in the region, and went through a period of civil war. The main reason for these conflicts is the foreign fighters who immigrated from Afghanistan and took shelter in the tribes region of Pakistan after the military operation carried out by the USA in Afghanistan, and the Pashtun people hosting these fighters and Pakistan's conflict. As a matter of fact, as a result of this conflict, the Pakistani Taliban was established, and then there was a series of events that affected Pakistan's national security. Keywords: Pakistan, 9/11, Pakistani Taliban, al-Qaeda, USA

AbstractThe continual political, commercial and economic relations and frequent military conflicts and clashes of the Pashtuns with neighbouring states or tribal formations or with similar structures to which Pashtuns were in a subordinate status were constantly resulting in intensive cultural and linguistic contacts. This article pays a modest tribute to the studies, insufficient for the present, concerning interrelations of the written Pashto with the Persian, Turkic and Indian languages in the sphere of their vocabularies during the period from the earliest literary monuments in Pashto (i.e. from the middle of the XVI century) up to the beginning of the XIX c., for which purpose texts of Afghan classic poetry, prose treaties and chronicles have been used That was a period of large-scale borrowing of foreign words through the channels of the written language and colloquial speech. Arab-Persian loanwords which had no tangible bounds as to their entry into the literary Pashto were very numerous (about a half of the Pashto vocabulary) in comparison with Indian loanwords and have been rnore organically included into the Pashto vocabulary, though at the same time all the borrowings, irrespective of their source-language, have been more or less equally adapted phonetically and morphologically. On this account the aspects of their presentation in this article are different: borrowings from Persian have been given only general characteristics, while concrete ancl detailed lists of Indian and Turkic loanwords are given because their quantity in the analysed texts was limited to such an extent that we have consinered it relevant to publish them almost completely.

This research explores the depiction of hegemony in four literary works: The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini, Girl of Kosovo by Alice Mead, and The Thief of Baghdad by Alexander Romanoff. Through Antonio Gramsci's theory of hegemony, this research analyzes the impact of political, ethnic and patriarchal power on individuals and society. In The Kite Runner, ethnic hierarchy in Afghanistan is reflected through Pashtun-Hazara relations. A Thousand Splendid Suns reveals the oppression of patriarchy and the Taliban regime's rule over women. In contrast, Girl of Kosovo depicts the trauma of war through political-military domination amidst ethnic conflict in the Balkans. The Thief of Baghdad presents a fantasy narrative of resistance to the tyranny of the authorities through symbolism and class tensions. Although set in different contexts, these four works demonstrate the universal theme of struggle against hegemonic power and the role of literature in articulating both trauma and hope. The analysis uses a qualitative approach by examining quotations, symbolism, dialogue, and characterization to identify forms of hegemony. As a result, literature becomes a reflective medium that highlights the multidimensional impact of hegemony in history and culture. This research demonstrates the relevance of Gramsci's theory in understanding complex global socio-political dynamics.

This study examines the history of master planning in Kabul city and how the government approaches segregation through urban planning. There are five master plans made for Kabul city, starting in 1964, with the others being conceived in 1970, 1978, 2011, and 2018. The civil war exacerbated the ethnic segmentation in Kabul city. The city is ethnically divided mainly among the different ethnicities of Pashtun, Tajik, and Hazara, which live in three different zones. The urban planning literature and master plans for Kabul city are surveyed, starting from the 1960s with the first master plan to the 2018 Kabul urban design framework. The first three master plans were designed on technical rather than communitive rationalities, with authoritarian planning. However, the fourth master plan of 2011 was developed through engagement with citizens and addressed the ethnic segregation in the city in abstract ways. The fifth masterplan, Kabul urban design framework, was a step backward in participatory planning; it also ignored the ethnic segmentation in the city by unequally distributing the future economic zones, administrative and facilities hubs. The past master plans have ignored the ethnic segregation of the city; there is no detailed plan on how the city will approach segregation through urban planning.

This article reviews the US-led nation-building strategy effort in Islamic Republic of Afghanistan. The history of the nation-building efforts is retraced from the creation of the Republic to its ultimate collapse. The central argument of the paper stresses the dysfunctionality of the centralization approach adopted by several successive administrations in Kabul with the backing of the United States. The inquiry reveals the problems of implementation of this strategy as well as the failure of this idea in general. In terms of implementation, centralization efforts were met with widespread corruption and cronyism. A more important aspect of the problem is that the centralization strategy did not account for the diversity of the Afghan society. Ethnic coalitions struggled for power inside the country, countering the efforts of the central administration headed by the president to extend its influence beyond Kabul. These processes transformed Afghan politics into a zero-sum game rendering the whole nation-building effort ineffective. In the end, the Republic collapsed with withdrawal of the foreign presence essentially confirming the dysfunctionality of centralization approach. Currently, the Taliban relies on essentially the same strategy although being deprived of foreign aid. Whether this effort to re-assert Pashtun dominance in the absence of foreign intervention will succeed remains to be seen.

This study portrayed Islamia College Peshawar (ICP) as an icon in academia and research since 2008, when it was upgraded from a college to a university. The study is based on quantitative cum qualitative research. The faculty of Islamia College Peshawar was taken as the population for whom a self- structured questionnaire was used to collect the data. SPSS software was used to give the results in the form of median and Chi-square tests because of the non-parametric data. The outcomes demonstrated that Islamia College Peshawar's performance has improved over time. ICP, which is also a university, has positioned itself at 34 of the nation's 73 universities, according to the HEC rating for 2015. Through a provincial assembly resolution, the college was granted university status in the year 2008. In the past twelve years of its upgrading, the institution has produced more than 1000 M.Phil. scholars and about 80 Ph.D. candidates. The findings further demonstrated that Islamia College Peshawar not only supports the local research culture but also upholds Pashtun history and its prior notoriety. Moreover, results revealed that Islamia College Peshawar faculty is satisfied with its upgradation status from college to university; they conduct different workshops/ seminars in their respective field of research and integrate their instruction with modern ICT in the classrooms. Results have been discussed, and limitations are given for future researchers.