Pakistan police detain Pashtun rights activist critical of military

The leader of an ethnic Pashtun rights movement has been detained after addressing a sit-in at Pakistan’s frontier city of Chaman to demand free cross-border movement with Afghanistan, officials said Tuesday.

Manzoor Pashteen, chief of the Pashtun Protection Movement (PTM), was traveling from the border town of Chaman to Turbat in Balochistan province when he was picked up by police Monday evening.

Pashtuns are a distinct ethnic group with their own language, living mostly in Pakistan and Afghanistan but divided by the colonial-drawn Durand Line that splits the two countries.

“He was detained for making inflammatory speeches and threatening public law and order,” Balochistan’s minister of information Jan Achakzai told AFP.

Achakzai said Pashteen would likely be released later Tuesday, and was expected to be “expelled from the province”.

Thousands of Pakistani protesters have camped near the Afghan border to demonstrate against new regulations that require cross-border travelers to have passports and visas.

Previously, people crossing by land could pass using only national ID cards.

The new regulations were introduced after Islamabad in October announced plans to expel all Afghans living illegally in Pakistan. So far nearly 400,000 have left voluntarily or have been deported.

Athar Abbas, the deputy commissioner of Chaman, confirmed Pashteen’s arrest, adding authorities had banned all PTM leaders from the province.

Pashteen, a former veterinary student, has rattled the military since 2018 with calls to end alleged abuses by security forces targeting ethnic Pashtuns in the restive tribal areas bordering Afghanistan.

His PTM also organizes rallies in Balochistan province, where both ethnic Pashtuns and Balochs have long accused the military of abuses.

Pakistan’s Pashtun heartlands were once plagued by violence and militancy, but army operations have dramatically improved security in recent years.

The military maintains a heavy presence there, however, and the PTM has tapped into festering anger over alleged abuses against Pashtuns — including enforced disappearances and targeted killings.

Authorities have repeatedly denied the claims and cracked down on the rights group.