Pashto poetry’s journey from love to war and resistance

During the Pashtun Tahafuz Movement's first, seismic protests in 2018, a chant emerged and became an anthem for Pakistan's thousands of disenchanted Pashtun youth. 

The PTM initially drew attention to the killing of Naqeebullah Mehsud, a Pashtun model and factory worker who was shot by Sindh police in Karachi. As the movement gathered force, their demands grew to include accountability for the killings, disappearances, torture and harassment routinely meted out to Pashtuns in Pakistan, and wider recognition of their rights under the country's constitution. The PTM did not shy away from pinpointing as perpetrators of these violations both Pakistan's military and security forces as well as Islamist militants active in Khyber Pakhtunkhwah, the Pashtun-majority province on the Afghanistan–Pakistan border. Over decades, the on-again, off-again relationship between these two groups had repeatedly devolved into brutal violence, with the people of Khyber Pakhtunkhwah caught in the middle. Now, Pashtuns rose up peacefully against their treatment as pawns in this bloody game.