Addressing a rally in Orakzai Agency on April 19, 2019, Prime Minister (PM) Imran Khan argued that the issues facing the people of the tribal areas being highlighted by the Pashtun Tahafuz Movement (PTM) now are the same he had spoken about 15 years ago. He reminded his audience that he had been speaking about innocent people dying and being displaced, which the PTM is reiterating at present. But, he said, although the PTM's complaints were justified, the tone and tenor they were using was not in the interests of the tribal areas or the country. The PM went on to remind the audience that he had spoken against the army going into the tribal areas (for the first time in Pakistan's history) in 2004 at the behest of the US because the tribesmen are our 'unpaid army'. The then military dictator Pervez Musharraf, according to the PM, along with people from other parts of the country had very little idea about the tribal region, people and their traditions. It was not the army to blame but
Musharraf, he continued, for siding with the US. The consequence was that soldiers were martyred and the tribal people suffered. "Nobody knew the pain of the tribal people having to move their women to safety in an honour-bound society. Only I knew," Imran Khan asserted. This was because no other PM had been to the tribal areas as frequently as him, Imran Khan claimed. "I am here again," he said, "because only I know your pain, knowing the area better than anyone else. Now the country and the region must think ahead about educating children, employing the youth and improving conditions." In another reference to the PTM, Imran Khan said just rubbing salt into the wounds without offering solutions was a futile approach. What was needed was balm for the wounds, help, compensation and support to those who had suffered. He ended by revealing that the registration of internally displaced persons had been completed and the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Chief Minister Mahmood Khan had been asked to draw up a plan to support all those who had suffered losses of houses, cattle and businesses.
While the PM's argument that anti-army slogans by the PTM would weaken the country and inciting people without offering solutions to the problems would benefit no one has weight, there are some glaring omissions in his analysis and message. One, Imran Khan when
he criticised the army's forays into the tribal areas starting in 2004 placed his trust in negotiated settlements with the extremists, a view that proved naïve and unworkable when agreement after agreement with the militants broke down. Two, when he advocates balm on the wounds of the tribal people instead of what he refers to as salt sprinkled on them by PTM, it should be remembered that the tribal people have been asking for redressal for their grievances even before the PTM came into existence. PTM is merely the angry and frustrated voice of the tribesmen who feel they have been the meat in the grinder between the Pakistani Taliban and the military. It is natural to assume that when military operations were mounted against the militants, some collateral damage was caused to innocent tribal people caught in the crossfire. Previous governments and the military failed to apply the balm of compensation and help after these operations, particularly after 2014 when, following the Army Public School massacre in Peshawar by the Pakistani Taliban, the military mounted a massive and ultimately successful counterinsurgency campaign (at least as far as winkling the militants out of their safe havens in the tribal areas and forcing them to flee across the border into Afghanistan is concerned). Taking the cue from the PM's remarks, it is still not too late to assuage the hurt and losses caused to the tribal people along the lines suggested by him as the best panacea for the anger and frustration of the PTM.