PESHAWAR, Sept 27: Reacting to a speech by President Pervez Musharraf in New York, the president of the Awami National Party (ANP), Senator Asfandyar Wali Khan, said in a press statement that it was surprising to see the Pakistani ruler championing Pukhtun rights in Afghanistan, while having failed to address the plight of Pukhtuns living likely second-class citizens in Pakistan.

Senator Asfandyar Wali Khan added that Pukhtuns in the Federally Administrated Tribal Areas (Fata) were still groaning under the 19th-century colonial rule.

Instead of introducing political reforms or economic development, elements in the ruling establishment had turned the area into a battlefield by using it as a sanctuary for their guests, he said.

He said: “We have pointed it out again and again that neither Al Qaeda nor Taliban were products of the Pukhtun society. In fact, outsiders with the connivance of a section of the ruling circles had injected them into our body politics.”

He said that they had also killed hundreds of tribal leaders and three working journalists who stood for peace.

The government had completely failed to bring a single culprit to justice for the aforementioned murders, Mr Khan said.

The ANP president underlined the fact that the government was not prepared to accept the demand of the provincial assembly for renaming the province reflecting the cultural and historic identity of Pukhtuns. Even the provincial rights enshrined in the constitution were denied to the dwellers of this province.

He said that the Pukhtuns had no control over national resources and were living under the conditions of large-scale illiteracy and socio-economic backwardness, adding that in view of these facts, it was not logical for our rulers to play the “Pukhtun Card” in the neighbouring country when they had miserably failed to clear the mess in their own backyard.