ISLAMABAD: A day after both houses of parliament voted for military courts to try civilian terror suspects, some Pakhtun lawmakers made a strong plea in the National Assembly on Wednesday to respect the fabled Pakhtun honour code for the sake of peace.

And one of them, Ghazi Gulab Jamal from the troubled Federally-Administered Tribal Areas (Fata), warned of an uncontrollable “new way of terrorism” among possible serious consequences if a balm was not put on what he called the bleeding wound of Pakhtuns.

Aftab Ahmed Khan Sherpao, a former interior minister now leading the KP-based Qaumi Watan Party, was not so blunt in his speech during a debate on the Dec 16 terrorist attack on an army public school in Peshawar that killed 149 students and staff, but he too endorsed Mr Jamal’s concerns for Pakhtuns and said “don’t limit ways” for them.

Dr Jamal, a professional doctor who was tourism minister in the previous PPP-led coalition government, also led a walkout by independent Fata lawmakers in continuation of an earlier boycott of the house to protest against an allegedly arbitrary attitude of Pakhtunkhwa Governor Mehtab Ahmed Khan, who oversees Fata’s seven agencies adjoining his province on behalf of the federal government.

The boycott began on Friday when another Fata member, Shah Jee Gul Afrdi, accused

the Pakhtunkhwa governor of behaving like a British-era viceroy and vowed to continue the protest until unspecified concerns of Fata lawmakers were addressed.

The protesters were present in the house on Tuesday to vote in favour of the government’s Constitution (21st Amendment) Bill and another to amend the Pakistan Army Act, 1952, to provide for speedy trials of civilian terrorism suspects by military courts without a right of appeal to a high court or the Supreme Court.

Dr Jamal said the boycott was continuing as he led five other Fata members out of the house after his speech, in which he cited terrorism as part of a “bundle’ along with ignorance and poverty that he said should be tackled together.

It was not clear how many of the existing 11 Fata assembly members – from a total of 12 reserved seats for the region - supported the boycott because five of them belonged to different political parties.

Speaking on conditions mainly of Pakhtuns in the tribal areas, Dr Jamal said “if no balm was placed on the bleeding wounds of this honourable nation …, there will be serious conditions” with a feeling among them that the state had failed to protect their honour.

He said Pakhtuns could tolerate anything but violation of their honour, which he said they were often forced to defend with bullets. “Don’t force them to take to a new way of terrorism that will not be possible for anyone to control,” he added.

Mr Sherpao said in his speech that “we will continue to raise voice for Pakhtuns, whether they were in Fata, in settled areas or in Karachi, but cautioned that if the problems of Pakhtuns remained as they were now, that would mean “limiting their ways” and added: “Don’t limit the ways.”

Ghulam Ahmed Bilour, a senior member of the opposition Awami National Party, one of whose brothers and a senior provincial minister, Bashir Ahmed Bilour, was killed in Peshawar in a suicide attack in December 20012, lamented that “our whole province has become a battlefield” and said it was for the sake of peace that his party had voted for military courts in a deviation from its traditional policy of opposing military rule.

RIDING TWO BOATS: Samad Sultana Jafri of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement taking a dig at the government-allied Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam-F (JUI-F) and opposition Jamaat-i-Islami, both of which boycotted Tuesday’s parliamentary passage of the two bills, saying the vote had exposed Taliban’s supporters and apologists and action should be taken against them as well.

But despite the JUI-F’s defiance of the government in boycotting the vote, its members continued occupying government benches in the house on Wednesday.

While JUI-F leader Maulana Fazlur Rehman did not come to the house for the day, his party’s Housing and Works Minister Akram Khan Durrani occupied his front row seat on the treasury benches and both he and another senior party member, Maulana Amir Zaman, went to desks of Minister of States for Frontier Regions Abdul Qadir Baloch and Minister of State for Parliamentary Affairs Sheikh Aftab Ahmed and separately talked to them for a while.

Published in Dawn January 8th , 2014

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