There is a struggle that stretches from Afghanistans capital Kabul to the southern Pakistani city of Quetta.It is thestruggleof the Pashtuns, the largest tribe of Afghanistan and Pakistans borderlands.

The area they live in is known as one of the worlds most unstable places, strategically important for the U.S.-ledWar on Terror. Since 2001, drones, military operations from Pakistani and Afghan government forces, CIA-led night raids, and forced disappearances have been part of Pashtuns daily life.

But in contrast to the perception ofPashtun elitism, especially in Afghanistan, the rural tribes of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border region have been marginalized by their states, left to their destiny as collateral damage of the international War on Terror.

In 2018,Manzoor Pashteen, a 25-year-old Pakistani activist and founder of thePashtun Tahafuz Movement(PTM), succeeded for the first time ingetting global attentionto this condition.

While Pashteen advocates for the protection of Pashtuns human rights on the Pakistani side of theDurand Line the disputed 1640-mile border between Afghanistan and Pakistan his revolutionary words echo across the border, inspiring Pashtuns in both countries to speak out.

The red and black Pashteen hat, originally from Northern Afghanistan and worn by Pashteenatpublic rallies and protests, now covers the heads of youthacross Kabul, Jalalabad, Kandahar, and many other Afghan cities. Videos of his speeches are saved in cell phones across the country.

The PTM leader moves elegantly, with gestures from the Islamic social etiquette. He dresses with the simplicity of a Pashtun man but speaks with the verve of a national hero. Pashteens public image has become powerful because he provides an alternative image of traditional Pashtun men and society; a representation Pashtuns believe finally does justice to the truth.

For long, Pashtun culture has been misrepresented by the media as radical, violent, and dominated by obtuse and ferocious men. The stories of the regions women are rarely told, if not for tales of extreme deprivation. Pashtun women are usually portraited as unidentified walkingburqas, also partially due to their refusal to be pictured.

But this doesnt mean that what cannot be seen does not exist. Beyond the PTMs outspoken Pashtun women, such asWranga LunriandSanna Ejaz, there is a court offemales struggling for their rights. Rather than being passive victims, these Pashtun women are an integral part of the ongoing waves of actions,the life and the soul of the Pashtun society.

Women participating in large crowds and at times even leading protests is indeed unusual for traditional Pashtuns. It breaks the social taboos of females appearing in public. The bravery of those who decide to come out has been received with both fascination and criticism.

This is, however, also a sign of the diversity of the PTM. Islamists and secular nationalists have put differences aside and stand together against the injustice and pain they share. This newly awakening recalls the ancient unity ofPashtunwali, the Pashtun peoples traditional set of values and behavioral guidance.

The Pashtun way of life, as the code is also known, is shaped throughout the history of an extreme egalitarian society, and melted easily with the form of Islam that characterized the region.

Indeed, theIslamization policythat Pakistans military dictatorMuhammad Zia-ul-Haqenforced in the late 1970s significantly changed the social structure of the Pashtun lands. Zia-ul-Haq tried to implement an Islamic unity against the ethnic bond that unites Pashtuns. While he succeeded in transforming the local approach toward religion, the ties of the Pashtun tribes across the Durand Line remained strong.

Rather than a divide, the porous Afghan-Pakistani border is a space of interactions and exchanges. These territories are characterized by extreme mobility, with ties of love, economic support, and indeed a shared struggle against oppression. However, the motive driving Pashtuns social resistance on the two sides of the border is different.

InAfghanistan, the struggle against injustice mainly comes from operations conducted by the U.S.-led coalition. Communities bound by centuries of tribal code lost trust among each other, and villages became coves of spies. People sold neighbors for revenge, and thousands of Pashtun men disappeared, were murdered, tortured, or send to secret prisons without trials.

The situation is different in Pakistan. The history of anti-colonialism enforced a strong and structured political consciousness that guided a struggle against both insurgency radicalism and state-imposed violence.

Pakistani material and financial support to Afghanistans Soviet resistance, and later thesheltering of the Taliban, forced the perception of local insurgencies as the right hand of the Pakistan establishment. Pakistans double agenda of both harboring terrorists and being an ally to Americans in the War on Terror exhausted particularly the Pashtuns of the tribal belt, the main social and economic victims of this unsuccessful strategy.

Now Pakistans government fears the current PMT-induced wave of protestsamong Pashtuns and sees it as a movement of independence that could trigger other minorities to speak out and threaten the nation-state.

Theliberal and social circles of Kabul, on the other hand, support the movement in Pakistanwith the hopeto tacticallyrevive the idea of Pashtunistan, the unification of the Pashtun homelandunjustlydivided between Afghanistan and Pakistan by the British Indian government in 1893. Their feelings, however, are far from what has since 2011 moved gatherings within Pashtuns directed affected by the war.

While Pashtuns in Afghanistan and Pakistan are driven by different forces, they are united in their struggle.

In Pakistan, thePTM refuses to react violently despite their leaders being arrested, brutally oppressed, and their demands publicly manipulated. The movement is aware of the power of Pakistans military state, and they boldly avoid entering their own martial realm bystressing their struggle is non-violent.

In contrast, the lack of a political structure in Afghanistan keeps the movement there on the edge of spontaneous violence guided byexhaustionrather than tactical aims.

In both cases, it seems that the ultimate aim is not to gain power within the state but to revitalize an idea of a geographical and political space that goes beyond the Westphalian concept of nation-states, and instead recalls the ancient nomadic tradition of the Pashtun lands.

It is inthisthatPashtuns find their revolutionary poweron both sides of the Durand Line. This social revolution is unique because it is fluid,crossing national borders, and moving a relentless flow of awakened consciences. Itaimsfor the long haul, nothing else.

This story is based on interviews in Kabul, Kandahar, and Peshawar.

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United in Struggle: Social Revolution of the Pashtun Borderlands - The Globe Post