Page 23 - Pakistan Link - September 25, 2020

COMMENTARY
Mataloona and Mizh: Understanding the Pukhtun People
n By Frankie Martin
American University
S Washington, DC
ome years ago while working on
an academic project with Am-
bassador Akbar Ahmed, the Ibn
Khaldun Chair of Islamic Studies at
American University, I
noticed a small book on
the shelf. I began leafing
through it and was fasci-
nated with what I found.
It was an old worn copy
of Ahmed’s book Ma-
that, I discovtearleodo,nad:aPteudkhbtaockPrtoovetrhbes the important and influential Mahsud
early 1970s and had been out of print
for decades. The book was a collection
of proverbs of the Pukhtun people of
Afghanistan and Pakistan.
What jumped out at me immediately
was the evident care that was taken in
assembling the collection: It was clearly
a labor of love. The proverbs were pre-
sented in the Pukhto language, translated
into English by Ahmed with additional
explanations of their meaning in English,
and finally equivalent sayings and prov-
erbs were included from international
sources ranging from Italian culture to
the Bible to English writers and poets like
Shakespeare and Wordsworth.
This method did a few things. It pre-
sented a unique insight into the culture
of the Pukhtun, it allowed non-Pukh-
tuns, whether English speakers inside or
outside South and Central Asia, to ap-
preciate the proverbs and their meaning,
and it additionally captured, with the in-
clusion of the equivalent sayings, some-
thing that was universal to humanity as
human beings grapple with similar moral
issues and experiences. For example, the
Pukhtun proverb “On this side the staff,
on that side the panther” was grouped
with the comparable saying “between the
devil and the deep blue sea.”
So, when Ahmed told me recently
that Mataloona (Proverbs) was being
republished by Oxford University Press,
I was thrilled. People would once again
be able to access this work of insight and
wisdom of the Pukhtun people (also
known as Pashtun and Pathan), who
number around 50 million and live in
a crucially important part of the world.
With the United States and the Western
powers attempting to withdraw military
forces from Afghanistan amidst the on-
going Afghan peace process, and the im-
portance of both Pakistan’s role in this
process and its relations with its own
Pukhtun population in areas like the
Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province, an un-
derstanding of the Pukhtun is crucial.
The Pukhtun are also the largest eth-
nic tribal nation in the world and under-
standing them also gives us insight into
peoples who identify as tribal with cer-
tain characteristics such as being in often
difficult to access areas like mountains,
living by a code of honor, being resistant
to central authority structures, and the
importance of values such as hospital-
ity, egalitarianism, honesty, practicality,
courage, and revenge.
The book includes proverbs such as,
“The Pukhtoon who took revenge after a
hundred years said I took it quickly”; “To
honor his word, the Pukhtoon will give
his life”; “Who calls himself a Khan is not
a Khan”; “Good health means permanent
‘Eid’”; “When a tree becomes old every
spirit/calamity nests for the night in it”;
“An hour’s luck is preferable to a hundred
days on the throne”; and “One mountain
does not go to another, but man goes to
his fellow man (for aid).”
I was moreover pleased that the new
book not only includes Mataloona but
another work on the Pukhtun, this time a
classic study that is a century old—Mizh:
A Monograph on Government’s Relations
with the Mahsud Tribe by the senior Brit-
ish colonial administrator Sir Evelyn
Howell. The story of how Mizh, meaning
“we” or “ourselves,” came to be published
by Oxford University Press in the first
place back in the late 1970s is also, like
Mataloona, a labor of love on Ahmed’s
part. While serving as the Political Agent,
the senior Pakistani government official
in the Pukhtun area of South Waziristan
on the Afghan border, Ahmed found an
old faded copy of the monograph. It had
been written by Howell as a study of the
relationship between the British colonial
government and a single Pukhtun tribe,
tribe. The state, recognizing that this
tribe was among the most difficult to ad-
minister, devoted an internal study to the
topic and discussed the behavior of the
sub-clans of the tribe, the tribal elders
and leadership, the political organiza-
tion of the tribe, and the role of religious
leaders in tribal life and relations with the
government.
For example, there is a great deal of
discussion on Mulla Powinda, the Mah-
sud religious leader who led an insurgen-
cy against the British government in the
late nineteenth century and is described
by Howell as “a champion of his tribe’s
independence.”
This proved of great interest to
Ahmed because at that time he was also
representing government authority in
its relationship with the same people
decades later. The difference was he was
not administering on behalf of a colo-
nial power but the independent nation
of Pakistan, a Muslim government offi-
cial administering Muslim citizens. Even
so, he recognized certain important pat-
terns and continuities in government’s
relationship with the Pukhtun and spe-
cifically the Mahsud, who, as Ahmed
found, remained resistant to state rule.
How to administer in that region effec-
tively without leading to a serious crisis
and violence would require a great deal
of tact, strategy, and most importantly
knowledge of and empathy for the peo-
ple themselves. There was much to learn
from the rich context and background
provided in Mizh, and Ahmed was able
to successfully have the book published
by Oxford so a wider audience could
benefit from it.
There was also a personal con-
nection. Ahmed had met Howell as a
student at Cambridge University, but
he had no idea that sometime later he
would be in Howell’s shoes administer-
ing the Pukhtun of the Pakistani frontier.
Ahmed would also meet and strike up a
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friendship with Sir Olaf Caroe, another
former senior colonial British official in man. Judged by this standard the social
the Pukhtun region and author of a book
on the history of the Pukhtun. Caroe’s
original preface to Mataloona from the
1970s is included in the new book. While
Ahmed was born as a colonized subject
of the British prior to independence, he
found in these administrators, elderly at
It is wonderful that Mataloona and
Mizh are being republished. As
Ahmed wrote in his introduction
to Mataloona, the proverbs are
“part of the atmosphere of the
land” of the Pukhtun and capture
“the magic of the mountains,
the joy and zest for life, the grim
reality of poverty, the warmth
of hospitality, and the priceless
charm of wisdom.” When
coupled with the political and
historical perspective offered in
Mizh, we have a unique gem of a
collection about the Pukhtun.
With the publication of Mataloona
and Mizh: Pukhtun Proverbs and
a Frontier Classic, both works are
thereby preserved for the next
generation of Pukhtun—especially
the youth connecting with their
history and culture, the political
leadership of the Pukhtun and
the Pakistani state whose job
it is to deal with the Pukhtun,
scholars, and nations that have
relationships with Pakistan
and Afghanistan and seek to
promote stability in the region
the time he knew them, an affection for
the Pukhtun and a nostalgia for their time rights platform that challenged state ac-
of service in the Pukhtun areas which be-
lied how difficult their assignments actu- Tahaffuz Movement. This is all to say that
ally were. In Ahmed’s new introduction
for this collection, he cites Howell’s ex- this historical study of the Mahsud, given
change with Mahsud elders from Mizh,
in which Howell told them that British
government officials were “custodians of
civilization dealing with barbarians.” The foreword, dominate the transport system
elders responded, “A civilization has no
other end than to produce a fine type of
system in which the Mahsud has been
evolved must be allowed immeasurably
to surpass all others. Therefore, let us
keep our independence and have none of
your ‘qanun’ [law] and your other institu-
tions which have wrought such havoc in
British India, but stick to our own ‘riwaj’
[custom] and be men like our fathers be-
fore us.” Howell concludes that he actu-
ally agreed with them and their “plea.”
Since the time the book was last pub-
lished, some four decades ago, much has
occurred in Waziristan and the Pukh-
tun region of Pakistan. The same year
Ahmed facilitated the publishing of
Mizh, the Soviets invaded Afghanistan,
sending mass numbers of Afghans over
the border into Pakistan and providing
a host of challenges. There followed the
rise of the Taliban in Afghanistan among
the Pukhtun, and after 9/11 and the start
of the “war on terror” in Pakistan, the in-
terest of the Pakistani state, and indeed
the world, through modern technolo-
gies such as the American drone, were
focused on the Pukhtun border region
and tribes like the Mahsud. Where the
Pakistani state had previously had a light
footprint in many Pukhtun areas, in the
new era government involvement, and
also conflict, increased exponentially, as
the Mahsud emerged to lead a Tehrik-i-
Taliban Pakistan (TTP) militant rebellion
against the Pakistan state with leaders
like Baitullah Mahsud and Hakimullah
Mahsud. There was a massive impact on
the ordinary Pakistani Pukhtun citizens
who struggled to survive as millions were
displaced in the fighting. New organiza-
tions like the Pashtun Tahaffuz (Protec-
tion) Movement (PTM) arose from the
Mahsud tribe in the turmoil with a civil
tions, beginning its life as the Mahsud
in this environment the republishing of
how important they remain in Pakistan,
is highly welcome, timely, and useful.
They even, Ahmed reminds us in his new
of Karachi, seen as the “greatest Pukhtun
city” because so many Pukhtun live there.
It is wonderful that Mataloona and
Mizh are being republished. As Ahmed
wrote in his introduction to Mataloona,
the proverbs are “part of the atmosphere
of the land” of the Pukhtun and capture
“the magic of the mountains, the joy and
zest for life, the grim reality of poverty,
the warmth of hospitality, and the price-
less charm of wisdom.” When coupled
with the political and historical perspec-
tive offered in Mizh, we have a unique
gem of a collection about the Pukhtun.
With the publication of Mataloona
and Mizh: Pukhtun Proverbs and a Fron-
tier Classic, both works are thereby pre-
served for the next generation of Pukh-
tun—especially the youth connecting
with their history and culture, the po-
litical leadership of the Pukhtun and the
Pakistani state whose job it is to deal with
the Pukhtun, scholars, and nations that
have relationships with Pakistan and Af-
ghanistan and seek to promote stability in
the region. I am hopeful it and works like
it that promote knowledge can assist the
Pukhtun effort to seek dignity, security,
opportunity, and preserve their identity
in a difficult and uncertain time, as well
as advancing the cause of peace and an
improved relationship between the Paki-
stani state and its Pukhtun citizens.
(Frankie Martin is an Ibn Khaldun
Chair Research Fellow at the School of
International Service at American Uni-
versity in Washington, DC and a PhD
candidate in the university’s Department
of Anthropology)