Faces of Pakistan
By Riaz Haq
CA

Pakistan is a racially diverse country with a range of skin colors and facial features. There are people of European descent in its northern areas like the Kalash along with the Sheedi or Makrani people of African descent in parts of the south along the Arabian Sea coastal line.
Kalash genes: Last year, a genetic study reported in The New York Times found that the Kalash people's DNA seems to indicate that they had an infusion of European blood during a "mixing event" at roughly the time of Alexander's conquests in 4th century BC. These isolated people are thus most likely the direct descendants of the ancient Greek-Macedonian armies that came to this region 2,300 years ago.
The study was published in February 2014 in the journal Science by a team led by Simon Myers of Oxford University, Garrett Hellenthal of University College London and Daniel Falush of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany.
A 2013 Harvard study published in the American Journal of Human Genetics has found that vast majority of Indians today have descended from a mixture of two genetically divergent populations--Ancestral North Indians (ANIs) who migrated from Central Asia, the Middle East, the Caucasus, and Europe, and Ancestral South Indians (ASI), who are not closely related to groups outside the subcontinent.
Sheedis of Sindh and Balochistan:Sheedis are thought to be the descendants of African slaves brought to the shores of Pakistan at the height of the international slave trade that started in the 7th century and continued till the 18th century.
Also known as Siddis in other parts of South Asia, they are believed to have arrived in India in 628 AD at the Bharuch port. Several others followed with the first Arab invasions of Sindh in 712 AD. The latter group are believed to have been soldiers with Muhammad bin Qasim's Arab army, and were called Zanjis. Siddis are related to the Bantu peoples of Southeast Africa. They were brought to the Indian subcontinent as slaves by the Portuguese.
The Sheedis of Pakistan, also known as Makranis, live primarily along the Makran Coast in Balochistan, and southern part of Sindh. In Karachi, they are mainly concentrated in Lyari. Pir Mangho is revered by Sheedis as their patron saint. Sheedis have an annual celebration in Manghopir area around the shrine of their patron saint.

Chitral Valley:A 10,000 ft high mountain pass and big glaciers separate the scenic Chitral valley, the home of the Kalash, from the Swat Valley that was hit by the Taliban insurgency in 2009. It has so far served to insulate these pagan people from the rising tide of intolerance and religious militancy in the Islamic Republic.

A CNN story calling the Kalsh "the happiest people in Pakistan" succinctly captured their lives in the following sentence: "Year round, the Kalasha dance their way through a stream of festivals and rituals, and socially and culturally, theirs appears to be a joyful existence".

Hunza's Greek and Macedonian Connections:A few years ago, the neighboring Hunza people, who also claim descent from Alexander's troops, found themselves in the middle of a tussle between the governments of Greece and Macedonia.

Many Pakistanis of Chitral, Hunza, Gilgit and Nagir have long claimed descent from the Greek and the Macedonian invaders who were led into India by Alexander in 327 BC. Among them are the Kalash people who live in Chitral, Pakistan.