The Pashtun Tahafuz Movement (PTM), 2018 to the ban

At a glance

• What it is: a Pashtun rights movement in Pakistan, known by its initials PTM, that grew out of the Mehsud Tahafuz Movement ("movement for the protection of the Mehsuds") and took its present name in the winter of 2018 [1]. Tahafuz means protection.

• Spark: the killing of Naqeebullah Mehsud, a young man from South Waziristan, by a Karachi police party on 13 January 2018 [4, 5]

• Main demands: a court case against his killers, then an end to enforced disappearances, extrajudicial killings, curfews and humiliating checkpoints, and the clearing of landmines in the former tribal districts [5, 6]

• Elected face: Mohsin Dawar and Ali Wazir, who won the two Waziristan seats in the National Assembly in July 2018 as independents [11, 29]

• Ban: the federal government proscribed the movement under the Anti-Terrorism Act on 6 October 2024; the Peshawar High Court upheld the ban in early February 2026 [20, 28]

• The two sides: the movement and its supporters call it a peaceful, constitutional protest by people who suffered in two decades of war; the army and government accuse its leaders of anti-state speech and foreign funding, which the movement denies [12, 22, 23]

From the Mehsud Tahafuz Movement

Manzoor Pashteen, the movement's best-known leader, has described its start himself. He writes that he came of age when his family and the whole Mehsud tribe, which he estimates at half a million people, were forced out of their South Waziristan homeland during the military offensive of 2009, and that everyone he knew had lost someone to Taliban bombs, airstrikes or shelling [1]. A few years before 2018, he says, he began organising volunteers among college friends with a simple aim, to protect their people, and they called the group the Mehsud Tahafuz Movement [1]. He writes that its members were then harassed, abducted and held in unlawful detention [1]. Abid Ali, a researcher at Government Post Graduate College Swabi, dates the founding to 2013 and names Pashteen, Mohsin Dawar and Ali Wazir as its three leading figures, all students at Gomal University in Dera Ismail Khan with a background in Pashtun nationalist politics [3].

The grievances were those of the Mehsud and Wazir country after the operations: families living in villages where landmines killed children and maimed adults, and mistreatment of civilians after any militant attack or disturbance nearby [1]. He also describes the Watan cards that people from Waziristan had to obtain after clearance from every intelligence agency, and the searches that followed even for cardholders [1]. People from the tribal districts who sought safety in Karachi, he adds, were met there with stereotyping and harassment [1]. This is Pashteen's account.

Naqeebullah Mehsud and the Islamabad sit-in

Naqeebullah Mehsud, 27, was an aspiring model from South Waziristan living in Karachi. He was one of four men killed on 13 January 2018 on the outskirts of the city by a police party under Rao Anwar, then senior superintendent of police for Malir [4, 5]. Anwar said it was a genuine shootout with militants [5]. An inquiry committee set up by the Sindh police chief found that Naqeebullah had no links to any militant group and had been killed extrajudicially, and Anwar was removed from his post on 20 January [4]. A joint investigation team also called it an extrajudicial killing [5]. Anwar made a failed attempt to leave the country from Islamabad airport and went into hiding, while the Supreme Court took notice of the case [4, 5]. Pashteen writes that photographs of the sharply dressed young man convinced thousands that the police story was a cover [1]. The killing is told more fully in Pashtuns in Karachi.

Protest began at Sohrab Goth in Karachi and ran for about two weeks. On 26 January 22 young men from the Mehsud tribe, joined by Naqeebullah's cousin Noor Rehman, set out on foot from Dera Ismail Khan for Islamabad, speaking in villages on the way; they arrived on 31 January, and the sit-in outside the National Press Club formally began on 1 February [5]. Pashteen says the movement had already planned an Islamabad sit-in and that the name Pashtun Tahafuz Movement was born on the road, before they reached the capital [1].

The sit-in made four demands: the arrest of Anwar and the police officers involved, the clearing of landmines from Fata, the production in court of missing persons, and an end to curfews imposed after any incident [6]. Some speakers also asked for a judicial commission under the chief justice on the killings of Pashtuns, and that Anwar and his team be hanged [5]. Dawn reported that the protest got almost no mainstream coverage, which some attributed to provocative slogans from some young speakers [6]. A senior member of a Muslim League party close to the establishment said the slogans were against the police uniform, not the army's [5]. The Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf chairman Imran Khan and the Jamaat-i-Islami chief Sirajul Haq addressed the gathering on 4 February [6]. The sit-in ended on 10 February after the prime minister's adviser Amir Muqam conveyed an assurance that all resources would be used to arrest Naqeebullah's killers, that landmines would be cleared and that victims of mine blasts would be compensated [7]. Pashteen says the government accepted the demands in writing and that the protesters only postponed their protest by a month [1].

Two weeks later, Aftab Mehsud, a Gomal University student who had taken an active part in the sit-in and had been a friend of Naqeebullah in Karachi, was found shot dead in Dera Ismail Khan; police registered a case against unknown people [8].

The demands

The movement's list stayed close to what the Islamabad sit-in had said, and its supporters and the army have each measured it against the record.

• Missing persons. Pashteen wrote in March 2018 that the movement had received the names of more than 4,000 people who had disappeared [1]. At the Peshawar rally of April 2018 its leaders claimed that 32,000 Pashtuns had gone missing from Fata in a decade; they said detainees must be produced before courts, which is what the Constitution requires [9]. In April 2019 the army's spokesman said the number of missing persons had fallen to 2,500 [12].

• Landmines. The army's spokesman said in April 2019 that 45 per cent of the mined area had been cleared at the cost of 101 military casualties [12].

• Checkpoints and curfews. The movement asked for an end to curfews and for greater freedom of movement in the former tribal districts, and Dawn reported complaints of mistreatment at security check posts [8, 18]. The army said the number of checkpoints had decreased [12]. Farhatullah Babar, a former Pakistan Peoples Party senator, said in 2024 that the army and government had repeatedly broken promises to the movement about removing checkpoints, clearing mines and releasing the forcibly disappeared [24].

• Extrajudicial killings and accountability. The movement asked for those who carried them out to be held to account within a truth and reconciliation framework [13].

The jalsas of 2018

After Islamabad the movement went from city to city. At Peshawar on 8 April 2018, thousands gathered at Pishtakhra Chowk near the Ring Road, and the families of the missing held up pictures of their sons and brothers [9]. Their slogan, da sang azadi da, is rendered by Dawn as "what kind of freedom is this" [9]. Pashteen told the crowd, "We are only against the oppressors," and answered the charge that foreign agencies backed the movement by saying "We are only the 'agents' of our nation" [9]. Dawn noted that the main television channels gave the rally little or no airtime and that people were mobilised through social media and pamphlets [9].

At Lahore on 22 April the rally was held at Mochi Gate although the district administration had refused a permit [10]. Tahera Jalib, daughter of the poet Habib Jalib, read her father's poem Dastoor, and Amina Masood Janjua, whose husband has been missing since 2005, spoke [10]. Pashteen announced the next stops, Swat and then Karachi on 12 May [10].

In the general election of July 2018 Mohsin Dawar won the North Waziristan seat (NA-48) with 16,496 votes and Ali Wazir the South Waziristan seat (NA-50) with 23,530; both stood as independents, and turnout was 23 and 33 per cent [11].

The army's charge sheet, April 2019

On 29 April 2019 the army's spokesman, Major General Asif Ghafoor, read out what Dawn called a charge sheet against the movement [12]. He said the movement had received money from Afghanistan's National Directorate of Security and India's Research and Analysis Wing, and asked its leaders about its donations, the funeral of Arman Loni, its "Larr-o-Barr" slogan and its relations with the Pakistani Taliban [12]. "Those playing in others' hands, their time is up," he said, adding that this was no declaration of war [12]. The movement's leaders deny the charges [20]. Mohsin Dawar told the National Assembly that the same allegations of treason and foreign funding had been made against Bacha Khan and Wali Khan, and that the movement was ready to be held to account before parliament [12]. Prime Minister Imran Khan had said earlier that the movement rightly spoke of the hardships of the tribal areas but that the manner of its demands harmed the country, and the army chief, General Qamar Javed Bajwa, said the movement itself was "not an issue" but that certain individuals were exploiting people's sufferings [13]. The history of such charges is older than the movement; see Bacha Khan and the Khudai Khidmatgar and Khan Abdul Wali Khan.

Kharqamar, 26 May 2019

A clash at a military check post at Kharqamar, near Boya in North Waziristan, left at least 13 protesters and one soldier dead by the government's own count. The facts are disputed, and Dawn wrote that there was no independent corroboration of either version [14].

The army said that a group led by Mohsin Dawar and Ali Wazir assaulted the post to press for the release of a suspected terrorist facilitator, that the group fired on it, and that troops used maximum restraint [13]. A report by the North Waziristan deputy commissioner to the government said residents of nearby Doga Macha had marched on the post after two suspects were detained in an operation on 24 May, that the two parliamentarians reached the post with about 300 supporters, that Ali Wazir used abusive language and urged the crowd to attack, and that armed men with them opened fire, after which soldiers fired for a short time [14]. The report gave 13 protesters and one soldier dead, with 25 protesters and seven soldiers wounded [14].

The movement rejected this. Mohsin Dawar said he and Ali Wazir went to show solidarity with the protesters, crossed two barriers after asking the officers to let them through, and heard shots from behind as the crowd welcomed them [14]. Another core committee member, Fazl Khan, said the protesters were unarmed [13]. Dawn's first report from PTM sources said the sit-in had begun the day before after an alleged assault on a local woman [13].

Ali Wazir was arrested at the scene and both men were charged with terrorism offences [13, 14]. On 14 October 2020 the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government withdrew the case and the judge accepted the complainant's application [15]. Neo News, which reported this, gave the death toll as at least 14 [15].

Arrests, and the death of Arif Wazir

Manzoor Pashteen was arrested in Peshawar on 27 January 2020 under an FIR registered in Dera Ismail Khan over a speech on 18 January in which he allegedly said the 1973 Constitution violated basic human rights; the charges included sedition [16]. Amnesty International called for his release, and the Pakistan Peoples Party said political arrests only aggravated the situation [16]. He was later released on bail [18].

Sardar Arif Wazir, a senior leader and first cousin of Ali Wazir, was arrested on 17 April 2020 for an allegedly anti-Pakistan speech made on a visit to Afghanistan [17]. Released from jail on bail, he was shot from a moving vehicle outside his home at Ghwa Khwa near Wana on 1 May and died in Islamabad the next day [17, 18]. Seven members of his family, including his father, had been killed in a clash with militants near Wana in 2007 [18]. Amnesty asked for an independent investigation and for those responsible to be held accountable [18]. Mohsin Dawar wrote that Arif had been "murdered by 'good' terrorists" [17].

In January 2023 a Karachi anti-terrorism court acquitted Rao Anwar and 17 others in the Naqeebullah case, saying the prosecution had failed to prove guilt beyond reasonable doubt and that geo-fencing reports and call records did not place Anwar at the scene [19]. Anwar said the allegations had been proved wrong, and the family's lawyer said it would appeal [19].

The ban of October 2024

On 6 October 2024 the interior ministry declared the movement "unlawful" under section 11B of the Anti-Terrorism Act, 1997, saying it posed a significant danger to public order and safety [20]. At least 52 people, among them Pashteen, were placed in the Fourth Schedule [21]. The notification came days before a grand Pashtun national jirga that the movement had planned for 11 October at Jamrud in Khyber district, and after police had raided and burned a camp set up for it [20].

The state's case, in the words of its ministers, was that the movement used abusive language against security institutions and the police, promoted ethnic division and tried to set up a "parallel judicial system" [22]. Information Minister Attaullah Tarar said it had burned Pakistan's flags, attacked the country's foreign missions, taken foreign funding and kept close coordination with the Pakistani Taliban [23]. In court the government's lawyer said the leaders had made hate speeches against Pakistan, and asked why the movement did not register with the Election Commission if it called itself political [28].

Others condemned the ban. The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan called the movement "a rights-based movement that has never resorted to violence" and the decision neither transparent nor warranted [20]. Amnesty called it an affront to freedom of association and assembly, and said the government had not given concrete evidence against the movement [2]. Mohsin Dawar, who by then had left the PTM to found the National Democratic Movement, said the ban told families of the missing that the state did not believe in peaceful struggle [20]. Ayesha Siddiqa of King's College London called it a knee-jerk reaction and expected more resentment [24].

On 9 October police and the movement's supporters clashed at Jamrud. The movement said three activists, Khalil Afghan, Sikandar and Ramzan, were killed; Dawn heard from the Hayatabad Medical Complex that at least three men had died, and reported that activists had burned a police vehicle and torn down bunkers [21]. Radio Free Europe counted at least four dead [24].

The Pashtun national jirga

The jirga went ahead from 11 to 13 October 2024, with the support of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government, whose chief minister and governor both attended [25]. Delegates from political parties and professional bodies met in 60 enclosures and the movement presented a 22-point resolution [25]. It demanded that the ban be lifted; gave militant groups and the military two months to leave the province; called for cheaper electricity, visa-free trade with Afghanistan along the border, an end to military courts and internment camps, the release of political prisoners, a judicial commission on deaths and disappearances, and the return of the displaced without extortion [25]. The movement displayed figures collected by itself: 5.7 million people displaced by military operations, of whom at least 2.3 million still homeless, 76,584 people killed in bomb blasts and targeted killings, and at least 6,700 missing [26]. These are its figures, not an official count. Governor Faisal Karim Kundi told the jirga that the army and police had made sacrifices for 24 years and that the nation must unite against its enemies [26].

Not everyone in the jirga agreed on the text. Three delegates told Dawn, without giving their names, that Pashteen's proposal for a tribal force of 30,000 volunteers and a permanent secretariat had been rejected in consultation and added by him to the declaration; another delegate, Barkat Afridi of Khyber, said all points were approved by the 80 delegates and that the volunteers were not meant to be a lashkar [27].

On the ban itself, the Peshawar High Court rejected two petitions against it, one filed by Pashteen and nine other leaders, in a short order reported on 5 February 2026 [28]. Their lawyers had argued that the movement was civil and non-violent, inspired by Bacha Khan, and that the ex parte listing without a hearing violated the right to a fair trial [28]. The detailed judgment was still to come.

Critics and supporters

Support was never complete among Pashtuns. In interviews with Pashtun students and urban residents in Islamabad and Lahore between 2020 and 2022, Abid Ali found opposition of three kinds: that the movement was anti-state and foreign-funded, that Pashtun ethnic nationalism threatened Pakistan, and that a Muslim should speak first for Muslims, as one madrasa student said [3]. A civil servant told him that a slogan of the movement, lar ao bar, yao Afghan, meant that it wanted unification with Afghanistan [3]. The author argues that this opposition rests on decades of state nationalism and class interest, a view of one researcher; the movement's own account is that it works within the Constitution [1, 9, 28].

The documented sequence is this: a police killing that an official inquiry found to be extrajudicial, though a court later acquitted the accused; a sit-in that won written assurances, a movement that carried those demands from Peshawar to Lahore and into parliament, a day at Kharqamar on which people died and whose account is still contested, and a ban whose reasons the government and the movement describe in opposite terms. For the name Pashtunkhwa, see Pashtunkhwa and Pakhtunkhwa; for the merger of the former tribal districts into Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, see the merger of Fata in 2018; for the party politics around it, see the Awami National Party.