The Awami National Party: Pashtun nationalist party, 1986 to today

At a glance

• The Awami National Party (ANP) is the Pashtun nationalist party that grew out of the Khudai Khidmatgar movement of Bacha Khan through the National Awami Party (NAP), founded in 1957. [2, 3]

• The government of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto banned the NAP in February 1975 and the Supreme Court upheld the ban on 30 October 1975. Its leader Wali Khan and about 80 others were tried in the Hyderabad conspiracy case. [6, 7]

• The ANP was founded in 1986 by a merger of the National Democratic Party with the Awami Tehrik and the Pakistan National Party, with Wali Khan as first president. [3, 5]

• It led the government of the North-West Frontier Province from 2008 to 2013 in coalition with the Pakistan Peoples Party. [4, 18]

• The Eighteenth Amendment of April 2010 renamed the province Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, a change the ANP had led. [1, 14]

• Taliban attacks killed many of its workers and leaders, among them the minister Bashir Bilour in 2012 and his son Haroon Bilour in 2018. [17–19]

• It won 48 provincial seats in 2008, five in 2013 and, in 2018, five in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Assembly. [11, 24]

From the Red Shirts to the National Awami Party

The party's founders trace it to the Khudai Khidmatgar, the Servants of God, which Abdul Ghaffar Khan, Bacha Khan, founded in 1929. The movement's two massacres, at Qissa Khwani in 1930 and at Babra in 1948, are told in the Qissa Khwani article and the Babra article. The historian Sayed Wiqar Ali Shah writes that the Khudai Khidmatgar pledged loyalty to Pakistan on 3 and 4 September 1947, that the provincial government under Abdul Qayyum Khan then began a campaign of intimidation against them, and that they were banned after Bacha Khan's arrest in June 1948. [2] See Abdul Qayyum Khan for the provincial government's side.

Wiqar Ali Shah says that after his release in July 1957 Bacha Khan, with Maulana Abdul Hamid Khan Bhashani, G. M. Syed and Mian Iftikhar-ud-Din, announced the decision to form the National Awami Party. [2] Ian Talbot dates the party to 1957, and says it called for the dissolution of the One Unit scheme and a federal reorganisation. [3] Dawn dates it to 1956. [5] Talbot writes that Bacha Khan's demand for Pakhtunistan, a Pashtun state, cost him long periods in prison after 1947, and that the authorities were suspicious of it at a time of tension with India and Afghanistan. [3] Wali Khan's own life and his book are in Khan Abdul Wali Khan.

The ministries of 1972 and the ban of 1975

The News writes that in 1972 the NAP formed coalition provincial governments in the Frontier and Balochistan with the Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam, and that they did not last long. [16] Dawn's profile of Wali Khan notes that this left-wing party was in coalition with the conservative religious party of Mufti Mahmud. [5] The dismissals of 1973 are told in Khan Abdul Wali Khan.

On 8 February 1975 a bomb killed Hayat Mohammad Khan Sherpao of Bhutto's People's Party at Peshawar University. Dawn writes that nobody claimed it and that, according to its historian, Bhutto telephoned from the United States and told his aide to have Wali Khan and the key NAP leaders arrested and to think of banning the party. [7] The ban followed within days and Dawn's two accounts give 9 and 10 February. [5, 7] The Third Amendment widened the state's powers to declare any person or group an enemy for "anti-national activity", and a reference against the NAP went to the Supreme Court, which upheld the ban on 30 October 1975. [7] Dawn says the court held that the party was working for an independent Pakhtunistan and a Greater Balochistan at the cost of Pakistan's territorial integrity. [6]

Wali Khan and about 80 associates, among them Ghaus Bakhsh Bizenjo, Khair Bakhsh Marri, Ataullah Mengal and the poet Habib Jalib, were sent to Hyderabad to face charges of treason. [7] The trial began on 10 May 1976 with a list of 455 witnesses, of whom 22 had been produced in eighteen months. Wali Khan withdrew from it after the tribunal refused to replace two judges who had been parties to the reference banning his party. [6] General Zia-ul-Haq dropped the case after taking power in July 1977, and Dawn dates the release of the leaders to 7 December 1977. [6]

Dawn's historian declines to settle whether Wali Khan wanted Pakhtunistan or backed a Greater Balochistan. He calls him a democratic leader who, after independence, "struggled for Pakhtun autonomy while staying within the Pakistan federation", and says that this branded him a rebel. [6] The Supreme Court's finding, as Dawn reports it, was different. Both are on the record.

The founding of 1986

After the ban the party's followers joined the National Democratic Party under Sherbaz Khan Mazari, and Wali Khan became its president. [5] Talbot writes that the ANP was founded in 1986 by the merger of the NDP, the Awami Tehrik of the Sindhi nationalist Rasul Bakhsh Palejo and the Pakistan National Party of the Baloch nationalist Ghaus Bakhsh Bizenjo, with Wali Khan as first president. [3] The party split soon afterwards and its strength remained in the Frontier, where some dissidents left to form the Pakhtun Liberation Front. [3]

The party then made alliances that its past did not predict. Dawn says that in 1990 and 1997 the ANP shared the provincial government with Nawaz Sharif's Muslim League. [5] Talbot records that the ANP left that coalition in a quarrel over renaming the province after Nawaz Sharif was said to have gone back on his support, and that Nawaz Sharif answered by bringing up Wali Khan's record on the Pakistan movement. [3] Ajmal Khattak, the poet, led the party through the 1990s; Ajmal Khattak tells his story and his break with it in 2000.

A family party

Dawn's profile of Wali Khan says that after he left active politics in 1990 he kept his hold on the party through his wife, Nasim Wali Khan. [5] She sat in the provincial assembly three times and was the party's provincial president. In 2012 she returned to politics after about seven years away. [9] She fell out with Asfandyar Wali Khan and founded the Awami National Party-Wali, then reconciled with him and merged it back into the ANP in 2017. She died on 16 May 2021, and the party announced three days of mourning. [9] The News writes that Bashir Bilour twice served as the party's acting president, once after Nasim Wali Khan resigned. [10]

Asfandyar Wali Khan, Wali Khan's son, was born at Shahibagh in Charsadda on 19 February 1949. Dawn says he began in the Pakhtun Student Federation in 1968 and was first elected president of the party in 1999. [8] Arab News calls the ANP a dynastic party, since three generations of one family have led it. [19] His son Aimal Wali Khan became provincial president in 2019 and, in May 2024, was elected central president unanimously, with Asfandyar named Rahbar-i-Tehreek, the party's guide. [27, 28]

The government of 2008 to 2013

The elections of 18 February 2008 returned the ANP to power after a very poor result in 2002. [4, 8, 12] Dawn counts 48 provincial and 12 National Assembly seats; the US Congressional Research Service's table gives 13 National Assembly seats. [4, 11] The Congressional Research Service says the People's Party and the ANP agreed to share power in the province, with the chief minister and 12 of 21 ministers from the ANP. [4] Bashir Bilour had been expected to be chief minister; the post went to Ameer Haider Khan Hoti and Bilour became senior minister. [10]

The government faced the Taliban from the start. In February 2009 the government agreed with Sufi Muhammad's Tehrik-i-Nifaz-i-Shariat-i-Muhammadi to promulgate a Nizam-i-Adl regulation for Swat and the rest of Malakand, and the governor did so on 15 April 2009. [12, 13] Dawn said the provincial government called it the key to durable peace in Swat. [12] A Dawn editorial of 20 February 2009 called it "yet another peace deal" and warned that it could make a tolerant society more retrogressive, with an effect on women and minorities. [13] Dawn's profile of Asfandyar Wali Khan says the party later supported the army's Swat operation of 2009, having "always opted for a negotiated solution" but being "left with no choice". [8]

Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, 2010

The ANP spearheaded the drive to give the province a Pashto name, according to Radio Free Europe. [14] On 15 April 2010 the Senate approved the Eighteenth Amendment, which carried the name, by 80 votes to 12. [14] The text replaced the words "North West Frontier" in Article 1 with "Khyber Pakhtunkhwa", and the president's assent was received on 19 April 2010. [1] Dawn notes that the party had insisted on Pakhtunkhwa alone. [15] The name's history and the compromise are told in Pashtunkhwa (Pakhtunkhwa).

Abubakar Siddique of Radio Free Europe said it was the first time the Pakistani state officially recognised Pashtun identity. [14] The ANP's Mian Iftikhar Hussain said Pashtun nationalists had worked 63 years for it. [14] At a celebration in 2016 a Khudai Khidmatgar associated with the party since 1930 said the old name had looked more like a geographical location and the new one gave the province recognition. [15] The province was not all Pashto-speaking. Radio Free Europe put non-Pashto speakers at 25 per cent, and on 12 April at least ten people were killed by police gunfire in Abbottabad during Hazara protests, where demonstrators wanted their own province. [14] The ANP said it would accept their demand by constitutional means. [14]

Killed by the Taliban

The Taliban attacked the ANP repeatedly. The News lists a suicide attack on a pre-election rally at Charsadda on 9 February 2008 that killed more than 25, and an attack on 2 October 2008 at Asfandyar Wali Khan's house at Wali Bagh, which he survived and in which at least four people were killed. [16]

On 22 December 2012 a suicide bomber killed Bashir Bilour, the senior minister, and eight others at a party meeting near Qissa Khwani bazaar in Peshawar. [17] A Taliban spokesman told Dawn he claimed responsibility as revenge for the death of a teacher at a madrasa, Sheikh Naseeb Khan. [17] The same spokesman had vowed that "the secular ANP and MQM" would be on the hit list for their secular views and enmity towards the Taliban. [17] The News says Bilour had survived four earlier attempts. [10]

On 10 July 2018 a suicide bomber killed Bashir's son Haroon Bilour, the party's candidate for the provincial seat PK-78 in Peshawar, and 19 others at a corner meeting at Yakatoot. [18] The Taliban claimed it. [18] Asfandyar Wali Khan announced three days of peaceful mourning and said: "We cannot declare every man with a beard to be a member of the Taliban." [18] The Election Commission postponed the vote in the seat. [18]

The number of dead is the party's claim. Senator Zahid Khan told Arab News in 2018 that more than a thousand ANP leaders and workers were killed while it governed, and about 250 more since. [19] Dawn writes that militants killed "hundreds" of ANP leaders and supporters around the 2013 election. [18] Pakistani papers headlined the dead of 2018 as martyred, and the party calls its dead shaheed. [29, 30] In 2019 Asfandyar Wali Khan called the shooting of a Peshawar party officer, Sartaj Khan, the work of "state-sponsored" terrorists; the police said it was not clear whether it was a targeted killing. [25] Another ANP leader who died for his peace work is Maulana Khanzeb.

What its critics say

Critics charge the party with corruption in office. Juma Khan Sufi, who had been close to its founders, told Arab News the party practised corruption in its last term and that its leaders should "become Pakistanis" instead of following "the line of Kabul and New Delhi". [19] The ANP's vice president Baz Muhammad Khan replied that the party faced such criticism because it demanded Pashtun rights, and Zahid Khan asked whether the killing of its leaders was not enough proof of patriotism. [19] A Dawn profile says Ghulam Ahmad Bilour, a federal minister from the party, headed the railways in what many called its worst financial crisis and faced corruption allegations, and records that he put a bounty on the maker of an anti-Islam film, which the ANP distanced itself from without acting against him. [20] The News gives the date as September 2012; Dawn's profile prints 2011. [10, 20]

The sharpest attack came from inside. In 2014 Senator Azam Khan Hoti asked the National Accountability Bureau to investigate Asfandyar Wali Khan and Afrasiab Khattak over the 2008 to 2013 government, accusing them of corruption. [21] He said he had been expelled in October 2013 for exposing it. [21] The Express Tribune, quoting Express News, says the party expelled him for demanding the two leaders' resignation after the defeat. [22] These are one man's allegations, and the reports show no court finding.

Rivals blamed the government's record for the defeat of 2013. The Muslim League's provincial general secretary, Rehmat Salam Khattak, told Dawn that the ANP-led government had done nothing for the people's welfare in five years. [23] The party's workers said they had built schools, colleges and roads and that voters ignored their sacrifices. [11]

Decline

In 2013 the ANP lost almost everything. Dawn says it won five provincial and one National Assembly seat, against 48 and 12 in 2008. [11] Another Dawn report counts four provincial seats. [23] Zahid Khan told Arab News the party lost because, "While other parties were campaigning, we were attending funerals of our party colleagues". [19]

In 2018 the party's president Asfandyar Wali Khan lost his Charsadda seat, 59,483 votes to 83,495. [24] The News says the ANP won five seats in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Assembly, one in Balochistan and one National Assembly seat, which Hoti took by 35 votes. [24] In the elections of February 2024 Aimal Wali Khan rejected the results and said the ANP had supported the establishment "till 2024" against terrorism and now saw that as its mistake. [26] The News counted it his third defeat in a row. [28]