Travel intelligence Letter from the North West Frontier Province – Pakistan October 2001

A Pathan walks into a chai shop on the corner Tanai Scout Post Road in Wana and asks everyone there to a circumcision party.

As jokes go it could be straight out of some city boy’s recession-war-bombing-weary perk-up collection, but it’s not, the Pathan really did walk into the chai shop, or rather he ran in, his blue eyes wide and his beard at full sail. He wanted everyone to come to his first son’s circumcision party, he wanted us all to celebrate with him and his family.

We, and when I say we I mean those in the shop, had just been taking a restorative chai after a morning of rioting in the streets of Wana. Those historic, hirsute North West Frontier warriors of South Waziristan had been throwing bricks and firing their Kalashnikovs at the helicopter of the area commander of the South Waziristan Scouts, who in turn had just been flying through to check out the lay of the land. The local lay of the land is pretty much in cahoots with the Taliban. The rioting had really just been business as usual so the circumcision party offered a bit of light relief.

The Pathans of the North West Frontier Province and Baluchistan and the Pashtuns of East Afghanistan are the same people, the same blue-eyed, fair skinned, very non-vegetarian warrior tribe. Many refer to them as one of the ten lost tribes of Israel and certainly, as illustrated by the invitation in the chai shop in Wana, they follow many of the customs of the Jews. They are also one of the biggest tribal groups in the world numbering about 15 million. They love a good scrap and they are a people famous for their inter-clan feuds and savage mountain guerrilla techniques. Pathans and Pashtuns live by a code of honour. They must provide hospitality to anyone who asks even if he be a sworn enemy. They are also driven by Badal, the cycle of revenge, invariably motivated by zar, zan, zamin, gold, women and land. This cycle of revenge is not only carried right through the whole clan but it is handed down from father to son and across the centuries. As warriors the mountain Pathans have never been defeated.

Wana is the main town of South Waziristan, a restricted frontier area particularly well know for the ferocity of its inter-clan punch-ups. It is not a recommended tourist spot. My guide, of the flashing teeth, eyes and AK47, was keen to tell me how the town apparently got its name. When the Brits established their outpost in the town they got lonesome for their ladies and sent for them from Lahore and Delhi. Up the lovely ladies tripped and were to be seen bustling about the town bazaar swishing their skirts in that fashion so particularly offensive to petticoat-shy Muslims. The OAPs of the town called a jirga, a council of elders, and voted to ban these wanton western hussies. Keen not to enrage the rumpustuous locals the Brits sent the girlies packing. And so the town got its acronym name: Women Are Not Allowed.  My storyteller’s eyes twinkled and he re-adjusted the cartridge belts across his chest in a slightly over-boyish fashion. Even so I went along to the circumcision party. It would have been an insult not to go.

It was all meat, argument and no alcohol of course as is the standard at gatherings in this part of the world. And obviously there were not a lot of ladies around. I asked a more moderate local lad, who’s Pathani hat was casually awry, whether he thought his people might calm down a bit if they cut down on the meat and took to moderate consumption of the occasional soothing nip. He rolled his eyes in a fashion that suggested he was perhaps already not averse to a bit more than just the odd nip. I stayed a little longer than I really wanted to, wild mountain dancing not being my strong point, but my guide was keen to join in.

Back up the hill and out of town, in the relative serenity of a rundown old government rest house set among some trees, I was cooched down beside the fire writing up my notes with the same frantic enthusiasm that had been given to the dancing down the hill in Wana. My guide wanted to find out whether I was writing about his dancing performance. I told him that I was comparing the raw ranges further north to the handiwork of a clan of drunken giants setting to with a gargantuan chisels.

‘But we are not taking alcohol here,’ interjected my guide.

So I posed the vegetarian and moderate tipple suggestion to him.

He laughed like a character out of a Bollywood movie, smacking his thighs and throwing his head back to the moon. Then he came over all serious in the firelight.

‘We Pathan people are the people of these mountains in Azad (Pakistan controlled Kashmir), rest of Pakistan and Afghanistan. We will always fight. We hate people from the outside and we hate to be told what to do. We live by tribal law and this is all.’

It is Pathans who have been targeted in the war against terrorism. It is Pathans who fill the refugee camps on the Afghan borders and in Iran and Pakistan. And it is the Pathans who have defeated every invading army that has ever tried to take control of Afghanistan.