Pashtun rights group accuses Pak army of widespread abuse

A Pakistani human rights group that has accused the military of widespread abuses as it battles Islamist militants in Pakistan's rugged border region with neighboring Afghanistan has emerged as a force among the country's Pashtun minority, drawing tens of thousands to rallies to protest what it contends is a campaign of intimidation that includes extrajudicial killings and thousands of disappearances and detentions.

The group's charismatic leader, 25-year-old Manzoor Pashteen, has become the face of the country's oppressed Pashtun, charging that in the name if its "war on terror" the military has used indiscriminant force as it hunts for Taliban hideouts in the tribal regions where the Pashtun dominate, imposing collective punishments like bulldozing the homes of family members of suspected militants and punishing entire villages for extremist attacks, reports AP.

The catalyst for the group's creation was the police killing in January of Naqueebullah Mehsud, a 27-year-old ethnic Pashtun and aspiring model who was shot dead in the southern port city of Karachi, where many displaced Pashtuns have relocated after being displaced by the military operations in the tribal regions.

The authorities originally said Mehsud fired first during a raid by security forces on a militant hideout, but later acknowledged he was unarmed and had been targeted simply because he was Pashtun.

His death ignited protests by Pashtuns, who accused Pakistan's security forces of racial profiling, seeing all Pashtuns as Taliban simply because many insurgents in Afghanistan and Pakistan are recruited from among Pashtun tribesmen.

Within weeks what began as a small group of about two dozen had morphed into a popular movement. Known as the Pashtun Protection Movement, it has drawn huge crowds to rallies where Pashteen leads the charge, accusing the military of detaining thousands of Pashtuns in internment camps for months or even years without charges and intimidating residents at the dozens of check points scattered throughout the tribal regions. Residents, he said, were scared silent, too afraid to criticise the army tactics.

"Punishment is all about sending a message to keep silent," Pashteen told The Associated Press in an interview in Peshawar, the capital of Pakistan's Khyber Pukhtunkhwa province and home to the majority of the country's ethnic Pashtuns.