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| Khan Abdul Wali Khan |
His early years were marked by his involvement in his father's non-violent resistance movement, the "red shirts" against the British Raj. Early in his life he narrowly escaped an attempt on his life and was later sent to school at Dehra Dun.
In
his late teens, he became active in the Indian National Congress.
After the formation of Pakistan, Wali Khan became a controversial figure in Pakistani politics, he was referred to as both a hero and traitor during his
political career because of his association to the Congress which opposed the
creation of Pakistan.
A
respected politician in his later years, he contributed to Pakistan's
third constitution, led protests for the restoration of democracy in the 1960s and
1980s. In the 1970s, he also served as the parliamentary leader of
opposition in Pakistan's first directly elected parliament.
Early life
Wali
Khan was born on 11 January 1917, to a family of local landlords in the town
of Utmanzai in Charsadda district
of the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province of undivided India. His father,Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, was a prominent
Pashtun and Indian Nationalist and founder of the pacifist Khudai
Khidmatgar (Servants of God) movement. His mother, Mehar
Qanda Khan, belonged to the nearby Razar village,
and married Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan in 1912; she died during the flu pandemic
after World War I. Khan Abdul Wali
Khan, the second of three sons, received his early education from the Azad
Islamia School in Utmanzai.
In 1922, this school became part of a chain of schools his father had formed
during his social reform activities. It was from this network of schools that
the Khudai Khidmatgar movement developed, eventually challenging British
authority in the North-West Frontier
Province through non-violent protest and posing one
of the most serious challenges to British rule in the region.
In
May 1930, Wali Khan narrowly escaped being killed at the hands of a British
soldier during a military crackdown in his home village. In 1933, he
attended the government's Deradun Public School and
completed his Senior Cambridge. He did not pursue further education because of
recurring problems with his eyesight, which led to him wearing glasses for the
rest of his life.
Despite
his pacifist upbringing, as a young freedom fighter, Wali Khan seemed
exasperated with the pacifism advocated by his father. He was to later explain
his frustration to Gandhi, in a story he told Muklaika Bannerjee, "If the
cook comes to slaughter this chicken's baby, is non-violence on the part of the
chicken likely to save the younger life?" The story ended with a twinkle
in his eye when he remembered Gandhiji's reply, "Wali, you seem to have
done more research on violence than I have on non-violence." His
first wife died in 1949 while Wali Khan was in prison. In 1954, he
married Nasim Wali Khan, the daughter of an old Khudai
Khidmatgar activist.
Early politics
In
1942, Wali Khan while still in his teens, joined the Khudai Khidmatgar
movement. Soon after, he formally stepped into politics by joining the Indian National Congress where
he eventually served as a provincial joint secretary of the party. He was
arrested and charged under the Frontier Crimes Regulations,
in 1943, at the height of the crackdown against the Quit
India Movement. He opposed the 1947
partition of the subcontinent and criticized the British decision to break up
India.
His
decision to serve in a more prominent political role was said to have been
influenced by his elder brother, Ghani Khan's, decision to withdraw from
politics. With his father in jail, Khan took over leading his father's
supporters.
Despite
his father's efforts against partition and a brief attempt to instead create a
new nation called Pakhtunistan, on
August 14, 1947, Pakistan came into being. The new nation was divided into two
wings (West and East Pakistan), separated by a thousand miles (1500 km) of
Indian territory.
Like
his father after the creation of Pakistan, Wali Khan agitated for Pashtun
autonomy within a Pakistani Federal system, which
placed him at odds with government authorities. Imprisoned without charge in
1948, he was freed in 1953; he immediately started negotiations with the
central government to allay apprehensions about the Khudai Khidmatgar. He
held talks with then NWFP Chief Minister Sardar Abdul Rashid and Prime
Minister Muhammad Ali Bogra. He also held a series
of meetings with then Governor General Ghulam Mohammed. These negotiations proved
successful and led to the release of hundreds of imprisoned activists belonging
to the Khudai Khidmatgar movement. Wali Khan next joined the National Awami
Party(NAP) in 1956, a new political party formed by his father along with other
progressive and leftist leaders from both wings of Pakistan.
The
National Awami Party seemed to be on its way to victory in the 1959
elections, when the civilian President Iskandar Mirza was ousted in a coup by
the military, under Commander-in-Chief Ayub
Khan. One of Ayub Khan's first decisions after he came to power was
to outlaw political activity and imprison politicians. Wali Khan, along with
many other politicians at the time, was imprisoned and disqualified from
contesting elections or participating in politics as part of this purge.
Politics: 1958–1972
By
1962, Ayub Khan introduced a new constitution and announced he would run in the
next Presidential election. The opposition parties united under the Combined
Opposition Party alliance and fielded a joint candidate against Ayub Khan in
the Presidential elections. As an opposition leader, Wali Khan supported the
consensus candidate Fatima
Jinnah, sister of Pakistan's founder Muhammad
Ali Jinnah. Wali Khan assisted Fatima Jinnah in her
election campaign and served as her election agent.
The
opposition's election campaign however proved a failure and Ayub Khan was
re-elected in 1964, in part due to alleged vote rigging by the central
government, and also because of divisions within the opposition. These
divisions were particularly sharp between Wali Khan and National Awami Party
President Maulana Bhashani,
as the Pro-Mao Bhashani was
alleged to have unofficially supported Ayub Khan because of the government's
pro-China policy.
These
divisions came to the surface in 1967, when the National Awami Party formally
split into Wali Khan and Bhashani factions. Wali Khan was elected President of
his own faction of the National Awami Party in June 1968. In the same
year, popular unrest broke out against Ayub
Khan's rule in Pakistan, due to increasing corruption and inflation.
Wali Khan, along with most of the opposition parties, including future
Bangladeshi President Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and others, formed
the Democratic Action Committee to negotiate with Ayub Khan for the restoration
of democracy.
Attempting
to provide Ayub Khan with an honorable exit from power, negotiations between
Ayub Khan and the opposition continued between May 9 and May 10, 1969. However,
despite a compromise agreement on some issues, it was alleged that the military
leadership and its political allies did not want Ayub Khan to
succeed. Wali Khan held a separate meeting with Ayub Khan on 11 May to
convince him to compromise. Ayub refused, and shortly afterwards Ayub resigned
under pressure from the military.
The
new military leader, Yahya Khan, called for general and provincial
elections in 1970, promising to transfer power to the majority party. In the
elections, Sheikh Mujeeb-ur Rehman, Bengali nationalist and leader of the Awami League, won a majority of seats
nationally and all the seats from the East wing of the country. In West
Pakistan, the charismatic populist Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto won the second largest number of seats in the assembly, almost
solely from the Punjab and Sindh provinces. Wali Khan was elected to both the provincial
Assembly as a member of the Provincial Assembly and the National Assembly from
his home constituency of Charsadda.
Despite
the results, the military government rejected the Awami League's victory.
Shocked on hearing the news that the military junta would not transfer power to
the majority Bengalis, Khan was to later tell A.P. journalist Zeitlin, "I
remember Bhutto said that it had been arranged with the 'powers that are' that
in East Pakistan Sheikh Mujibur Rahman would rule, and in West Pakistan, Mr.
Bhutto would be the Prime Minister."
In
1971, in an attempt to avert a possible showdown between the Military and the
people of East Pakistan, on March 23, 1971, Khan, along with other Pakistani
politicians, jointly met Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. They offered support to Mujeeb
in the formation of a government, but it was already too late to break the
impasse as Yahya Khan had already decided on a full scale military crackdown.
Pakistan's increasing vulnerability and widespread international outrage
against the military crackdown eventually created a situation that led to war between Pakistan and India. This war proved disastrous and
culminated in Pakistan's armed forces being defeated in East Pakistan and the
creation of the new state of Bangladesh. Shocked by the defeat, Yahya Khan resigned from office and the
military. Under General Gul
Hassan Khan, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was brought back from America and
appointed President.
During
the martial law crackdown against East Pakistan, the National Awami Party under
Wali Khan was one of a handful of parties that protested the military
operation. In one case, Khan helped a senior East Pakistani diplomat's son
escape to Afghanistan from possible internment in West Pakistan. The
military government, in retaliation against the protests, banned the party and
launched mass arrests of party activists.
Politics: 1972–1977
Tripartite agreement
In
1972, as the opposition leader, Wali Khan was contacted by Zulfikar Ali Bhutto,
who wanted to lift martial law and set up a new constitution. Wali Khan's
negotiations with Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto led to the signing of an agreement with
the government in 1972, called the Tripartite Agreement. The agreement led
to the lifting of martial law and removal of the ban on the National Awami
Party. This led to the formation of National Awami Party coalition provincial
governments in the NWFP and Baluchistan. Despite the initial positive start, the agreement rapidly began
to unravel due to the growing animosity between Khan and Bhutto.
Liaqat bagh massacre
& Framing the constitution
On
March 23, 1973, the Federal Security Force, a paramilitary force
under the alleged orders of Bhutto, attacked a public opposition rally at
the Liaquat Bagh in the town of Rawalpindi and killed a dozen people; many more were wounded by their
automatic gunfire. Wali Khan narrowly escaped a bullet during the attack.
Public anger amongst ethnic Pashtuns ran high,
as almost all the dead and most of the wounded were from the NWFP and were
mostly members of the National Awami Party. The enraged party workers and
followers wanted to parade the dead bodies on the streets in Peshawar and other cities of the province, and provoke a full scale
confrontation. Wali Khan rejected this notion and held back his infuriated
party cadres, escorting the dead bodies to Peshawar; he had them buried quietly
and solemnly with their bereaved families.
Despite
the massacre, Wali Khan continued to support talks with Bhutto over a new
constitution. Shortly afterwards, he was appointed the leader of the opposition
by joint agreement of all the opposition parties. He then led negotiations with
Bhutto for the passage, in August 1973, of Pakistan's only unanimous
constitution.
Last
minute disagreements over issues ranging from provincial rights to the renaming
of NWFP, according to federal negotiator Abdul
Hafiz Pirzada, Despite
reservations, Wali Khan agreed to a compromise with the precondition that
issues of Judicial independence and provincial rights would be granted by the
federal government after transition periods of five and ten years, respectively. However,
he succeeded in incorporating Hydel and gas royalties for NWFP and Baluchistan
as well as having obligated the Federal government to ensure equal improvements
for all regions in Pakistan. Due to Bhutto's party's large majority in Parliament
and opposition divisions, Khan was critically unable to stop Bhutto from
concentrating greater power in his office.
It
was during this period that Wali Khan supported Bhutto's move toward the
release of prisoners of war captured by India in the 1971 war and full normalization of
relations through theSimla peace agreement.
Arrest and Hyderabad tribunal
In
1974, after Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto's
close ally and governor of the North-West Frontier
Province Hayat Sherpao was killed in a bomb blast,
Bhutto convinced that Wali Khan and the National Awami Party were responsible,
and in retaliation the federal government banned the National Awami Party.
It
also ordered the arrest and imprisonment of most of its senior leadership,
including Wali Khan. The widely discredited Hyderabad
tribunal subsequently put Wali Khan and his
colleagues on trial.
Refusing
to participate in what he felt was a farcical trial, Wali Khan did not take
part in his own legal defense. In response to one of the charges before
the Hyderabad Tribunal, that he had been sent Rs 20 million by Indian Prime
Minister Indira Gandhi through a certain emissary,
Wali Khan sarcastically filed a civil suit against the emissary for the
recovery of the Rs 20 million. He argued that, although he could not imagine
why Indira Gandhi would send him such a large sum of money, he had never
received the money, and obviously the emissary had embezzled the money.
Facts Are Facts
Although
not widely known, Wali Khan had previously written a book in Pashto on his father's non-violent movement, The Khudai
Khidmatgar. In 1986, he published another book called Facts Are
Facts. This book was written gradually over many years and included
critical and declassified British Imperial documents before the creation of
Pakistan. Wali Khan, citing those documents, alleged that Pakistan's formation
was done as part of a deliberate "divide
and rule" policy of the British and that Muhammad
Ali Jinnah(Pakistan's founder), along with various
religious leaders and feudal landlords, acted on their behalf.
Awami National Party
In
July 1986, Wali Khan and other former National Awami Party members formed
the Awami National Party (ANP). Wali Khan was
elected its first President and Sindhi Nationalist Rasool Baksh Palijo became
the first Secretary General of the party.
The
ANP, under Wali Khan's presidency, contested the 1988 national elections in
alliance with former rivals the Pakistan Peoples' Party of Benazir
Bhutto (Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto's daughter). The
ANP's success in the elections was limited to the NWFP and even then only
certain regions of that province. In addition, Wali Khan lost his provincial
seat to a PPP candidate, a sign of the decline in the ANP's popularity. The ANP-PPP
alliance collapsed in 1989 after a perceived snub by PPP Prime Minister Benazir
Bhutto and a dispute over ministerial posts and the governorship of NWFP. After
joining the opposition, Wali Khan started talks with the Army backed IJI
(Islamic Democratic Alliance) and joined the alliance before the 1990 general
elections.
Post-retirement politics
After
his defeat in the 1990 elections at the hands of opposition candidate Maulana
Hassan Jan (a close confidante of the Afghan Pashtun
leader Gulbadin Hekmatyar),
Wali Khan opted to retire from electoral politics and turned down a senate
ticket from his party and the offer from Prime Minister Nawaz
Sharif of contesting Lahore. When asked his reason for retirement, he said that he had no
place in politics "when the mullahs and ISI (Inter-Services Intelligence)
decide our destiny and politics".
As
Wali Khan withdrew from politics, his contact with the press and public became
limited. This period in the 1990s would be marked by his party's assumption of
power in alliance with former army-backed opponents, a focus only on provincial
politics, the increasing influence of his wife in party affairs, corruption
scandals hitting the once clean image of his supporters and in particular the
focus on renaming the NWFP Pakhtunkhwa ('Land of the
Pashtuns'). The exception was in 1998, when in response to Prime Minister
Nawaz Sharif's announcement of the construction of Kalabagh Dam, Pashtun and Sindhi nationalists opposed construction of the dam
because they believed it would give control of Pakistan's water resources to
the majority Punjabis.
In response to the announcement, Wali Khan led a massive rally against the dam
in the town of Nowshera. The rally spurred other parties, in particular
Benazir Bhutto's PPP, into leading a campaign against the construction of the
dam. The campaign was successful and Sharif dropped the plan.
In
another press conference in 2001, Wali Khan supported the US attack on
the Taliban and said that had
the US not attacked Afghanistan, the country would have turned into an Arab
colony since Osama Bin Laden had a well-equipped army of 16,000 people, which far
outnumbered the trained soldiers in the Afghan army.
Wali
Khan's final press conference was in 2003, when he announced his close friend
and colleague Ajmal Khattak's return to the ANP, along with
many other colleagues, who had briefly led a splinter faction of the party
between 2000 and 2002.
Relationships
His
relationship with PPP leader and Pakistani Prime Minister Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto
was characterized by a fierce rivalry and a powerful clash of egos. He used to
criticize the Prime Minister for his "fascist tendencies" by calling
him "Adolph Bhutto" and "Raja Dahir". In exchange Bhutto would accuse Khan of collusion with India
and Afghanistan in an attempt to break up Pakistan.
Wali
Khan accused Zulfiqar Bhutto of attempting his assassination on the floor of
Pakistan's parliament. During Bhutto's time in office, Khan survived four
assassination attempts. The attempts occurred in Malakand, Dir, Rawalpindi and Gujranwala. He survived the first attack when the vehicle he was travelling
in, from Jandol to Timergara in Dir, came under fire. One of his bodyguards was
killed in the attack. He survived a grenade attack at the Gujranwala railway
station when he, along with Pir
Pagara and Chaudhry Zahur Elahi,
was on a visit to Punjab under the banner of the opposition alliance United
Democratic Front (UDF).
The
fourth attack was carried out when he was about to address a public meeting in
Liaquat Bagh Rawalpindi, a stray bullet killed a youth standing close to Wali
Khan on the stage. Convinced that Bhutto had orchestrated the attacks with the
collusion of Khan's old rival Abdul
Qayyum Khan, and after one particularly narrow escape, he
warned Bhutto on the floor of the National Assembly that he would trade bullet
for bullet with Bhutto, after that speech Bhutto's trips to the North-West
Frontier Province were heavily guarded.
Debates
between the two rivals remained bitter, in one case Bhutto had just returned
from a successful trip abroad, and in a confrontational mood he lashed out at
the opposition and Khan for slowing him down. When Bhutto was done, Wali Khan
responded: "Mr. Bhutto, you stop telling lies about me and I will stop
telling the truth about you.
The
brutality he and his family experienced at the hands of Bhutto's government led
to little sympathy from Wali Khan in 1979 when Bhutto faced execution.
Imprisonments
Wali
Khan served several stints in prison, and survived several assassination
attempts during his 48-year political career. His first arrest was under
the Frontier Crimes Regulations (FCR)
by the British Raj in 1943 for his role in the Khudai
Khidmatgar movement. On June 15, 1948, he was arrested
again, this time by the new Pakistani government, for the Khudai Khidmatgar's
opposition to the creation of Pakistan, and placed behind bars in Haripur jail in Haripur, NWFP. In 1953, after serving more
than five years in various jails without being charged, he was released by the
central government. During this stint in prison, in February 1949, his first
wife Taj Bibi and their second son died in a Mardan hospital.
Wali Khan was not allowed to attend her funeral. In February 1949, Wali
Khan was moved from Haripur jail to Mach jail in Balochistan, then to Quetta jail in May 1951,
and to Dera Ismail Khan jail in 1952. He was
brought back to Haripur jail in March 1952 and then released on 14 October
1953.
His
third stint in prison was after Pakistani President Iskandar Mirza was ousted in a military
coup by General Ayub Khan. The new military regime sought to
purge political opponents, which led to Khan and hundreds of other politicians
being disqualified from participating in politics. Wali Khan commented about
his imprisonment to Ayub Khan's Information secretary in 1969 shortly after the
Democratic Action Committee's conference with Ayub Khan had finished. Gauhar
writes that, "Wali Khan narrated how Khawaja Shahabuddin asked him on
three occasions during the conference, 'how is it that I never met a bright and
able person like you when I was Governor of NWFP for three years.' Wali Khan
let it pass on the first two occasions but on the third occasion he could not
restrain himself and rejoined, 'Because all those three years you kept me in
prison!'" This was followed by another brief arrest in 1969 after
another military ruler, Yahya Khan, assumed power after Ayub Khan
resigned.
His
final stint in prison was under Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto's government. Khan
considered this period his most difficult experience. His party was banned and
a brutal crackdown was launched against his family and friends. As part of
the crackdown, his brother-in-law was forced into exile and his son was
tortured. In his book Facts Are Sacred, he wrote of this
stint in prison with some bitterness.
This
difficult experience prompted Wali Khan to be often ambivalent in his criticism
of military dictator Muhammad
Zia-ul-Haq who in 1977 ousted Bhutto and in 1979 had
him executed.
Criticisms
Wali
Khan struggled for most of his life with the twin legacies of his influential
father Ghaffar Khan and the perception of his "Anti-Pakistani activities". As
a result, he has been criticized for backing separatist ideals as well as
causing social unrest in Pakistan. His critics blamed him for alienation of Pashtuns from the rest
of Pakistan and for supporting "anti-Pakistani forces." He
remained tagged with the title of traitor by the state run media and Pakistan's
ruling establishment for much of his political career. Paradoxically he is
criticised by democrats for his alleged lukewarm opposition to Zia-ul Haq, who
allegedly offered him the Prime Ministership of the country.
However
writers like Lawrence Ziring have rejected the charges against him. Syed went a step
further, arguing that the clash between the National Awami Party under Wali
Khan, "was not a contest between the state of Pakistan and a secessionist
force..but was more like a clash of rival political wills".
His
supporters disagree, and believe he promoted left of centre progressive and
secular politics in Pakistan. Before his arrest in 1975, he was in fact
striving for a more national role more in line with his position as Leader of
the Opposition in government and he had started campaigning heavily in Punjab
and Sind, where he was attracting large crowds.
In
his statements he left an ambiguity in his policies, exemplified in 1972 when a
journalist questioned his loyalty and his first allegiance, to which his reply
was, "I have been a Pashtun for six thousand years, a Muslim for thirteen
hundred years, and a Pakistani for twenty-five." However at the same
time, before the 1990 general elections, he stated "The survival of the federation
is the main issue in this election. Everyone considers themselves a Sindhi or
Pashtun or Punjabi first. Nobody considers themselves a Pakistani. There has to
be greater provincial autonomy".
He
also worked well with many politicians from Punjab including prominent Muslim Leaguers like Sardar Shaukat
Hayat Khan and Chaudhry Zahoor Elahi (father of former
Prime Minister (Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain)
and with Baloch politicians especially Sardar Ataullah
Mengal and Sherbaz Khan Mazari.
He
was also accused of being a communist, or a secular Pashtun nationalist. Khan's falling
out with Baloch leader Ghous Bizenjo in the late 1970s can be traced to his
disillusionment with Communism.
Khan,
and by extension his party and family, maintained a long association with
senior leaders in the Congress Party of India because of his father's close
association with Mohandas Gandhi. His preference for
dialogue over conflict with India and his links to India also strengthened the
impression that he was anti-Pakistan amongst the more strident anti-India
elements in Punjab. His opposition to the Pakistan-United
States backed Afghan jihad and support for Afghan
communist President Mohammad
Najibullah damaged his standing amongst many
conservative Pashtuns and Pakistanis."
Legacy
Critics
argue that Wali Khan made limited contributions to Pakistan's polarized and corrupt
political system. They challenged his claim that he was the major or sole
spokesperson for Pashtuns, discounted the benefits of the 1973
constitution and the Simla agreement, and disagreed with his principles of not
compromising with dictators. Others argue that if he had compromised with
Pakistan's military establishment he may well have ended up Pakistan's Prime
Minister, but that his principles proved to be his undoing.
Some
Pashtun nationalists were also critical of Wali Khan, as many felt that he
squandered a chance to unite all Pashtuns in NWFP, Baluchistan and Federally Administered Tribal Areas into one large province that could be named Pakhtunkhwa or Pakhtunistan. Khan also faced criticism for
his "betrayal of his language" because of his, and the National Awami
Party, support for Urdu as the provincial
language of instruction in NWFP and Baluchistan (declared in 1972) rather than
the majority languages of Pashto and Balochi.
After
a long illness, Wali Khan died of a heart attack on 26 January 2006 in
Peshawar, Pakistan. He was buried in his ancestral village in Uthmanzai, Charsadda.
His funeral was widely attended by members of the public and senior political
leaders including Prime Minister Shaukat
Aziz; condolence messages were sent from Pakistani President Pervaiz Musharraf, Prime Minister Manmohan
Singh and Afghan President Hamid
Karzai.
He
is survived by his wife Nasim
Wali Khan, three daughters and two sons. Asfandyar Wali Khan, his eldest son, true to the political
traditions of Wali Khan's family, is a politician in Pakistan and the current
President of the Awami National Party.
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