| Summary/Abstract |
In early 2018, the Pashtun Tahafuz Movement or Pashtun Protection Movement (PTM) came suddenly into the limelight in Pakistan. The PTM is spearheaded by young firebrand Pashtun generation mainly from the war-torn North-West Frontier region of the country. However, the movement's rhetoric and policy agenda have put it at loggerheads with Pakistan's powerful military establishment. Whilst the PTM blames the Army for the plight of Pashtuns in the country, the military has labelled the movement as a foreign ‘proxy’ working at the behest of other countries against the institutions of its own state. In essence, both parties have resorted to conspiracy theories of one sort or the other. This development has strained the nascent process of ‘mainstreaming’ the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) into becoming a normalized part of Pakistan. However, there are some encouraging political aspects and developments related to this debate. These include the increasingly wide-scale use of social media for political activism and awareness; various impacts on merger of FATA with Khyber Pakhtunkhwa; and also the successful conduct of recent provincial elections in the region.
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