Pashtun Tahafuz Movement, former Mahsud Tahafuz Movement (From May 2014 until January 2018)

Head: Manzoor Pashteen (20231104)

Background:
In a midnight raid in Peshawar on January 27, 2020, Pakistani police arrested human
rights activist Manzoor Pashteen, charging him with conspiracy, sedition, and other alleged
crimes When the sun rose, tens of thousands of people took to the streets in protest Over
the past seven years, Pashteen and his peers have built a civil resistance movement focused
on Pakistan’s human rights abuses against members of the minority Pashtun tribe As the
leader of the Pashtun Tahafuz Movement (PTM), Pashteen has guided the movement in using
nonviolent tactics in their struggle In response to the PTM’s momentum and recent gains,
the Pakistani state has used physical and administrative repression to suppress the movement
and create a counternarrative that plays off of stereotypes of Pashtuns being inherently vio
lent and their territory being overrun with jihadists.

In a region profoundly affected by the US War on Terror, the PTM has integrated tribal
traditions and international standards of constitutional justice to catalyze a decidedly nonvi
olent movement for change—a movement so strong that the state could not ignore it and
chose to use violence to counter it.