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Great visit by Ali Gohar recently for INNATE where he shared on some of his conflict and restorative justice work in Pakistan and Afghanistan . We hope to bring you an interview with him in the next issue. But one of the most revealing little things he said was actually a quote from Bacha Khan (Abdul Ghaffar Khan) where he said about the Pashtoon/Pukhtoon (different forms of the word are used in English), the ethnic group who form a majority in Afghanistan and over 14% in Pakistan, that “He will go with you to hell if you can win his heart, but you cannot force him even to go to heaven. Such is the power of love over the Pukhtoon.” If the USA and its allies had actually heard that, and listened to it, before the current war in Afghanistan and Pakistan then the world could have been spared an enormous amount of death, misery and suffering.
And there is of course a universal truth in this saying but it has a particular resonance in relation to an ethnic group that the imperialist powers have never defeated. The quote appears on page 141 of Ali Gohar’s book “Who learns from whom? Pukhtoon traditions in modern perspective” which is not available on the Just Peace International website though INNATE can send you an electronic copy, similarly with a book on jirgas which Ali Gohar has been trying to develop for dealing with conflict, the traditional and the modern together in a circle for conflict resolution. |
