The latest major victim of Talibans is ANP’s provincial leader, Muhammad Shoaib Khan, , shot dead in Swabi, sadar town of Swabi district, on 18 July. A former member of NA, he was the leader of a peace and reconciliation committee in Yar Hussain, one of the largest towns in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province ,about 80 kilometres from the provincial capital of Peshawar. Official spokesperson of the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), Muhammad Khurasani, informed that he was gunned down by a “special squad” that entered. The men entered Shoaib Khan’s hujra (a drawing room where guests are entertained in Pashtun areas) in Yar Hussain to open fire on him.

The cowardly assassination of Shoaib Khan marks the continuation of numerous killings one after another, including two former other MNAs and former senior minister Bashir Ahmed Bilour. The ANP termed the series of bloody campaign as an “attack on the Pashtun movement”, that began in 2009 when it was running the government in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa and demanded an operation against Maulana Fazlullah-led militants in Swat. Refused to be cowed down by the Taliban threat, the ANP has decided to take on the terrorists by launching a sit-in campaign from Swabi against the target killing of its workers on August 28.

ANP senior vice-president and noted intellectual Bushra Gohar said firmly, “Despite serious threats, the ANP has remained firmly on the ground and on the forefront of the struggle against terrorism.” She added that ANP would not budge an inch from its determined struggle for peace” . Small wonder, she stated, the party remains the principal main target of anti-peace and pro-Taliban forces.

Founded by Wali Khan in 1986, ANP’s fountainhead of inspiration is Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan and his life and teachings. Affectionately called as Baacha Khan and Badshah Khan, whose followers were christened by him as Khudai Khidmatgars during the Indian freedom struggle, fought against colonialism and imperialism. In fine, he looked at politics as the highest form of public service and often described himself as only a social worker .His motto was to liberate the masses of South Asia and, particularly, his own people, the Pukhtuns, from the shackles of ignorance and poverty. Keeping this socio-economic ideals in mind , ANP’s predecessors, National Awami Party and National Democratic Party) were fully committed to the promotion of democracy and freedom, the eradication of poverty, the protection of human rights, the combating of extremism in all its forms and the creation of equal opportunities for all citizens.

In keeping with this spirit, the ANP, like its predecessors, the NAP (National Awami Party) and the NDP (National Democratic Party), looks upon politics primarily as a public service, particularly to the poor and the disadvantaged. Hence the Party is dedicated to the promotion of democracy and freedom, the eradication of poverty, the protection of human rights, the combating of extremism in all its forms and the creation of equal opportunities for all citizens. It firmly believes in peace and non-violence as the best way to resolve all issues. It is committed to securing for all the federating units of Pakistan their full political, social and economic rights as equal partners in the federation and their fair share in national progress and prosperity.

But Talibans do not spare the Pakistan Peoples Party, Mutahida Qaumi Movement, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf and other political parties and killed many leaders of them. But their chief targets are Pashtun nationalists. Which was why the ANP’s rallies were attacked before the general elections in 2013. The slain TTP chief Hakimullah Mehsud made no secret of his organisation’s aim at destruction of the “democratic, secular” system, meaning ANP whose existence unnerved ‘political Islam’.

The list of ANP martyrs against so-called Islamic terrorism is a long one. The first major leader, killed by the terrorist was provincial legislator Alamzeb Khan in Peshawar in February 2009. Another legislator to fall victim was Shamsher Ali Khan in Swat in December 2009. The number of martyrs keeps increasing thereafter. The terrorization was heightened in 2013 during the national elections. In February 2013, the then chief minister Amir Haider Khan Hoti survives suicide attempt in Mardan. In April-end of the same year, ten people, including a child, were killed and around 25 others were wounded in the Pakistani Taliban militants ’ attack on a secular political party during a street corner meering near Mominabad Police Station in Karachi’s SITE area. It was attended, among others, by a local leader of ANP, Bashir Jan.

The Talibans intimidated ANP poll campaigners and succeeded in preventing the party from winning several parliamentary and provincial seats. Nonetheless, ANP wages a grim battle solely on the strength of its secular and anti-war credentials plus the tradition of protestation against social oppression, a tradition handed down by Baacha Khan. (IPA Service)