Pakistan’s history offers a recurring warning: When the state mistakes regional dissent for disloyalty and electoral opposition for a security threat, it risks turning political grievances into an existential crisis. A recent editorial in this newspaper (‘The siege within Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’, IE, October 17) focused on the political factors leading to the declaration of emergency and the displacement of the elected government in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP). It, however, does not touch upon the Pashtun question, one that predates Pakistan.

Abdul Ghaffar Khan’s Khudai Khidmatgar movement represented an anti-colonial tradition that sat uneasily with the Muslim League’s vision of nationhood. The 1947 referendum in the North-West Frontier Province, which excluded independence and a separate Pashtunistan from its options, left enduring grievances among sections of Pashtun political opinion. Pashtun nationalism was subsequently viewed through the lenses of separatism, Afghan interference and territorial insecurity.

The parallels with East Pakistan in 1970-71 are not exact, but they are sufficiently unsettling to warrant scrutiny. In December 1970,........

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