The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition. 2001 - Pathans

Pathans

(ptdnz4) (KEY) , group of seminomadic peoples consisting of more than 60 tribes, numbering approximately 10 million in Pakistan and 6 million in Afghanistan, where they form the dominate ethnic group (historically known as Afghans and now typically as Pashtuns). Pathans are Muslims and speak Pashto (or Pushtu). They are also known as Pashtuns, Pushtuns, Pakhtuns, and Pakhtoons.
The Pathans are noted as fierce fighters, and throughout history they have offered strong resistance to invaders. The British attempted to subdue the Pathans in a series of punitive expeditions in the late 19th and early 20th cent. but were finally forced to offer them a semiautonomous area (see North-West Frontier Province) between the border of British India and that of Afghanistan.
After the creation of Pakistan in 1947, the new nation annexed the Pathan border regions, and a Pathan independence movement, called the Redshirts, was born. In the early 1950s, Afghanistan supported Pathan ambitions for the creation of an independent Pushtunistan (also called Pakhtunistan or Pakhtoonistan) in the border areas of West Pakistan. Several border clashes and ruptures of diplomatic relations between Afghanistan and Pakistan ensued. In the early 1970s thousands of armed Pathan tribespeople pressed for increased autonomy within Pakistan, even demanding independence after the secession of Bangladesh (East Pakistan). The Pathans remain a potentially destabilizing force in NW Pakistan, where the Pathan-based Taliban movement of Afghanistan has many sympathizers.
See O. K. Caroe, The Pathans, 550 B.C.A.D. 1957 (1958, repr. 1965); J. W. Spain, People of the Khyber (1963), The Pathan Borderland (1963), and The Way of the Pathans (2d ed. 1973).

North-West Frontier Province

province and historic region (1998 pop. 17,554,674), c.41,000 sq mi (106,200 sq km), NW Pakistan, bounded on the N and W by Afghanistan. Peshawar is the capital. An area of high, barren mountains dissected by fertile valleys, it is predominantly agricultural. Wheat is the chief crop; barley, sugarcane, tobacco, cotton, and fruit trees are also cultivated, and livestock is raised. Irrigation works, notably the Warsak project on the Kabul River, supplement the scanty rainfall. Mineral resources include marble, rock salt, gypsum, and limestone. There are some mountain forests. Food processing, cotton and wool milling, papermaking, and the production of cigarettes, textiles, chemicals, and fertilizer are the main industries; handicrafts also flourish. Some Pathan tribes inhabit the province in the plains and lower hills.
The region has been historically and strategically important due to passes leading into India, through which came invaders from central Asia. Alexander the Great conquered the region c.326 B.C., but his garrisons were unable to hold the region. In the early centuries A.D., Kanishka and his Kushan dynasty ruled the area. The Pathans arrived in the 7th cent., and by the 10th cent. conquerors from Afghanistan had made Islam the dominant religion. Under local Pathan rule from the late 12th cent. until Babur annexed it to his Mughal empire, the region paid nominal allegiance to the Mughals in the 16th and 17th cent. After Nadir Shahs invasion (1738), it became a feudatory of the Afghan Durrani kingdom. The Sikhs later held the area, which passed to Great Britain in 1849. The British maintained large military forces and paid heavy subsidies to pacify the Pathan resistance.
Britain separated the region from the Punjab of India in 1901 and constituted the North-West Frontier Province, whose people voted to join newly independent Pakistan in 1947. Following the absorption of the North-West Frontier Province into Pakistan, neighboring Afghanistan engendered the Pushtunistan Controversy (see Afghanistan). From 1955 to 1970 the North-West Frontier Province was a section of the consolidated province of West Pakistan. In 1970, the region was once again granted provincial status.
The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan caused over 3 million refugees to flee to the North-West Frontier Province. Peshawar became the military and political center of the Afghan anti-Soviet coalition. The Soviet withdrawal in 1989 raised hopes that the refugees would be repatriated. Although renewed factional fighting in 1992 threatened the process, all Afghan tented refugee camps were closed by 1995.	4