Pakhtuns hold games to dispel wrong impression

In a bid to dispell the widespread impression about Pakhtun land of being the hot bed of insurgency, the government of Pakistan's NWFP province, recently mentioned as Pakhtunkhwa by the country's president Asif Ali Zardar while addressing the UN General Assembly, has decided to hold inter-provincial games there.

Scheduled to begin from November 9, the four-day event will be held in the city of Peshawar, the capital of NWFP and the strategic city joining Afghanistan with Pakistan.

According to officials in the city of Peshawar, the games included athletics, swimming, badminton, squash, volley-ball, judo, baseball, taekwondo, karate, football, kabadi (a kind of wrestling competition by two groups), boxing, weigh-lifting, wrestling, hockey and cycling.

Arrangements and venues for the inter-provincial games were finalized during a meeting chaired by the Provincial Minister for Sports Syed Aqil Shah and attended by Information Minister Mian Iftikhar Hussain and Secretary Sports Sahibzada Fazal Amin besides others.

Briefing journalists, NWFP Information Minister Mian Iftikhar Hussain said the games would prove a psychological defeat for the terrorists, extremists and militants, who are out to disrupt peace of the land.

At the same time, he said holdng of the sports competitions in the province would convey the message to the world that Pakhtuns are peace-loving people and they can not be held hostage by a small number of terrorists and extremists.

The minsiter admitted that violence had increased manifold on the Pakhtun land over the previous few months, but said those responsible for the violence were not representing Pakhtuns.

He said Pakhtuns are the followers of the non-violence preached by their leader Khan Abdul Ghafar Khan, known as Bacha Khan, and they have a rich culture and traditions full of lessons of love for humanity, peace and love for their land.

Hundreds of people have been killed and maimed in bomb blasts, direct attacs, fightings and military actions in NWFP and the adjacent tribal areas straddling the 2,640 kilometres Pak-Afghan border, also known as the Durand Line.

The tribal areas, defined as the Federally Administered Tribal Areas or FATA are speedily converting into the core area of the United States' war against terrorism as misslile attacks by US spy planes has almost become a routine there.

As reported in the local media, nearly 50 people have been killed in such attacks in the tribal region of Waziristan by the US drones over the previous fortnight. Some of those killed in the attacks are said to be key leaders of the Taliban, fighting the Afghan government and US forces in Afghanistan, and al-Qaeda.

Taliban militants are active in the Pakistani tribal areas since their ouster from power in Afghanistan as a result of the US-led invasion of Afghanistan in late 2001. Since then, thousands of people, mostly Afghan and Pakistani civilians, as well as military personnel, both local and foreign and the militants have been killed. ENDS