The Cartography of Calumny: Representing Waziristan in Twentieth-Century Historiography

• Muhammad Fawad

  Author

This research paper undertakes a comprehensive, critical examination of the Waziristani Pashtun identity as constructed within the historiographical traditions spanning the twentieth century. The core argument rests on the assertion that the indigenous inhabitants of Waziristan, especially the resilient Wazir and Mahsud tribes, have been subject to a pervasive and deliberate process of misrepresentation across both the official colonial record and the subsequent postcolonial literary output. Initial colonial accounts, predominantly authored by military strategists and administrative officials, established a discourse founded on civilizational superiority and the politics of control, consistently affixing pejorative and reductive labels such as 'wild,' 'barbarous,' 'noble savage,' and 'untrustworthy mountaineer' to the tribes. This systemic 'Othering' was intellectually vital, serving as the necessary justification for costly military expeditions and the imposition of special, often draconian, administrative regimes like the Frontier Crimes Regulation (FCR). Crucially, the research demonstrates that this flawed representational model exhibited a damaging continuity; the postcolonial literature and subsequent media narratives, particularly following the geopolitical upheaval catalysed by the Afghan Jihad, perpetuated the colonial framework, simply updating the vocabulary. The older terms of 'savage' were replaced by 'militant' and 'terrorist,' thereby cementing a fundamentally distorted, securitized image of the Waziristani people that profoundly obscures their genuine cultural narratives, historical agency, and legitimate political grievances, ensuring their continued marginalization from the national mainstream.

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