The anecdote of ‘Beheading’ basically refers to a process of hasty removal of head with a sword or through guillotine in the past. The process has once again repeated during the last ten years after demolishing the so called Taliban cum Pakistan controlled Taliban ‘terrorist-empire’ in Afghanistan by the American jets in 2001. To keep the moral of religious fanatics high in society for future strategies, and to provide parallel otherwise government to them and their supporting religious parties in Pashtun areas including Pakhtunkhawa province, FATA and Baluchistan in Pakistan. Al-qaida and the Taliban were purposefully brought and settled in FATA, Federally Administrated Tribal Areas of Pakistan adjacent to Southern Afghanistan. Shockingly, where they not only got safe heavens and continued attacks on forces and civilians in Afghanistan but also started pauperizing the local people and eventually all the spearheads, political workers and liberal people in FATA were brutally killed, beheaded or forced to leave their hometown. The nasty story of beheading people by fanatical Taliban tragically, started from Kandahar province in Southern Afghanistan to FATA, Pakhtunkhwa province in Pakistan. Hundreds of people including children, women, youths and Afghan soldiers were beheaded allegedly accused for being Afghan government’s supporters or spying against Taliban. Currently, as claimed, Taliban beheaded 13 soldiers of FC, Pashtun dominant untrained local force, were beheaded in FATA. Some pseudo religious scholars in Pakistan, surprisingly, links and mixes the beheading and other activities of Taliban with Pashtun tribal and social norms which is in reality not more than a hatched propaganda and their ignorance.
Positively, Beheading of people has never taken place in Pashtun society by the hands of Pashtun in the entire history of Pashtun living in adjacent areas both in Afghanistan to Pakistan. In Pashtun culture, there are even some roles for taking revenge and killing someone's arch-enemy. Which go as:
1. If a murderer is accompanied by child or a woman, the victim is then traditionally, not allowed to attack murderer ( not to speak of the woman or children).
2. ‘Beheading’ has never happened in Pashtun society in entire history because they consider Human head as the direct creation by Allah's hands.
Even there is a saying in Pashto “Tarbbor Marr ka Kho Lamr ty ma Paragda," means if you kill your relative doesn’t let his corpse in open sky to perish.
It ischallengingly, a good topic of research for history and all other scholars to prove a single case of beheading in the Pashtun history. Pashtun have ruled on United India for more than one and half a century, where 95% people of the empire were non-Muslim and had other faiths and beliefs but they never beheaded any one among the opponents. The same Pashtun, traditionally also known as Afghan, have fought with emperor Alexandre of Macedonia (Europe), Changaiz Khan of Mangolia, Moghul imperialists, the British army and USSR armies for centuries. These all forces were defeated and killed thousands of their soldiers but you cannot find a single case where any Pashtun army beheaded any soldier during these wars in history. Even When Changaiz Khan and Alexanderinvaded Afghanistan; their brutal forces beheaded Pashtun and other Afghan.
Alexander’s army pilled of their ‘Cut off’ heads as a pillar to terrify the people but none of the Alexander soldier was beheaded by Pashtun.
Beheading or execution has a long history rooted in Arab, Roman and European societal and administrative setups. It is as compared to other methods used, such as crucifixion, burning at the stake, hanging, the wheel, or burying alive, the method actually represented progress and for this reason in Europe beheading was for a long time a “privilege” of the elite. Historically, the states, in the past, used it as a severe but quick punishment to remove the enemies. The Romans were the pioneer that killed thousands of their empire’s opponents by beheading them in public.
John the Baptist was beheaded by Herod, a sub king of Roman Empire for he reproved Herod for divorcing his wife and unlawfully takingthe wife of his brother. The Roman kings killed hundreds of religious saints because of their affiliations with Christianity. Similarly,after the ancient Romans, to remove the political rivals or in some cases, the so called clash of civilizations among the three big traditions Judaism, Christianity and Islam also caused heinous practicing of ‘Beheading of the opponents’ in England, Revolutionary France, Scotland and Arab countries respectively.
Before Islam, the religion of Peace and prosperity, ‘Beheading’ in Arab society was happening through centuries where they slaughter and cut off the head of their enemy after killing him. The beheading of Hazrat Imam Hussain, the grandson of Muhammad (PBUH) and his 72 companions in the historical event of ‘Karbala’ in present Iraq is a crystal clear example of this Arab culture. And his ‘head’ was carried for miles to terrify the people. Abu Muslim Khurasani, was an Abbasid general from theKhurasaniregion now Afghanistan who led the Abbasid Revolution that toppled the Umayyad dynasty, was beheaded in Baghdad’s castle by his own Arab master for whom he had defeated the Umayyad and installed the Abbasid density in Afghanistan.
He was decisively called to Baghdad, capital of Iraq to be honored for his bravery and was promised to be installed as governor of the Afghanistan. But as history says, the Arab never allowed any other non-Arab Muslim to be on such key posts in their entire epoch and when Muslim Khurasani reached Baghdad, he was beheaded by his own masters. Last but not the least, another impressive instance can be Raja Dair, the ruler of Sindh now Pakistan, was beheaded by an Arab invader Muhammad Bin Qasim after invading India in 712 for spreading the Arab culture and imperialism on the name of religion.
The flag of Saudi Arabia, the native country of Osama Bin Ladin, is still marked with ‘Sword’, the weapon used to behead enemy .The head and the sword have a specific place in the rhetoric Arab society and it went on like that in North Africa, Spain, Asia, everywhere where the Arab spread.
in the same way, when Alqaida, an arab dominant terrorist organization, led by Osama Bin Ladin of Saudi Arabia, recently killed in Pakistan military compound, came to Afghanistan and now settled in FATA, Pakistan. They are practicing the same Arab culture here and started practicing beheading people. In 2002, the first such case appeared in Karachi, former capital of Pakistan when a US journalist Denial Pereal was first kidnapped by Khalid Sheikh, an Alqaida member, later on, was beheaded as shown in a video released by the terrorists. Likewise, such heinous acts of beheading have been reported in Kashmir a conflict zone between Pakistan and India. Where the Muslim Mujahidin, who have affiliations with Alqaida, Pakistan army and its spy agency ISI, Inter-Services of Intelligence and funded by Saudi Arab, fighting against India had killed and ‘beheaded’ soldiers during guerilla war attacks on their camps. Time and again,the Indian authorities have many times reportedly accused the Pakistanis for ‘Beheading’ of their soldiers on the Line of Control (LOC), a border between Pakistan and India but Pakistani authorities rejected such claims of the Indians.
On the contrary, all the incidents of beheading occurring in Pashtun areas including Southern Afghanistan and FATA, in Pakistan have either done by Alqaida or Taliban and majority of the people beheaded are Pashtun. In the last ten years or a couple of days ago, say all the FC men killed by Taliban were basically Pashtun. and all hundreds of other Pashtun women, girls, children and tribal chiefs beheaded were from the identical ethnicity.
Pashtun as a nation is confronted with multi facets conflicts and matter of survival ranging from terrorism, religious extremism, and exploitation of the mother land resources to history, from their culture to identity. So, on one hand, if Taliban have started their genocide, some Pakistani intellectuals, politicians, Pakistani media and the so called analysts and secular like javed Ahmad Ghamdi, AnsarAbbasi, OryaMaqbool Jan, General Pervez Mushraf and such other people have daringly been conspiring to contaminating Pashtun culture by spreading such illogical propaganda of mixing ‘Beheading’ with Pashtunwali, the codes of life of Pashtun society.
