North-West Frontier Province Pakistan: Encyclopedia II - North-West Frontier Province Pakistan - History

North-West Frontier Province Pakistan - History

North-West Frontier Province Pakistan - Ancient History

Since ancient times the NWFP region has been invaded by numerous groups including the Aryans, Persians, Greeks, Scythians, Kushans, Huns, Arabs, Turks, Mongols, Mughals, Sikhs, and the British. It has been speculated that early pre-Aryan populations in the NWFP were an Elamo-Dravidian group, but this remains unproven. Between 2000 and 1500 BCE Aryan invaders split off into an Iranian branch, represented by the Pakhtuns who dominated most of the region, and various Dardic peoples which came to populate much of the north.

The Vale of Peshawar was home to the Kingdom of Gandhara starting around the 6th century BCE and later ancient Peshawar became a capital of the Kushan Empire. The region was visited by such notable historical figures as Darius II, Alexander the Great, Marco Polo, Mountstuart Elphinstone, and Winston Churchill among others.

The region was, in ancient times, a major center of Buddhism as attested by recent archaeological and hermeneutic evidence.

"The region of Ghandara has long been known as a major center of Buddhist art and culture around the beginning of the Christian era. But until recently, the Buddhist literature of this region was almost entirely lost. Now, within the last decade, a large corpus of Gandharan manuscripts dating from as early as the 1st century A.D. has come to light and is being studied and published by scholars at the University of Washinton. These scrolls, written on birch-bark in the Ghandaran language and the Kharosthi script, are the oldest surviving Buddhist literature , which has hitherto been known to us only from later and modern Buddhist canons. They also institute a missing link between original Indian Buddhism and the Buddhism of East Asia, which was exported primarily from Ghandara along the Silk Roads through Central Asia and thence to China".

North-West Frontier Province Pakistan - Arrival of Islam

Buddhism remained prominent in the region until the Muslim Arabs and Turks conquered the area before the 2nd millennium CE. Over the centuries local Pakhtun and Dardic tribes were converted to Islam, while retaining some local traditions such as Pashtunwali or the Pakhtun code of honor. The NWFP became part of larger Islamic empires including the Ghaznavid Empire and the empire of Muhammad of Ghor and was nominally controlled by the Delhi Sultanate and Ilkhantate Empire of the Mongols. The Muslim technocrats, bureaucrats, soldiers, traders, scientists, architects, teachers, theologians and sufis flocked from the rest of the Muslim world to Islamic Sultanate in South Asia including NWFP.

The NWFP was an important borderland that was often contested by the Mughals and Safavids of Persia. During the reign of the Mughal emperor Aurangzeb, the NWFP required formidable military forces to control and the emergence of Pakhtun nationalism through the voice of local warrior poet Khushal Khan Khattak united some of the tribes against the various empires around the region. The area, as a predominantly Pakhtun region, merged following a loya jirga with the Durrani Empire founded by Ahmad Shah Durrani in 1747 and remained mainly under Afghan control until the coming of the British.

North-West Frontier Province Pakistan - British Era

A series of conflicts known as the Anglo-Afghan wars during the imperialist Great Game between Britain and Russia led to the eventual dismemberment of Afghanistan. The annexation of the region led to the demarcation of the Durand Line and administration as part of British South Asia. The Durand line is a term for the poorly marked 2,450 kilometer (1,519 mile) border between Afghanistan and Pakistan. After being defeated in two wars against Afghans, the British succeeded in 1893 in imposing the Durand line, dividing Afghanistan and what was then British South Asia. Named for Sir Mortimer Durand, the foreign secretary of the British colonial government, it was agreed upon by representatives of both governments, while the Afghan side greatly resented the border and viewed as a temporary development as opposed to a permanent settlement as the British viewed it as being. One of the two representatives of the Afghan government was the revered Ahmadi Sahibzada Abdul Latif of Khost. The border was drawn intentionally to cut through the Pakhtun tribes.

North-West Frontier Province Pakistan - After Independance

During the early 20th century the so-called Red Shirts led by Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan agitated through non-violence for an rights Pakhtun areas. Following independence, the NWFP voted to join Pakistan in a referendum in 1947. However, Afghanistan's loya jirga of 1949 declared the Durand Line invalid. During the 1950s, Afghanistan supported a secessionist movement in the NWFP known as the Pakhtunistan movement. The issue kept Pakistan and Afghanistan at odds for decades until the Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan in 1979. Following the invasion over 5 million Afghan refugees poured into Pakistan, most residing in the NWFP. During the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, the NWFP served as a major base for supplying the Mujahideen who fought the Soviets during the 1980s.

The NWFP remained heavily influenced by events in Afghanistan and the civil war led to the rise of the Taliban, which had emerged in the border region between Afghanistan and Pakistan as a formidable political force that nearly took-over all of Afghanistan. Following the attacks of September 11, 2001, the NWFP became a frontline region again as part of the US-led 'war on terror'.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "History", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki