The ANP's Nasim Wali Khan (left) sits with Aftab Ahmad Khan Sherpao (an original PPP stalwart) during a meeting with reporters. Photo: File

On February 8, 2012, Nasim Wali Khan, the former provincial president and the first-ever woman directly elected to Pakistan’s national parliament, had her application for senator rejected by the ANP party parliamentary board. Coldly, no explanation was formally offered and no sympathy shown by others. Nasim Wali Khan discovered something that everyone had known for long: the political career of the nearly 80-year-old former Iron lady of the frontier, wife of the late Wali Khan, was over.

To understand her journey one has to rewind to the years between 1986 and 1989, nearly a quarter of a century back. It was a tumultuous time in Pakistan, even more so for the three-year-old ANP (Awami National Party). By 1989, the party, led by Wali Khan, was at a crossroads. In his final years in parliamentary politics, Wali Khan tried to resurrect the old National Awami Party. The vision was a party with a national outlook, espousing secular, leftist politics and dominated by the core of what were the old “red shirts.” Several attempts were made by leftists, ethno-nationalists to once again unite as they did in the 1950s to challenge the state. But things were changing in the frontier and power was shifting within the party. In the video below is a rather one-sided perspective by B.M. Kutty on an attempt by Baloch leader Ghaus Bakhsh Bizenjo to merge his Pakistan National Party with the ANP:

Click play and skip to the 12:20 mark to hear his story:

In brief, he attributed the failure of the merger to the veto held by Wali Khan’s wife, Nasim Wali, the most powerful female politician in the province. The party’s alliance with the PPP eventually ruptured as well, and Nasim Wali Khan was to lead the party into an alliance with their old rivals the Pakistan Muslim League and the ISI-backed IJI. This led to many rebelling from the party in disgust and the end of any claim to national politics. One activist at the time bitterly commented how he could not understand how “we could sit in alliance with those we had only recently been cursing.”

Married to the Red Shirts

Da zalmo Na Pora Na shwa
Fakhre-Afghana Jeenakai ba de Gatee

(if the youth are not enough,
the women who are the pride of the Afghans will carry the day)

Nasim Wali Khan is the daughter of Amir Hoti, a Khudai Khidmatgar (also known as the red shirts) and close associate of Bacha Khan. In 1954, she married Wali Khan, Bacha Khan’s son and political heir, whose first wife tragically died five years prior. Early on in her married life, there was little sign of any future political career. But that changed in 1975, when Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto arrested her husband and banned the opposition National Awami Party. With her husband facing treason charges under the Hyderabad Tribunal, her stepson in jail and with many NAP leaders in exile or arrested, Nasim Wali was left to champion their cause (read a reference to one of the NAP’s alliances from 1971-1972 here).

Resurrecting her husband’s party under the new name of the National Democratic Party, the party recruited Sardar Sherbaz Mazari to formally lead the party. She campaigned nationally; her emotional speeches against Zulfikar Ali Bhutto started to attract large crowds. At this crucial time, in what would be a forerunner of her political pragmatism, she joined an alliance of religio-political parties united under the Pakistan National Alliance. Making history, she won her seat in the 1977 election amidst widespread allegations of rigging. In protest against the allegations, she sided with an opposition protest against the government. Here, at a crucial moment when the government was willing to call new elections, she hesitated. Some allege she delayed an agreement after receiving assurances from the military, while others say it was because of a lack of trust in Bhutto. Whatever the reason, the military soon took over in 1977, and in an attempt to appease the opposition, released her husband and many other political prisoners.

The Politics of Power

The second phase of her career started in the mid 1980s as the military began to withdraw from government (if not power) and the ANP was formed. By 1989, the party had split with a breakaway faction, first called the Qaumi Inqilabi Party and later Pakhtunkhwa Qaumi Party, siding with the PPP. This was followed by her husband Wali Khan’s defeat in the 1990 elections after which he retired from politics. She however won her own seat and took over as provincial head of the party.

Her political career was one of political success. She achieved the distinction of being the first woman directly elected to the provincial assembly. The party performed well in the 1993 and 1997 elections, both times forming coalition governments. More importantly, she reconciled with the military establishment and ruthlessly marginalised opponents, including Wali Khan’s close friend and party central president, Ajmal Khattak.

More importantly, she articulated a new vision of Pashtun nationalism radically different from the regional appeal of Bacha Khan or from her husband’s claim for national power within Pakistan. It was now politics within a province defined by the renaming of the province to Pakhtunkhwa and stopping the Kalabagh dam. She articulated this in an interview where she said, “I want an identity… I want a name change so that the Pakhtuns may be identified on the map of Pakistan.”

Within the party by contrast, her politics were defined by the concentration of power in her own family of the Hoti tribe of Mardan. The patronising of the new Pashtun business class helped finance her party, and her reconciliation with former ideological rivals the Pakistan Muslim League helped access the tools of state patronage.

A Family of Politics

Within the family, her daughter became the first female surgeon in the province, and her brother was elected MNA and went on in 1997 to become federal minister for communication. However, ruthlessness extended in other ways when she sidelined her stepson Asfandyar Wali Khan, while aggressively promoting her brother Azam Khan Hoti. According to a report in Dawn, at one stage Wali Khan had to intervene to ensure Asfandyar was even allocated a party ticket.

What Goes Around

Things had come full circle by 1999. The ANP-PML alliance had ended acrimoniously over the renaming of the province. Her brother was arrested on charges of corruption by the new Musharraf government. This was in turn followed the ANP’s rout in the 2002 elections at the hands of the religio-political alliance. Nasim Wali Khan was decisively defeated in her hometown. Finally, this was followed by a split between her and Asfandyar Wali Khan in which her brother sided with Asfandyar against her. This ultimately led to her ouster as party provincial president.

Besides withdrawing from active politics, she also faced personal tragedy: the death of her husband as well as the tragic death of her son, Sangeen Wali. This in turn was followed by her daughter narrowly surviving an attack on her life in Peshawar.

The party, on the other hand, won a historic victory in the 2008 elections. The ANP is on its way to becoming the third-largest party in the upcoming senate elections, and Nasim Wali Khan, for some unknown reason, decided to apply for one of the senate seats. In an irony of fate, sitting on the parliamentary board deciding her application were some of the people she had purged from the party 23 years earlier.

Perhaps, the ruthlessness shown in rejecting her application reflects another change in the party she had nurtured for so long. The Awami National Party may have rejected her in the final calculation but they accepted the politics of power as her legacy.