POLITICAL PARTIES, ETHNO-NATIONALISM AND NATIONAL INTEGRATION IN KHYBER PAKHTUNKHWA

Abstract

This paper examines how political parties in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa dealt with the ethnic and regional grievances of the province during the period 2010 and 2024, and what this meant for national integration. The study uses Relative Deprivation Theory as its main framework and Recognition Theory as a supplementary lens. This qualitative study relies mainly on election results, party manifestos, official records and press reports supported by a small number of semi-structured interviews with politicians and journalists, which were analysed through thematic analysis. The paper founded that parties carried only part of grievance of the province. The renaming of the province in 2010 met the long-standing demand of the Awami National Party for recognition of the Pashtun identity. However, it left the complaint of the province over its share of resources unsettled and created a new grievance among the Hindko-speaking population of Hazara Division. In the 2013 general election, most Pashtun voters moved to Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf because of its clear position on the war on terror rather than any appeal to ethnic identity. Similarly, in the newly merged tribal districts, voters in the 2019 elections preferred independent candidates and Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf over the older nationalist parties, while grievances raised by the Pashtun Tahaffuz Movement later found a party platform in the shape of National Democratic Movement (NDM). In Hazara Division, the demand for a separate province never became a strong party force, because the division itself is divided over it. The paper concludes that wider access to elections increased political inclusion but did not by itself produce national integration. When political parties failed to address grievances of the people, those frustrations turned into mass mobilization outside the party system.