KABUL: Thousands of people attended a peace rally of the Pashtun Tahafuz Movement (PTM) held on Sunday in Karachi city, Pakistan, urging for an end to targeted assassinations and wars on the Pakhtun land on both sides of the Durand Line. 

The Pashtun Tahaffuz Movement (PTM) organized the landmark rally, participated by its leaders and thousands of other activists residing in Sohrab Ghat, Karachi.

Mohsin Dawar, Ali Wazir, Abdullah Nangyal, and other leaders and the movement’s chief, Manzoor Pashtun, appeared and addressed the rally, promising to continue fighting for the Pashtun rights.

“Pashtuns are peace-loving people. They’re not terrorists, but they are victims of terrorism,” Pashteen said. 

“The terrorists are the ones who have killed Pashtuns on both sides of the Durand Line,” he said without naming anyone, adding that hundreds of thousands of Pashtuns had been killed across Afghanistan.

He asked the Pashtuns of both sides of the Durand Line to show unity. “Peace at home and abroad is our goal. Unless there is peace in Afghanistan, there will be no peace in Pakistan.”

Mohsin Dawar, on his part, questioned Pakistan’s summoning of ‘Afghan war criminals’ as intra-Afghan talks in Doha were trying to draw an end line to the decades-long war in the country. “Quetta and Waziristan councils are still functional. The generals and policymakers should know that as long as the PTM is there, your policy will not work,” Mohsin Dawar told the rally. 

This inclusive rally comes as the spiking violence in Afghanistan takes many lives amid some relative progress in the Afghan peace talks.