LAKKI MARWAT, June 4: The provincial president of the Awami National Party, Afrasayab Khattak, has called upon Pakhtuns to forge unity in their ranks in order to foil conspiracies to turn their land into a battleground.

He was addressing two separate functions here on Monday — one a convention of party workers held at the Begukhel House and the other organised by lawyers at the Lakki District Bar Association building.

Mr Khattak said that areas on both sides of the Durand Line, including the Waziristan Agency, had been converted into battlefields in the name of war against terror.

He urged Pakhtuns to assemble under the ANP’s banner and said that if they did not shun differences, turmoil in tribal areas would spill over into the ‘settled’ areas bordering the troubled areas.

“Why is it that the phenomenon of militancy is encountered in the Pakhtun areas only, while there is peace in areas where Uzbeks, Tajiks, Hazaras and other tribes live?” he asked, adding that Pakhtuns were being eliminated in the name of war against terror.

Addressing the function organised by the legal community, he praised them for launching the struggle for the supremacy of the constitution and independence of the judiciary.

He said: “Military is not a state within a state but it is the state itself.” Mr Khattak said that military intervention in state affairs could be gauged from the fact that the judiciary was still working under the Provisional Constitution Order.

Terming the assemblies ineffective, he said that the parliament and the executive were both ‘occupied’ by the military bureaucracy.

Blaming the MQM, federal government and President Gen Pervez Musharraf for the May 12 carnage in Karachi, he assured his party workers that the ANP would support the lawyers’ struggle for the restoration of real democracy and sanctity of the judiciary.

A unanimous resolution was adopted at the district bar event in which participants expressed their concern over imposition of restrictions on the electronic media and condemned threats received by journalists.

On the occasion president of the Lakki Marwat Bar Mohammad Yaqoob, who is also a PML-N leader, announced joining the ANP along with his supporters and family members.