WASHINGTON: Pashtun Tahaffuz Movement (PTM) leader and Member of National Assembly (MNA) Mohsin Dawar addressed academics and United States (US) Department officials at a round-table discussion earlier this week at the Washington DC-based think tank The Hudson Institute.
Dawar had been selected as a candidate in the State Department’s International Visitor Leadership Programme (IVLP).
Founded in 1961, the institute “challenges conventional thinking and helps manage strategic transitions to the future” by guiding “public policy makers and global leaders in government and business through a vigorous program of publications, conferences, policy briefings, and recommendations”.
Speaking at the roundtable conference, Dawar claimed that PTM had four demands connected with the persecution of Pashtuns, which are: “Extrajudicial killings should be stopped; those kept in custody without any due process should be released; landmines in the area be removed; the humiliation of families and individual Pashtuns at checkpoints be stopped.”
Answering a question pertaining to the movement’s presence on social media, Dawar asserted that PTM wouldn’t have been possible without social media, and it certainly wouldn’t have reached its present stature.
He also shared that the movement did not intend to align itself as a political group: “The goal of the movement is to remain a non-violent and peaceful pressure group. We have no plans to be a political group.”
