New Delhi: After coming under fire from activists in both Pakistan and Afghanistan, including Nobel Peace Prize winner Malala Yousafzai’s father, Pakistan’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations (UN) Munir Akram on Friday apologised for his remarks on Pashtun culture.
“My apologies for the hurt caused by my comments at the humanitarian briefing on Afghanistan. I misspoke and my words did not accurately reflect Pakistan’s position (sic),” he said.
The ambassador further clarified that he has “deep respect” for Pashtun culture and denying women and girls access to education is “neither Islamic nor Pashtun culture”.
Earlier on Wednesday, during a briefing at the UN in New York, Akram had said restrictions imposed on women’s education by the Taliban-led Afghan government stem not so much from religious factors but from the country’s Pashtun culture.
“The restrictions that have been put by the Afghan interim government, flow not so much from a religious perspective as from a peculiar cultural perspective of the Pashtun culture, which requires women to be kept at home,” he said at the briefing.
“And this is a peculiar, distinctive cultural reality of Afghanistan which has not changed for hundreds of years,” he added.
Pashtuns, also known as Pakhtuns or Pathans, are the predominant ethnic group in Afghanistan. There are also a large number of Pashtuns in Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, which shares a border with Afghanistan.
This is not the first time Akram has courted controversy. In 2008, he was dismissed from the post of UN Permanent Representative by former Pakistan president Asif Ali Zardari due to a disagreement over whether to take up the case of Benazir Bhutto’s murder with the UN.
Earlier in 2002, he was accused of domestic violence by his then girlfriend in the US.
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‘Disgusting and disgraceful’
Akram drew flak from a host of human rights activists in Afghanistan and Pakistan, who staunchly defended Pashtun culture.
Malala Yousafzai’s father and education activist, Ziauddin, called the ambassador’s remarks “disgusting and disgraceful”.
“You must apologise to 50 million Pakhtuns of Pakistan by misrepresenting and humiliating them at the UN,” he said in a tweet.
Meanwhile Pakistani activists like Usama Khilji, Director of Bolo Bhi — a non-profit geared towards advocacy, policy and research in Pakistan — called Akram’s remarks “embarrassing”.
Other Pakistani officials have attracted criticism for comments about Pashtuns in the past. In 2021, former Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan had erroneously referred to the Haqqani network, a terrorist organisation in Afghanistan, as a Pashtun tribe.
(Edited by Anumeha Saxena)
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