Islamists want Pakistan province renamed "Afghania"

By Zeeshan Haider

ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - An Islamic alliance ruling Pakistan's North West Frontier Province bordering Afghanistan has proposed changing the region's name to "Afghania", a provincial minister said on Wednesday.

The NWFP government's request to the federal government in Islamabad is likely to rekindle an old debate over the name of the region dominated by ethnic Pashtuns, who live on both sides of the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan.

"Constitutionally there is no bar on us to rename the province on our own but we want to resolve this issue in an amicable manner," Malik Zafar Azam, NWFP's law minister, told Reuters.

He said the provincial government had conducted a survey to find an alternative name for the region, designated North West Frontier Province since the days of the British Raj in pre-partition India, and most people favored "Afghania".

"We have firmed up our proposal and plan to put it before the federal government's inter-provincial coordination committee in its next meeting."

Central government officials were unavailable for comment.

Pashtun nationalists have long demanded the old colonial name be changed as it only indicates a geographical location rather than the ethnicity of its inhabitants, as in the other three Pakistan provinces -- Punjab for Punjabis, Sindh for Sindhis and Baluchistan for Baluchis.

The nationalists had proposed "Pakhtunkhwa" as the new name for the province after its Pashtun, or Pakhtun, population, but the central government is fearful it would revive old differences with Afghanistan over the Pashtun territory, known as Pashtoonistan, straddling both sides of the border.