Refuting Pashtunistan and Creation of NWFP.

For Afghans (Pashtuns of Afghanistan) to say that Pakistan is a colonial settler project is to basically admit that their own Pashtun brothers are colonial settlers in the region of Peshawar, Swat, Bajaur and Dera Ismail Khan since the Turks and the British placed them there by displacing many Dardics and Punjabi Hindkowans from those lands.

How the British formed NWFP (now KPK) by separating northern areas of Punjab from Punjab, this is the first stage of dividing Punjab, second stage was in 1947 when east and west were divided by the Radcliffe line.

The Punjab in 1880 (included areas of the later North-West Frontier Province)

Map of the North-West Frontier Province and Kashmir from The Imperial Gazetteer of India (1907-1909)

Map of the North-West Frontier Province and neighbouring regions (National Geographic, 1946)

To all Afghans, show me a coin from the 12th century that says Afghanistan, guaranteed you won't find any.

NWFP was established on 9 November 1901 from the north-western districts of the Punjab, during the British Raj. After the creation of Pakistan, Pakistan continued with this name but a Pashtun Nationalist party, Awami National Party based in the province demanded that the province name be changed to "Pakhtunkhwa". Their logic behind that demand was that Punjabi people, Sindhi people and Baloch people have their provinces named after their ethnicities but that is not the case for Pashtun people. PML-N was ready to change the province's name by supporting the ruling PPP and ANP, in a constitutional amendment but wanted to name the province something other than which does not carry only the Pashtun identity in it as they argued that there were other communities living in the province especially the Hazarewals of the Hazara region who spoke Hindko dialect of Punjabi, thus the word Khyber was introduced with the name because it is the name of a major pass which connects Pakistan to Afghanistan.

This is a map of Punjab before 1901

DIALECTS & LANGUAGES SPOKEN IN PUNJAB - 1891
From the book, Census of India, 1891 Vol XIX The Punjab & its Feudatories Part 1, by E.D. Maclagan.

Peshawar, Mardan, Kohat, Bannu, Naushera, Marwat and Hazara were once part of Punjab. Yes the people there today are mostly Pashto speakers, including the Gujjars who still remain there also speak Pashto, hence why it's highlighted blue, by the time this map was made, Pashtuns had become the majority through migration from their Pakhtun region, Punjabis had become minority, the original Peshwari dialect of Punjabi in Peshawar became a minority. This map also include Mansera, which is now part of NWFP since 1901, but is still mostly speaks the Hindko dialect of Punjabi.

DIALECTS & LANGUAGES SPOKEN IN PUNJAB - 1891
From the book, Census of India, 1891 Vol XIX The Punjab & its Feudatories Part 1, by E.D. Maclagan.

Of course, Swat valley isn't shown on this map of Punjab as it was a separate Kingdom known as the Kingdom of Swat, yes it had Pashtuns, but also had Gujjars that actually ruled Swat like Akhund Abdul Ghaffur, famously known as Saidu Baba, who was the Gujjar ruler of Swat and had an army of Yusufzai Pashtuns as his allies, until the British took over, Swat was never a part of KPK (NWFP) or Afghanistan as Afghans would like to claim, neither was it ever annexed by the Durrani empire, KPK itself is a result British Geographical decisions in 1901 i.e. the formation of NWFP which also annexed the area of Chitral some time later and made it part of NWFP, Chitral till this day is majority non-pashtun with Khowar as primary language, regarding more on Swat, the Yusufzais there were never a majority, they only became the majority by assimilating the Swatis and driving the rest out, Safi tribe is one tribe of that region that was assimilated from being Dardic to being Pashtuns.

In Pre-Islamic times, Swat was a center of the Buddhist Gandhara kingdom, the DNA from ancient remains found in the region closely matches Gujjars, Awans and Khatris of Northern Punjab including other Northern Punjabis, and also Kashmiris, Pashtuns do also cluster and this is either due to some being assimilated Swatis or due to common ancestry from the Vedic era before some Gandharans migrated to Kandahar region.

The name Kandahar is the latinization of Gandhara, yes its true that Gandharans spread their presence towards the boundaries of Iran but ended up with a different language due to the linguistic influence of their direct neighbors, the Persians, and their Old Avestan language, hence a lineage split between the descendants of the Gandharans as a result of expansion and mixing with other groups such as the Parthians, Huns and Hephtalites.

More than a 100,000 Punjabi Awans live in different areas of KPK, each.

NWFP (North West Frontier Province)

The province covered an area of 70,709 km2 (27,301 sq mi), including much of the current Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province but excluding the Federally Administered Tribal Areas and the former princely states of Amb, Chitral, Dir, Phulra and Swat. Its capital was the city of Peshawar, and the province was composed of six divisions (Bannu, Dera Ismail Khan, Hazara, Kohat, Mardan, and Peshawar Division; Malakand was later added as the seventh division). Until 1947, the province was bordered by five princely states to the north, the minor states of the Gilgit Agency to the northeast, the province of West Punjab to the east and the province of Balochistan to the south. The Kingdom of Afghanistan lay to the northwest, with the Federally Administered Tribal Areas forming a buffer zone between the two.

The NWFP was a separate provincial entity to FATA (Federally Administered Tribal Areas), while the regions of Amb, Phulra, Dir, Swat and Chitral were separate princely states, until both became a part of what is now known as KPK in 2018. Present-day KPK is basically a combination of NWFP (Frontier districts of Punjab), Swat, Chitral and FATA (Pashtun and Dardic tribally-controlled districts), Present-day KPK is an inseparable part of Pakistan, recognized by the international community which also includes the Global South; except two neighboring nations who each want a part of Pakistan.