For the Pashtun people, questioning Pakistan Army’s role and pointing its misconduct in the tribal belt is to invite accusations of treason as the state did with PTM.

Pakistan’s relations with Afghanistan have plunged to their lowest point in years. The recurrent clashes across the Durand Line that divides the two countries are often framed as a dispute over the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), a Pashtun Islamist insurgent group which has become Achilles heel for the Pakistani state. But, beneath the surface of this conundrum lies a much older struggle that predates the Taliban and the war on terror. It is the decades long tension between Pashtun nationalism and a Punjabi-dominated Pakistani state.

The TTP is often described purely as an umbrella militant organisation. Yet it represents a fusion of Islamism and ethnic grievance and is a product of decades of marginalisation of the Pashtun heartland by a state that has alternated between military repression and strategic manipulation. To understand why the conflict refuses to end, one must revisit how Pakistan’s power structure was built on the exclusion of its largest ethnic periphery.

Pashtun nationalism did not begin with neither Afghan Taliban nor Pakistan Taliban. Its current incarnation dates to Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, or Bacha Khan, also known as the “Frontier Gandhi,” who led the non-violent Khudai Khidmatgar (“Servants of God”) movement in British India. Bacha Khan, as a staunch secularist as an ideological commitment opposed India’s religion-based partition of 1947. However, when partition became a fait accompli, he, and others in the tribal leadership, demanded that the Pashtuns be allowed the choice of creating their own Pashtunistan (the Bannu Resolution of 21 June 1947).

In the years that followed, Bacha Khan and his followers were vilified, jailed, and banned and their demands for provincial autonomy was branded as treason by the Pakistani state which increasingly became military dominated. This set the template for how the country’s overwhelmingly Punjabi-dominated ruling establishment would treat dissent from the peripheries: with suspicion, suppression, and militarisation.

Despite extreme suppression and oppression, the legacy of Bacha Khan’s peaceful struggle survives to this day through movements like the Pashtun Tahafuz Movement (PTM) and Awami National Party (ANP) by highlighting Pakistan Army’s misconduct through enforced disappearances, extrajudicial killings and sexual violence across the tribal belt.

The PTM’s rallies were filled not with insurgent slogans but with portraits of missing persons, chants for accountability, and the insistence that their blood be valued as much as any Punjabi. While PTM has been proscribed by the Pakistani state and its leaders like Manzoor Pashteen routinely silenced, yet their demands echo the same call made nearly eight decades ago which is that of dignity, rights, and an end to collective punishment.

If history began with exclusion, it was the Pakistani military that institutionalised control. The colonial-era Frontier Crimes Regulations (FCR) that represented a draconian legal code denying tribal residents due process remained in place as recent as 2018. For over seven decades, the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) were governed this FCR that granted local tribal lords with autonomy thereby treating people treated as subjects rather than citizens.

The tragedy of Pakistan’s Pashtuns is that they have been both the sword and the sacrifice of the state being deployed in its proxy wars and displaced in its peace. Their land has been used as a laboratory for proxy wars, their people as cannon fodder for strategic depth. The Pakistani military viewed these borderlands less as communities and more as a strategic buffer.

In the 1980s, during the U.S.-backed Afghan jihad against Soviet forces in Afghanistan, the Pashtun belt was turned into a staging ground for mujahideen recruitment and weapons smuggling. After 2001, it became a battleground again but this time for Pakistan’s ambiguous war on terror. While Islamabad allied with Washington, its intelligence services sheltered the Afghan Taliban, seeing them as a tool of regional influence.

Caught in the crossfire were ordinary Pashtuns. Between 2004 and 2024, according to various estimates including South Asian Terrorism Portal (SATP) and CRSS Annual reports, at least 20,000 Pashtun civilians have been killed in Pakistan Army’s anti-insurgency campaigns and militant violence between 2004 and 2024. Besides, over 4000 people were also killed in hundreds of American drone strikes greenlighted by Pakistan Army according to a report by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism.

Moreover, thousands of people were internally displaced, their homes flattened, family members disappeared, and entire villages across North and South Waziristan were razed under Pakistan Army’s counterterrorism operations like Rah-e-Rast (2009) and Zarb-e-Azab (2014). To this day, thousands remain unaccounted as victims of “enforced disappearances” with Pakistan military and its intelligence agencies as prime accused, with at least 3485 cases reported by the Missing Person’s Commission established by the Supreme Court.

As such, rather than peace, Pakistani state’s reliance on militarisation in the peripheries has only produced alienation. On ground, it reflects in the garrisoning of the Pashtun heartland with checkpoints dotting every artery and locals subjected to random searches and collective reprisals. A generation and two of Pashtuns have grown up knowing only checkpoints, recurrent curfews, and ever-present drones sounds and strikes.

If muscular policy of subjugation in their homeland was not enough, Pashtuns have long been cast as the “other” in Pakistan’s social imagination as ‘rough’ and ‘uncouth’ cousin to the so-called urbane Punjabi. This cultural stereotyping has been deeply ingrained in Pakistani cinema and literature with Pashtuns often portrayed as tribal, backward, and violent. Such characterisation has helped the state justify its decades of systemic exclusion of Pashtuns as well as normalise Pakistan Army’s misconduct.

This is also achieved by domination of the Punjabi elite within the politics and media of the country as well as the officer corps of its powerful army. While Punjab is Pakistan’s largest province by population, comprising 53 percent of its total population, it has a disproportionate share of senior military positions and federal bureaucratic positions with some estimates putting it above 70 percent In contrast, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, including FATA, has been grossly underrepresented in the corridors of power in Islamabad and Rawalpindi with less than 12 percent and 10 percent share in federal bureaucracy and officer corps of armed forces respectively.

The costs of this hierarchy are stark. KPK remains among Pakistan’s poorest provinces, with nearly 30 percent of the population enduring multidimensional poverty, which is nearly double that of Punjab. Literacy among women in former FATA tribal districts hovers below 15 percent, which is nearly three times less than KPK (39 percent) and four times lesser from women in Punjab (58 percent). Infrastructure spending per capita in KPK is a fraction of that in Punjab’s major cities. The region’s development budget has often been slashed to subsidize military operations or bailouts for state-owned enterprises concentrated in Punjab and Sindh.

Such disparities are not accidental function as the political architecture of a state that conflates security with ethnicity. For the Pashtun people, questioning Pakistan Army’s role and pointing its misconduct in the tribal belt is to invite accusations of treason as the state did with PTM. Even the merger of FATA into KPK in 2018 (25^th Amendment), which was hailed as a democratic milestone has changed little on the ground. At best, it remains an annexation on paper rather than empowerment in practice.

Perhaps the darkest face of this militarised policy of the state is the impunity with which Pakistan Army conducts itself across the Pashtun heartland. For Pashtuns, the state’s “war on terror” is simply a war on being who they are and their identity often conflated with extremism and militancy. Islamabad and Rawalpindi never seem to understand that the killing of a family member, an arbitrary arrest or an enforced disappearance and every other misconduct of its military only fuel resentment and rebellion.

Detestably, Pakistan’s Punjabi-centric political and military elite often view Pashtun nationalism as an existential threat with a fear that such calls for justice and accountability might evolve into secession. Yet it is not separatism the demand for equal citizenship that drives the new generation of Pashtuns.

Islamabad’s refusal to reckon with this sentiment carries peril. The more the state relies on coercion, the more it alienates the very population it claims its own. The Afghan frontier may remain under barbed wire and drones, but the deeper frontier of Pakistan’s powerful Punjabi core and its neglected peripheries continue to widen.

Nevertheless, if Pakistan is to find stability, it will need to must start by listening to its margins be it Pashtuns, Baloch, and Sindhis, among others. But that would mean an end to its current policy of militarisation, accountability of its past actions and to the human rights violations of its military, and importantly allowing Pashtun people shape their own governance than dictating it from the garrisons of Peshawar. Until the Pashtun heartland is treated not as a frontier to be controlled but as a homeland to be respected, Pakistan’s both internal and external wars will never truly end.

Disclaimer: Views expressed by writers in this section are their own and do not reflect Milli Chronicle’s point-of-view.

Pakistan has repeatedly weaponized the idea of “Ummah solidarity”—not as a moral or theological commitment, but as a bargaining chip in global diplomacy. 

Pakistan’s Army Chief, Field Marshal Asim Munir, has recently triggered global alarm by threatening that if pushed to the brink, Pakistan would “take half the world down,” explicitly naming India. Speaking in the U.S., he also hinted at missile strikes on Indian dams and economic assets, including Mukesh Ambani’s Jamnagar refinery.

India’s Ministry of External Affairs condemned the remarks as “nuclear sabre-rattling” and labelled Pakistan an “irresponsible nuclear state,” vowing not to yield to nuclear blackmail. Officials called it “regrettable” that such threats were made from the soil of a friendly third country.

Such bravado, however, is at odds with Pakistan’s historical pattern of opportunism and duplicity on the global stage — a track record that belies its self-portrayal as a principled actor. 

From its crypto-alliance with the United States during the war in Afghanistan, to betraying Iran by passing intelligence to Washington; from waging a silent war against its own Pashtun population through forced displacement and resource exploitation, to the mass expulsion of Afghan refugees; from its deafening silence on China’s repression of Uyghur Muslims, to suppressing Palestinian factions during Black September in Jordan; from covertly aligning with Israel in the Azerbaijan–Armenia conflict, to backing both Iran and Donald Trump — whom it bizarrely nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize — Pakistan’s foreign policy has often been a study in contradictions.

These contradictions reveal a nation untethered to any consistent moral compass or principled foreign policy. Pakistan epitomizes the adage: running with the hare and hunting with the hounds.

Pakistan’s Betrayal of Iran

Iranian commentators have long accused Islamabad of pursuing self-interest at Tehran’s expense. Following Pakistan’s June 2025 luncheon with U.S. President Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago, the government even announced its intention to recommend Trump for the 2026 Nobel Peace Prize — a surreal move given Trump’s record of hostility toward Iran.

Only two days later, the U.S. launched devastating bunker-buster strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities at Natanz, Isfahan, and Fordow. In a strange diplomatic twist, Pakistan publicly condemned the strikes and expressed “solidarity with the Islamic Republic of Iran,” even while maintaining private overtures to Trump.

Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam (Fazl), one of Pakistan’s largest religious parties, denounced the Nobel move as “morally indefensible.” Party chief Maulana Fazlur Rehman blasted it as an insult to victims of American aggression across the Muslim world.

The double-speak reflects a familiar pattern: Islamabad leveraging the “Ummah card” to appease domestic audiences, while pursuing pragmatic deals with Washington. Meanwhile, Iran continues to accuse Pakistan of harboring extremist groups like Jaish al-Adl, which launch deadly attacks on Iranian border guards from sanctuaries in Pakistan’s Balochistan province.

Pakistan’s Betrayal of the United States

Pakistan’s duplicity vis-à-vis Washington is not new—it is historical.

During the U.S.-led “War on Terror” after 2001, Pakistan allowed American forces to use its airbases while simultaneously sheltering and supporting jihadist proxies that targeted U.S. troops in Afghanistan. Billions of dollars in American aid poured into Islamabad, yet the ISI covertly facilitated the Taliban and the Haqqani Network.

The most damning episode came in 2011 when Osama Bin Laden was discovered living in Abbottabad, just a short distance from Pakistan’s premier military academy. The U.S. Navy SEAL raid that killed him exposed Islamabad’s double game.

Yet, in 2020, then Prime Minister Imran Khan openly called Bin Laden a “martyr” in Pakistan’s parliament. Former U.S. Secretaries of State Hillary Clinton and Mike Pompeo both condemned Islamabad’s duplicity. 

Clinton memorably said: “You can’t keep snakes in your backyard and expect them only to bite your neighbors.” Pompeo, in his 2023 memoir Never Give an Inch, recounted in detail how Pakistan undermined U.S. operations while pocketing aid.

By 2025, Pakistan had again drawn international ire by forcibly expelling more than a million Afghan refugees, many registered with the UNHCR. UN reports documented widespread abuses against returnees, particularly women and minorities, exposing the emptiness of Pakistan’s claims of “Ummah solidarity.”

Visit to the U.S.: War on Terror or War on Pashtuns?

Munir’s recent U.S. visit must also be understood in light of Pakistan’s decades-long militarization of its Pashtun belt. Under the guise of the “War on Terror,” Islamabad has waged a parallel war against its own Pashtun population, treating the tribal belt as both a buffer zone and an economic colony.

For years, Pakistan has deliberately kept low-intensity conflict simmering in the region to justify military control. Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have repeatedly documented mass arrests, extrajudicial killings, and the denial of due process, pointing to a systemic policy of securitization. 

By engineering insecurity, the state ensures that local communities accept a perpetual military presence and even foreign interference in the name of peace. The Pashtun Tahafuz Movement (PTM) has gone further, recording numerous cases in which civilian areas were bombed under the pretext of counterterrorism.

The cost for ordinary Pashtuns has been devastating. Entire villages have been burned, residents uprooted, and people pushed into economic marginalization — a process critics describe as deliberate demographic engineering. 

According to the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC), more than five million Pashtuns were displaced during military operations between 2004 and 2016, many of whom remain in limbo without adequate resettlement or compensation.

At the same time, the mineral-rich belt of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan has become a source of extraction rather than empowerment. Gold, copper, and lithium deposits — vital for the global energy transition — are siphoned off by military-linked conglomerates and foreign partners, while local communities continue to live in poverty. 

Reports from the Pakistan Institute of Development Economics (PIDE) note how extractive projects disproportionately benefit military and political elites, leaving indigenous populations excluded from any meaningful share of the wealth.

Munir’s anti-India rhetoric in Washington thus masks a deeper agenda: securing U.S. geopolitical indulgence while sustaining the internal war economy on Pashtun soil.

Selective Outrage: Uyghurs Ignored, Palestinians Betrayed

Pakistan’s “principled” defense of Muslim causes unravels most starkly when examined through its selective outrage. Nowhere is this clearer than in its silence on China’s persecution of Uyghur Muslims and its contradictory stance on Palestine. Despite Beijing’s demolition of mosques, erasure of Islamic culture, and incarceration of more than a million Uyghurs in Xinjiang camps, Pakistan’s leadership has never once raised the issue on international platforms. 

When pressed in 2020 on why he vocally condemned India’s actions in Kashmir but remained mute on China’s atrocities in Xinjiang, then Prime Minister Imran Khan candidly admitted: “China has been a great friend… we do talk about things with China privately, not publicly.” The remark underscored that Islamabad’s so-called “Ummah solidarity” is less moral conviction than transactional diplomacy.

The same duplicity marks its approach to Palestine. For decades, Pakistan has claimed to be the staunchest defender of the Palestinian cause, even stamping its passports with the phrase: valid for all countries except Israel. 

Yet its actions tell a different story. During Black September in 1970, Pakistani General Zia-ul-Haq, then stationed in Jordan, advised Jordanian forces during their bloody crackdown on Palestinian factions. Between 3,000 and 5,000 Palestinians were killed, with more than 25,000 displaced — a massacre rarely acknowledged in Pakistani discourse.

Fast forward to 2020, and Pakistan stood with Turkey in backing Azerbaijan during its war against Armenia, even as Israel supplied Baku with drones and precision munitions. The result was an effective alignment of Pakistan, Turkey, and Israel — a triangular cooperation that starkly contradicted Islamabad’s anti-Israel rhetoric.

What It All Means

Pakistan has repeatedly weaponized the idea of “Ummah solidarity”—not as a moral or theological commitment, but as a bargaining chip in global diplomacy. 

Its foreign policy choices reveal a pattern: alliance with the U.S. while sponsoring its enemies; posturing as Iran’s partner while sheltering anti-Iran militants; waving the Palestinian flag while aiding Israel’s allies; condemning India while staying mute on China’s genocide against Muslims.

This is not a strategy. It is duplicity dressed up as ideology.

Pakistan continues to run with the West while hunting with the Ummah—a game that fools no one and secures nothing lasting.