WHEN KP CM Gandapur says Kurram’s problem is a conflict between two groups and not militancy, he has got blinkers on. Either that, or he is deliberately hoodwinking a nation that needs an NOC to enter Kurram (within which Parachinar remains strictly off-limits) to hear what people there actually have to say. Their words debunk the rulers’ drivel, exposing the insincerity of the state and how blind it is to the suffering of those whose lives and livelihoods it has imperilled through its policies. The authorities, meanwhile, hide their incompetence by weaving even more falsehoods into their intricate web of lies.

Bloodshed in Kurram is less about infighting between the ‘two groups’ and more about what the locals describe as the ‘hidden hand’, by which they mean militants — including allegedly state-supported operatives — ‘inflaming’ and ‘manipulating’ the distrust between them. Anyone from the long-suffering Sunni and Shia communities in Sada or Parachinar, tired of violence and who has an objective view, would tell you so. Like Israel that denies the 75-year history of Palestinian occupation to justify its massacres in Gaza, the powers obfuscate the real origins of Kurram’s troubles. The irony that Palestine serves as a simile for Parachinar should not be lost on anyone, nor the equivalence of children dying in that picturesque hell of hunger and disease in sub-zero temperatures.

History, both recent and past, gives the lie to official versions. It tells us that Kurram’s problem is militancy — militancy instigated and perpetuated in the tribal districts by both state and anti-state elements in the cauldron of sectarianism, ‘strategic depth’, Afghan ‘jihad’, and the so-called war on terror. While the rest of the tribal districts have gone the way of dominoes in shadowy wars, Kurram poses a singular problem — the strategic Shia-dominated Parachinar has resisted the Taliban, in whose ranks stand sectarian militants, created in the wake of the Iran-Saudi conflict in the 1980s. The last time Parachinar resisted them, it was held under siege from 2007-2011.

A truth and reconciliation initiative is needed.

Back then, the Taliban, alongside the Haqqanis, who were increasingly targeted by US drones in North Waziristan, needed an alternative ingress into Afghanistan. Neighbouring Kurram — with Parachinar the closest route to Kabul — touching several provinces in Afghanistan, was a convenient choice. To force the Shia population into submission, they closed off the lifeline to Parachinar — the Thal-Parachinar road. With that trauma still fresh, it is no surprise that a seemingly sectarian state, with its concerning treatment of sects and faith groups, faces a trust deficit when it asks Kurram to deweaponise. Especially when the state has done little to protect other tribal districts from militants, despite deweaponisation, displacements and decades of military operations.

Fear and mistrust of the authorities deepen when a militant group like the banned TTP, with a sectarian outlook, as established during the 2007-2011 siege, issues a statement offering to ‘play a role’ in settling the conflict in Kurram. It echoes the 2008 Murree Accord extracted under duress from a desperate, besieged population, under the influence of the Haqqanis who wanted their road to Afghanistan through Kurram. More than a decade later, that accord has delivered little in terms of peace. The wilds of central Kurram remain a nest for militants, suggesting that peace, which could only be ensured through ‘de-militantisation’ and demilitarisation, never was an objective.

As the official jirga dithers and dictates its terms, as roads and parts of Kurram remain under siege by militants, as children die and people take to rationing salt and flour, Parachinar’s population asks — as, indeed, the entire Pakhtun border belt should — why it has seen little but bloodshed even after the accord; for it is a Pakhtun head that is harvested in this saga of beheadings, no matter what sect. Who, they ask, will protect them if they relinquish the right to protect themselves? Can the people trust the authorities that have let them down time and again despite assurances — verbal, legal, and constitutional?

The solution to Kurram’s problem is not in more lies but hard truths. It requires a truth and reconciliation initiative to address the deep-rooted mistrust among communities — tribal and sectarian — and between citizens and the state. Deep and sincere introspection by the state and its auxiliaries to reverse the decades of pro-war, anti-people policies and a pledge to no more imperil the life and well-being of the many for the sake of a few and deliver earnestly on the social contract with the citizens, is needed. Kurram and, indeed, the rest of Pakistan, does not need this dance of death with deadly forces at home and abroad.

The writer is a journalist based in Peshawar.

Published in Dawn, December 28th, 2024