Militant attacks in Pakistan’s northwest have plagued the region for years, leading to tensions between some of the region’s civilian leaders and the Pakistani military.
Last month, the military announced the Azm-e-Istehkam or “Resolve for Stability” offensive would be an operation that cracks down on militants, but after a decade of similar interventions, many residents in the region are wary.
This week, a man recorded a video while standing next to debris from a girls school that militants blew up Monday night in a small village in the North Waziristan district in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. He lamented how violent the province has become, especially compared with other, more peaceful parts of Pakistan.
“We never heard that a school was blown up in Punjab,” Pakistan’s most populous province and home to the majority of the country’s armed forces, he said.
Mohsin Dawar, the former chairman of the foreign affairs committee in Pakistan’s lower house, posted video of the destroyed school on the X platform with a comment, “The state stands by, complicit in the destruction.”
Monday’s destruction of the girls school was not unusual. Last week there were attacks on police stations, a hospital and an army base, all in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, a province about the same size as Iceland or South Korea.
After years of violence, the local Pashtun population is questioning why peace has not returned to the border region despite the withdrawal of U.S.-led forces from neighboring Afghanistan.
The ongoing militant attacks have boosted support for a local rights movement, the Pashtun Tahaffuz Movement, which is leading a series of mass peace rallies aimed at holding Pakistan’s military accountable for its track record in combating terrorism.
The group is the major voice opposing the government’s plan to launch another military operation in the region to try to drive out militants and end the attacks.
The prospect of another military offensive has drawn opposition from residents, who remember the large-scale displacements that happened when the military launched offensives twice before in the last decade.
Army spokesperson Lieutenant General Ahmad Sharif on Monday blamed groups who oppose the new offensive for allegedly trying to sabotage the operation with a disinformation campaign.
He insisted the proposed Azm-e-Istehkam is aimed at destroying militant groups operating in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Baluchistan, two provinces that border Afghanistan, Iran and the strategic Arabian Sea, and also host several major Chinese-backed development projects.
Murad Ali, an academic at Malakand University in the nearby Swat Valley, says the region’s history of military offensives has left many skeptical of the army’s plans.
“It is a fact that [the] military also suffered in terms of sweat and blood in [the] fight against militants," Ali said, but many in the Pashtun population doubt the capability of the military to eradicate militancy or suspect it is an "accomplice in perpetrating this hide and seek with ‘good’ and ‘bad’ Taliban.”
The army spokesman said security forces have lost 137 soldiers so far, including officers, in 2024 in the fight against militants.
Ahmad Kundi, an elected member of Pakhtunkhwa’s regional assembly, says over the years, the national government has sent a mixed message about how to combat militancy.
“One prime minister said negotiations with militants was a way forward and another prime minister opts for military operations, though it didn’t deliver in the past,” Kundi said.
Hamid Ullah in Peshawar contributed to this report.
