ISLAMABAD – Militants in Pakistan’s volatile Waziristan region have escalated attacks on educational institutions just days before the end of 2025.

On Thursday, unidentified assailants detonated explosives at the Government Primary School in the Khushhali area of Ayaz Kot village in North Waziristan. According to reports, the attack obliterated much of the building and left more than 600 students without a classroom.

No group has claimed responsibility so far.

The attack follows a broader pattern of violence in the former tribal district, where armed groups have targeted schools amid a rise in terror attacks.

In December of last year, the United Nations special rapporteurs wrote a letter to the government of Pakistan, voicing their concerns over militant assaults on girls’ schools in the country.

In the letter, Farida Shaheed, special rapporteur on the right to education; Reem Alsalem, special rapporteur on violence against women and girls; and Laura Nyirinkindi, chair-rapporteur of the Working Group on discrimination against women and girls, called on the government of Pakistan to protect the fundamental right of women and girls to receive a safe and secure education.

“We are troubled by the persistent terrorist attacks targeting girls’ schools by groups opposing the education of women and girls. While all attacks on schools are reprehensible, those specifically aimed at girls’ institutions discourage women and girls from pursuing education, thereby reinforcing discrimination and societal inequalities,” the letter read.

Further, they requested information from the government regarding the investigations and actions being taken to safeguard girls’ schools in Waziristan.

Militants have bombed or burned girls’ schools in both North and South Waziristan, often citing opposition to female education.

Parents and rights advocates say the latest school bombing undermines efforts to expand schooling in a region where access to education, especially for girls, remains limited.

“This school was the only beacon of hope for our children,” one local elder was quoted as saying by Dawn, lamenting how the blast threatens young students’ futures.

Security challenges persist across Pakistan’s northwest, with Pakistani forces conducting counter-terror operations even as violence affects civilian life.

The rise in school attacks adds to mounting concerns about safety and the ability of the state to protect basic services in former conflict zones. Observers note that attacks on schools resonate widely in Pakistan, evoking memories of past high-profile assaults on educational institutions by extremists.

Fariha Ijaz

The writer is an Assistant Editor at Dissent Today, focusing on extremism and political violence.

The post 600 Students Affected As Blast Destroys Government School in Waziristan appeared first on Dissent Today.

When Mohsin Dawar narrowly escaped an elaborate assassination attempt in which his vehicle was sprayed with more than 60 bullets about a month before the 2024 general elections, he saw no option but to slow down his campaign. He was seeking re-election to a National Assembly seat from his hometown of North Waziristan — a restive tribal district of Pakistan’s Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province that borders Afghanistan and is one of the areas in the country worst affected by Taliban militancy and the war on terror.

On the morning of Jan. 3, Dawar’s corner meetings planned in the village of Tappi, North Waziristan, had to be abruptly cancelled when his vehicle came under attack from around 15 assailants from the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP). He survived the attack because the vehicle was armoured, but the attackers — determined to get him — launched another attack as more militants joined in from across Waziristan.

As Dawar was whisked away to safety at a home in the village, his private security and the police guarding his convoy sought help from the Pakistan Army to fight the attackers. But they received no response or assistance. Despite this, they continued to engage the militants and were able to drive them away after 45 minutes of violent clashes involving live ammunition and heavy weapons. 

“It was a miracle I survived that attack,” Dawar told Dissent Today in a phone interview, saying that his supporters, people from his tribe, and the police were on their own against the militants, with no assistance from the military. After this near-death experience, he had to end his participation in campaign events due to security concerns, relying on his party colleagues and supporters to convey his campaign message.

Dawar, who heads the progressive National Democratic Movement (NDM) that he founded in 2021 along with a group of secular Pashtun politicians, has been vocal against the resurgence of Taliban terrorism in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa during his time in the National Assembly from 2018 to 2023. During an in-camera meeting of the parliament’s National Security Committee held in 2022 to discuss the rise in terrorism in the province, Dawar was reportedly the only member to challenge then-Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) chief Faiz Hameed about the military’s decision to negotiate with the Taliban.

Even before he began his 2024 election campaign, he heard threats and warnings that the Taliban wanted to target him. Following the attack in Waziristan, personnel from the security agencies warned him that this time the militants had sent a suicide bomber who was roaming around his chamber in the town of Miranshah, disguised as one of his many guests and waiting to hug him.

Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa has a bloody history of election violence, with candidates and representatives of secular parties being attacked by militants in the lead up to the polls. Like a number of other anti-Taliban candidates in the province, Dawar had to go to the polls amid this wave of fear, but he and his followers remained determined not to end the campaign.

The former lawmaker could not stay in one city for more than three days and would travel from Waziristan to Peshawar to Islamabad and back, just to thwart another potential assassination attempt. “Due to this, there was virtually no election campaign,” Dawar said, adding that his supporters remained on the ground, but it was hard for the party to counter the opponents’ narrative because of his absence from campaign activities.

These threats, however, were not the only hurdle in their way. Just weeks before the elections, the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) altered the electoral scheme in Waziristan, moving 56 polling stations from areas that Dawar believed were his strongholds to less accessible locations. The changes were made at the request of the Islamist Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam (JUI-F), one of Dawar’s main opponents, whose candidate would later be declared the winner in this constituency. 

Most of these polling stations were moved to properties owned by or in use by members or leaders of the JUI-F, which Dawar and his supporters feared could be used as leverage against them.

The JUI-F’s request to change these polling stations was initially rejected, but the election officials overseeing the process later accepted the demand abruptly. Dawar says his sources in the civil administration informed him that the relevant officials had to approve the application after being pressured to do so by military officials.

The NDM wrote applications to the district returning officer and the ECP, expressing concerns over this change, but received no response.

Despite this series of setbacks, the newly formed NDM had fielded 17 candidates for national and provincial assembly seats and was eager to navigate its first general election. Dawar said the party had conducted multiple training sessions for its polling agents to thwart rigging attempts. “We considered every scenario [of electoral rigging] and trained our polling agents accordingly.”

But Election Day on Feb. 8 arrived with yet another act of terror: a suicide attack targeting NDM’s three female polling agents in the same village where Dawar had earlier survived an assassination attempt. Although the women were not physically injured, the trauma left them unconscious, forcing them to abandon their duties. 

Dawar later heard reports that the Taliban had taken over some polling stations in the village. “We wrote to the ECP about this attack on our polling agents and the militants taking control of the polling stations, but we did not hear back,” he said. 

As unofficial election results began to emerge, reports surfaced that a Returning Officer (RO) — the main official responsible for consolidating results — was tampering with votes in the constituency and increasing the JUI-F’s count. Dawar went to the RO’s office located in the Miranshah cantonment area and confronted him with information he had received about the tampering. “The RO denied altering the results. But he later disappeared, and we could not find him all day,” Dawar says. The RO’s mysterious disappearance led to unusual delays in the counting process.

Dawar and other candidates stayed the night at the building, waiting to receive an update. On the night of Feb. 9, they were informed that the pending results from the Mir Ali district wouldn’t be received until the next day. Since the counting was delayed until then, candidates were asked to leave the office and return the following morning. At the time they left the RO’s office that night, Dawar was leading by more than 5,000 votes.

But they woke up next morning to a hurriedly issued notification from the ECP for the provincial assembly seat of PK-103, where a candidate who had been trailing by a significant number of votes since the voting day, was declared the winner.

“That’s when we realized they were completely distorting the results,” Dawar says.

Two days before the election, Dawar had issued a video message predicting that election officers may change the final results on Form 45, a crucial document used in Pakistan’s post-electoral process, which discloses the outcomes of the voting procedure at a particular polling place.

“That’s exactly what they later did to us and many other candidates across Pakistan,” he says.

When Dawar and his supporters arrived at the RO’s office in Cantonment area once again that morning, they were stopped at the gate, which was sealed by security forces. 

According to Pakistan’s election laws, candidates and their polling agents are entitled to be present at the location where votes are being counted and gathered. But no candidates were being allowed to enter the premises, in violation of the law.

After being denied entry, Dawar and his supporters began a protest outside the building, demanding access to the RO’s office. “Our concern was that our mandate was being stolen inside,” Dawar said.

As the protesters marched toward the RO’s office, chanting slogans, security forces stationed at the gate suddenly opened fire on them. Dawar was the first to be hit, receiving two bullets in his right leg. Three of his supporters died on the spot from the gunfire, while another succumbed to his injuries at a hospital. 15 other protestors were injured. 

Dawar was rushed to a nearby hospital in Waziristan. As he received treatment for his bullet wounds at the hospital, a candidate from the JUI-F was announced the winner from the constituency. 

Pakistan’s mainstream media conducted marathon transmissions covering the elections, but this incident of election violence targeting a former parliamentarian barely registered in the mainstream media. On the contrary, sections of the media reported it as an attack on the Pakistani military, airing misleading claims from government officials that Dawar’s supporters had attacked security forces and injured policemen.

Miranshah district administration officials had claimed at the time that Dawar’s supporters tried to force their way into the building and injured policemen in the process. However, according to two Waziristan-based reporters Dissent Today spoke to, the local police denied that their personnel were killed or injured in the incident, disputing the official version that held the protesters responsible.

Then-interim Prime Minister Anwaar Kakar repeated these accusations during a media briefing, and most media outlets reported the questionable official version, which cleared the security forces of responsibility for opening fire at the protest.

“I did not expect them to shoot,” Dawar said, adding that he wouldn’t have staged a protest and endangered his supporters’ lives if he had known the security forces would open fire on them.

Three of the men killed in the gunfire were under 30 years of age, while one was in his late 40s.

After initial treatment in Waziristan, Dawar was moved to a hospital in Peshawar for better medical care, where he remained under treatment for four days. During this time, no mainstream politician — including those who were once his allies in the Pakistan Democratic Movement — reached out to him to inquire about his health. Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, who called him to ask for details about the incident, was the only exception.

A year after this incident, no FIR has been registered for the killing of the four protesters, as authorities rejected Dawar’s application for a case and registered a counter FIR against him and his supporters in response. Their complaint before the election tribunal regarding alleged rigging in the constituency has not been heard either and continues to face delays.

Dawar says he had expected to face hurdles during the election but had not anticipated that the establishment would go to such lengths to keep him away from Parliament. 

His sources among security agencies often tell him that the main reason he is unacceptable to the powers that be is his stance against the Taliban. “Many political forces in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa chose to accept the Taliban as a reality after they gained ground in the province,” Dawar says, but adds that his party will never accept the militant group’s presence in the region.

“We are not willing to compromise on any part of our narrative,” he says.

• Additional reporting by Rai Bhittani in North Waziristan.

Ailia Zehra

The writer is a journalist and the Founding Editor of Dissent Today. She covers politics, human rights, and religious extremism. She tweets at @AiliaZehra.

The post A Year After Elections, Ex-Waziristan Parliamentarian Unable to Find Justice for Fallen Comrades appeared first on Dissent Today.

The assailants were reportedly armed with both light and heavy weaponry. The attack took place late Wednesday night.

According to police reports, they took the four officers hostage and moved them to an undisclosed location.

Authorities have confirmed that four officers are currently unaccounted for and stated that an investigation has been initiated regarding the incident.

The missing officers have been identified as Akbar, Jan Mohammad, Sultan, and Naseeb.

Security forces have launched a search operation in the area to find the missing officers and apprehend those responsible for the attack.

Local residents have been increasingly troubled by the deteriorating security conditions in Waziristan over the past year. This incident has led to a new wave of fear in the restive South Waziristan districts.

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The provincial government confirmed the safe recovery of the judge.

Marwat had said in the video that the Taliban had abducted him, adding, “There is a war going on. It is a jungle.” He had also stated that his release hinged on the acceptance of the militants’ demands.

The First Information Report (FIR) into the incident cited Section 7 of the Anti-Terrorism Act and other relevant laws and was registered by the Counter Terrorism Department (CTD). The driver of the judge, Sher Ali Khan Mehsud, reported in the FIR that they were traveling to D.I. Khan from Tank when a group of 25 to 30 armed individuals intercepted their car at Garah Mohabbat Morr and opened fire on the vehicle, forcing it to stop.

The report added that the judge was in pants and a shirt, but the abductors took out a traditional shalwar kameez suit from the car for him to wear. They then set the car on fire.

The abductors instructed the driver to inform the authorities that they would release the judge if their demands regarding their jailed relatives were met, with a warning of severe consequences otherwise. The kidnappers ultimately took the judge away on a motorcycle.

The security situation in the KP province has been deteriorating for the past few months. In January, former lawmaker Mohsin Dawar survived an assassination attempt while campaigning for the February 8 elections. Later, he was injured in a gun attack in Waziristan two days after the election, while protesting alleged rigging and delayed election results.

On April 22, security forces claimed to have killed 11 militants in raids on their hideouts in the volatile in D.I. Khan and North Waziristan.

News Desk

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The post Waziristan Judge Reportedly Abducted By Taliban Returns Home appeared first on Dissent Today.

According to reports, 11-year-old Sher Ali was killed in a landmine blast yesterday.

Protesters are staging a sit-in along with the dead body of the boy, demanding to demine the region.

ہمارے وطن میں لینڈ مائنز کی اس فصل کو کسی اور نے بویا جب کے کاٹ ہمارے بچے رہے ہیں۔
کل لینڈ مائن دھماکے میں شیر علی نامی شہید بچے کی لاش سمت دھرنا شروع ہو گیا ہے اور حکومت سے لینڈ مائنز کی صفائی کا مطالبہ کر رہے ہیں۔
رابطہ نمبر
03310493085#DemineExFATA pic.twitter.com/dyGcSxNErA

— Alam Zaib Mahsud (@AlamZaibPK) April 17, 2023

In 2017, Pakistan reported the highest number of casualties in the world due to landmine explosions, mostly in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, as the country continues to hold one of the biggest stockpiles of landmines in the world, despite human rights activists protesting it.

A large number of landmines in the country are remnants of the war on terrorism. Pakistan has also used landmines on its borders due to conflicts with India, while non-state actors have also planted landmines.

Innocent civilians and mostly children suffer the most due to landmine explosions.

In February this year, at least two children were wounded when a landmine exploded in Mir Ali, a tehsil in North Waziristan in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. 14-year-old Mohsin Ahmed and 10-year-old Amir Aziz were playing near Al-Quresh Petrol Pump when the landmine exploded due to which both the children were critically injured.

News Desk

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After the attack on the 2014 Army Public School in Peshawar in which the TTP claimed responsibility for killing around 149 people including 132 schoolchildren, he shamelessly sat down with the then PML-N government – though he lacked a shred of regret – and the regime at that time came up with the National Action Plan to deal with terrorism and extremism, but it was never implemented.

Earlier this month, thousands of locals staged a protest sit-in in South Waziristan’s Wana area against the rising terrorism in the tribal areas. Similar anti-Taliban demonstrations have been held in various other parts of KP.

MNA from North Waziristan Mohsin Dawar, the National Democratic Movement (NDM) chief, said in a tweet that the Pashtuns of South Waziristan had come out in large numbers in Wana to protest against terrorism “and Talibanisation in our areas”.

“Our people refuse to be used as cannon fodder and scapegoats in the new great game being imposed on the region,” he added.

Imran Khan, as the chief of the party that rules the province, did not even bother to speak to the protestors. Perhaps he did not wish to anger the TTP, which he has been backing for so many years.

Imran is also responsible for our economic woes. He should have gone to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) as soon as he came to power. But being an arrogant egomaniac, he instead relied on overseas Pakistanis and ‘friendly countries’ to make things work.

The Pakistani diaspora sent him a few thousand bucks, and the aid we received from friendly countries was not enough. He eventually did go to the IMF, and after seeing that Pakistan had exhausted all its resources, he inked a loan pact with the country with very harsh conditions. So strict that the PTI government could not implement them.

Imran’s party had around four years to rule compared with the current rulers who have not even completed one full year in power. But Imran Khan still has the gall to blame them for ‘his’ fiscal mess.

Imran is also indirectly responsible for the ongoing flour crisis, as it was his government in Punjab that miscalculated the quantity of wheat that needed to be imported.

Besides, there has been an uptick in extremism and militancy in Punjab ever since the PTI teamed up with the Pakistan Muslim League – Q (PML-Q) to come into power in the province. The recent Taliban attacks in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa and Punjab, the desecration of Ahmadi ‘worship places’ as well as the changes in the words of the nikkahnama to single out the already persecuted community and the incident wherein a fanatic in Narowal confessed to killing a (Muslim) man after accusing him of committing “Shirk” (the sin of idolatry or polytheism) are just a few examples of this growing extremism.

Imran has recently forced the Punjab and Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa chief ministers to dissolve the provincial assemblies saying that snap polls are an elixir to the financial woes. But if you ask him how, he will be as clueless as he was back in 2008. No plan at all, yet his blind supporters can’t see that. Perhaps, the blame lies with our textbooks that are filled with lies.

Imran is willing to sacrifice Pakistan for the sake of his insatiable ego. He also wanted to return to the National Assembly after making his members resign in the wake of his ouster from power in April last year. However, the NA speaker has accepted the resignations of only 35 PTI MNAs – just about enough to ensure that Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif wins the trust vote that Imran was hoping he would take.

To clarify, I am neither a “jiyala, nor a ‘patwari” but a neutral journalist, who writes things as he sees them.

Bilal Farooqi

The writer is a Karachi-based journalist.

The post Imran Khan’s Links To Growing Extremism In Pakistan appeared first on Dissent Today.

Almost all of these public rallies and protests have been organized by local activists. Most of the speeches in these protests have been critical of the state’s policy of engaging in talks with the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) that were taking place until recently, and the way in which the TTP has been allowed to return to spread terror.

What is significant about these public gatherings is that it is the locals, the ordinary people, who have been organizing them. The mainstream political parties have yet to catch up with the sentiments of our people who are not willing to allow our lands to be used for what we fear is the beginning of a new great game in the region, especially after the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan in August 2021. The statements of several federal ministers with regards to the increasing terrorist attacks in Pakhtunkhwa and the offer of support from US officials to Pakistan to counter the growing threat of terrorism are reminiscent of the situation caused by terrorism in the mid-2000s that resulted in military operations in the then ex-FATA and Swat. It led to the displacement of thousands of our people, with their homes and lives devastated.

While Pashtun nationalist parties and their leaders have been participating in these protests, leaders of the mainstream political parties who are leading the federal government are yet to acknowledge these protests and our demands for peace. Similarly, the mainstream media has also not given any coverage to these protests. Pashtun activists have relied on social media to not only cover the massive gatherings but to also spread the messages of resistance against the Taliban and the demands for peace that emanate from these protests.

The resurgence of terrorism in Pakhtunkhwa is directly linked to the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan. Those in Pakistan, including government functionaries and officials of the state, who make poor attempts to distinguish between the TTP and the Taliban in Afghanistan, are not fooling anyone. The TTP functions and operates as an extension of the Taliban in Afghanistan. One of the first things that the Taliban did in Afghanistan after their takeover was to release all of the TTP’s prisoners who had been arrested by the previous governments of President Ashraf Ghani and President Hamid Karzai.

Pakistan’s strategic depth policy for Afghanistan has not been abandoned and appears to be in full effect. Pakistan will need to abandon its support for the Taliban in Afghanistan for it to effectively deal with the menace of TTP. The Taliban in Afghanistan and the TTP are not political entities. They are an armed group of militants who perpetrate violence. We cannot afford to be confused about them.

At some point, the mainstream in Pakistan will not only need to acknowledge the protests against Taliban and terrorism in Pakhtunkhwa but will also need to heed the very important messages being delivered in these protests for establishing peace in our region. The violence that we are experiencing in our districts will not remain limited to Pakhtunkhwa. This fire will spread to the entire country. The state needs to correct its course before it is too late.

Khushal Khattak

The writer is a member of the National Democratic Movement (NDM).

The post Here’s How Pashtuns Are Fighting Back Against The Fresh Wave Of Terror appeared first on Dissent Today.