Why is there a permanent civil war-like situation in Kurram Agency and especially in Parachinar?
Why an endless war has broken out on the borders of Pakistan?
Will there be an end to it?
Will there be a permanent ceasefire?
We will put three angles before you to solve this problem.
Historical angle, international angle and modern angle, to know why is a fight going on there?
First, let’s look at its historical aspect.
By the mid-th century,…
…when the British had conquered large parts of India,…
…only one large, powerful state in the north remained unconquered.
It was Ranjit Singh’s Khalsa Raj, the Punjab Empire.
It was such a big state that today’s entire Jammu and Kashmir,…
…Khyber Pakhtunkhwa up to Peshawar,…
…and the present-day Pakistani and Indian Punjab, Haryana, and Himachal Pradesh were part of it.
In the East, it was up to the river Sutlej and in the upper north to a bank of the river Yamuna.
After the death of Ranjit Singh in the British took over the Punjab Raj.
After that, the British fought several wars with the Afghans, known as the Anglo-Afghan Wars.
As a result, some other areas were also captured by the British and made part of British India.
These regions were in the northwest above the Punjab Empire.
In the Afghan king Abdul Rahman Khan settled the Afghan-India border,…
…known as the Durand Line, and these new areas, under British India, were named Agencies.
As you can see on the map these areas are Bajaur Agency,…
…Khyber Agency, Kurram, Mohmand, Orakzai,…
…North Waziristan and South Waziristan.
After their annexation, British India came face-to-face with the largest empire of its time, the Russian Empire.
Only after an -mile-wide Wakhan corridor was the Russian Empire…
…and Afghanistan on the western side was a buffer zone.
That is, two strong rivals came eyeball to eyeball.
The British believed that the Russians…
…would attack India from the Afghan side to reach warmer waters.
Because the British believed that this part of their great British Indian Empire,…
…the northwestern part, was their weakest point.
So, it was the geostrategic importance of this area,…
…due to which the British gave them special treatment.
In such a way that first in November the Viceroy of India, Lord Curzon,…
…separated Hazara, Peshawar, Kohat, Bannu and Dera Ismail Khan from Punjab to form a new province.
It was geographically named the North West Frontier Province …
…and commonly known as NWFP (Now Khyber Pakhtunkhwa).
The British Government administered this province through a Deputy Commissioner.
Among the above seven agencies, the British appointed a Political Agent…
…and it came to be run directly by the Central Indian Government.
Thus the agencies were not made a part of any political arrangement or border province.
Therefore, this entire region and Afghanistan were by the government of British India…
…viewed and operated as a buffer zone for their empire.
The word security was attached to these areas.
This security mindset of the ruling class…
became a major reason for the region’s long backwardness.
Whenever there were reforms, or development works in India, this area was neglected…
…because these areas did not have political representation.
A political agent was representing these areas…
…but he did not represent the people to highlight their problems.
He was a representative of the government.
For instance, when canals and roads were laid in India at the beginning of the th century,…
…these unsettled areas and agencies were kept out of this water facility.
Then in when the “Marley Minto Reforms” were introduced in India,…
…the agencies did not even get a share.
Similarly, the Montagu-Chelmsford Reforms in were brought in…
…they also ignored the share of the tribal areas.
Both these reforms improved local governments, health and education systems across India, but…
…tribal agencies continued to be left out.
From the examples of these two reforms, you can understand why these agencies…
…were lagging behind the rest of India politically, socially and educationally.
Although the leaders of these areas were in constant contact with the British rulers and the political parties of India.
They would contact the British government, the Muslim League and the Congress…
…and demand their share in development under these reforms…
…but no one would listen to them.
While doing all this, came and India was partitioned.
These areas became part of Pakistan.
Now, instead of adding these areas to the Frontier Province or bringing them into any political arrangement,…
…Pakistan also continued the political agent system of the British.
It was the Political Agent to deal with the people under a black law of FCR.
According to this law, the Political Agent was given the carte blanche of these areas,…
…which, meant that the same law of the Britishers.
However, years after the creation of Pakistan, a good change was seen there.
That is, in these areas were made a part of the Frontier Province, renamed Khyber Pakhtunkhwa in
The merger of these regions into KPK has not yet matured,…
…but it has certainly become part of the political process,…
…in which it has become possible to go along with the rest of the regions.
But the damage done to these agencies by keeping them out of the political process over a century…
…is not going to be undone in a few years.
Among these agencies, the area that suffered the most in the past years…
…is Karrum Agency. The first reason for it is its demography.
Kurram district is divided into Upper, Central and Lower Kurram.
Its total population is slightly above
It has many tribes including Turi, Bangash, Mangal and Muqbal.
Kurram Agency, which is now Kurram District, has percent of its population of Shia Muslims…
…while percent are Sunnis.
Ahl-e-Shia tribes are mostly settled in Upper Kurram i.e. the areas closest to Afghanistan,…
…of which Parachinar is the most important.
The majority of the population in Central and Lower Kuram belongs to the tribes of the Ahle-e-Sunnah sect.
Due to the same demographics, the problems here took a new turn in the s.
Because the new Great Game began in the world,…
…in which the tip of the Upper Kurram, Parachinar, assumed great importance.
This is another angle to this story.
An international angle about unrest in Kurram Agency…
…relate to the Iran-Saudi proxy war, also known as the Shia-Sunni sectarian rifts.
They took root in Pakistan from Kurram Agency.
Here the Shia-Sunni hatred has been going on for a century.
But in he took an international turn.
In Iran in Ayatollah Khomeini overthrew Reza Shah Pahlavi and…
…established Wilayat al-Faqih, a religious revolutionary government.
This government dreamt of bringing the entire Islamic world under its leadership.
On the other hand, the Saudi kings, being servants of Mecca and Medina, already….
…regarded themselves as the only legitimate leaders of the entire Muslim world.
So, a great proxy war started between the two countries for influence on the Muslim world.
For this, both of them used their co-religionists in every Muslim country.
Both funded the Madrasahs of their pro-sect and gave educational scholarships to the youth.
Saudi Arabia joined the Sunni group, especially the people of the Salafi school of thought,…
…and Iran used its influence on the Shia population.
And in this, Kurram Agency became the first battleground.
In such a way that in the beginning of the s…
…the Afghan Jihad went on with the support of the American, Saudi and Pakistani establishment against Soviet Russia.
For this war from the entire Arab world and especially from the northwestern regions of Pakistan…
…the naive people were sent to Afghanistan in the name of Jihad, however, factually to fuel the American Great Game.
These young men were mostly related to different to offshoots of Ahle-Sunnah sects…
from the school of thought of Ahl-e-Hadith, Deoband and Salafi.
When all these warrior youths were launched in Afghanistan,…
…the Para Chinnar area of Kurram Agency was picked up as an ideal location.
Because Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan, was only km away from here.
Then this area is embedded inside the Afghan territory like a beak.
That is, on its three sides are the Afghan provinces of Khost, Paktia and Nangarhar.
In all of them, the majority of those Ahle Sunni Muslims…
…who were fighting against Soviet Russia in the name of Jihad in Afghanistan.
Therefore, it formed an ideal location from where attacks were made from Pakistan in Afghanistan…
…against the Soviet forces and their local supporters.
When attacks were launched from here,…
…the Soviet forces and their Afghan allies would bomb Kurram Agency and Parachinar.
Geographically, you know that since the Shia population was high on this tip,…
…they were the most vulnerable to these offensives.
On one side, Soviet Russia would fire shots…
…and on the other side, Saudi-American-backed Arab and other Muslim fighters would attack them.
Here, the sandwiched Shia population was badly affected,…
…although it was not ideologically involved in the Great Game against Soviet Russia.
The Shiite leaders and population here went hostile to the caravans going to fight in Afghanistan.
They would attack the convoys to prevent them from using this route to Afghanistan.
But this route had been the most important strategic one since General Ziaul Haq’s martial law.
General Ziaul Haq also took a strategic rather than a political decision like the colonial British…
…and dealt with the area from a security point of view.
At the beginning of it was reported that General Zia’s government…
…wanted to turn Kurram Agency into a permanent base for fighters.
This was unbearable for the Shiite tribes.
Their main group, the Turi tribe, took up arms and attacked the warriors who would pass through their area.
Fierce clashes started.
Iran provided diplomatic and financial support to the Shiites,…
…and Saudi Arabia was already funding the Sunni mujahideen with billions of dollars.
So, there was a war against Soviet Russia in Afghanistan, but now Kurram Agency…
…also had a systematic Saudi-Iranian proxy war.
This series of communal battles continued intermittently for about a year and a half.
In July General Zia-ul-Haq replaced the Arab fighters with…
…local and Afghan fighters to attack the Turi tribes.
The Turi warriors also retaliated vigorously.
Fierce fighting for two weeks took the lives of Turi fighters and from the opposing groups.
At least villages were partially or completely destroyed in this battle.
Complex geography, colonial problems, backwardness, lack of resources and now religious hatred.
All these made the problem of Kurram Agency complicated.
In Soviet Russia was on the way to death.
Russian troops withdrew from Afghanistan and crossed the Volga River, but…
…left behind millions of tons of weapons in the Kurram Agency.
With this Russian-American weaponry, they also left years of wound scars,…
…in which many groups in Kurram Agency had to settle accounts with several enemies.
The Pakistani elite was also so engrossed in its own problems…
…that it did not make any grand plan to normalise its border areas after the Afghan-Soveit War.
That is, the chapter on persecution was not closed.
Small things ballooned into major issues,…
…such as it happened in
In in the Government High School, Parachinar, someone wrote some words on the blackboard,…
…which hurt the feelings of the Shia majority.
The students reported to the headmaster and he asked the assistant political agent to sort out the matter.
Jirga was held but the matter could not be settled.
On September students of both sects argued the same issue and opened fire.
From this point, the fight intensified and arms were used from both sides.
This local communal civil war continued for months.
Including the headmaster of the local school, people were killed in these clashes.
Jirga tried to stop the fight but failed.
The target killing continued intermittently.
The matter did not end here but it rapidly…
…engulfed first Karachi and then the entire country.
In the s, similar clashes produced organisations like Sipah Sahaba of the Sunni sect…
…and Sipah Muhammad took up arms from the Shia sect.
Thousands of people were killed in this religious conflict in Pakistan.
In Shia scholar Allama Arif Hussaini,…
…in Maulana Haq Nawaz Jhangvi of Sunni school of thought,…
…in the famous poet Mohsin Naqvi,…
…in the head of Sipah-e-Sahaba Ziaur Rehman Farooqui,…
…in the head of the Sunni movement Muhammad Salim Qadri,…
…in Sipah Sahaba chief Maulana Azam Tariq,…
…in Shia scholar Ziauddin Rizvi,…
…and Allama Hasan Turabi in are some who were killed in Shia-Sunni clashes.
Many people were killed in this fight being…
…part of the Iran-Saudi proxy war, but many ordinary people were also killed therein…
…only for their sectarian eminence and were not involved the violent activity.
When Saudi-Iranian relations began to improve in …
…and Prince Abdullah, who later became Saudi king,…
….visited Iran, there was hope the Muslim Cold War would cool down.
It seemed no foreign funding would be made to fan religious riots in Pakistan.
And the situation would calm down and be peaceful.
But unfortunately, it was just the beginning that /took place.
The downside was that once again the old launching pad area, Kurram Agency…
…and the entire Pak-Afghan border became a haven for militants.
In Afghanistan, the Shia population, the Hazara tribes, joined the US-backed Afghan government.
It meant they became hostile to the Afghan Taliban.
It impacted the communal hatred in Kurram Agency.
The Taliban began to fight against the US…
…and many extremist groups also targeted the Shia population of Kurram Agency.
That is, once again the same story started.
We refer to an incident as an example.
It was the middle of the Islamic month Rabi’ul Awwal in that…
…in the majority Shia-populated Upper Kurram, the Sunnis took out a religious procession.
It goes that some anti-Shia slogans were raised in that procession.
In response, the Shiites took out a procession in Parachinar…
…and this procession was fired at.
Who fired, It is not known.
But the firing triggered clashes…
…which soon spread throughout Kurram Agency.
Fierce fighting started in several villages, including Chamkani, Trimengal, Bushehra and Balashkhel.
Hundreds of houses and markets were burnt to ashes.
More than people were killed in Sadda city too.
Children died due to rockets and mortars falling on the houses.
On one occasion, missiles were fired at Kurram Agency from Afghan territory, injuring three people.
For days, people remained besieged and were unable to get food and water.
To stop these terrible riots, Cobra gunship helicopters and artillery of the army…
…also bombed the hideouts of the militants.
After that, a ceasefire was reached with the help of the Jirga.
But this period of peace did not last long.
Just a few months later, in November, riots broke out again.
It happened that some unknown people opened fire in Parachinar Bazaar,…
…killing people and injuring
It was followed by such fierce fighting that villages were destroyed…
…and more than people were displaced.
These riots continued intermittently for the next four years.
The most dangerous aspect of it was the direct involvement of Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) in them.
The TTP fighters blocked Thall Parachinar Road which connected Kurram Agency with the rest of Pakistan.
This road runs from the Afghan border through Parachhinar to the Thall area in the south.
From here it splits into two branches…
…one goes to Bannu and the other to Kohat.
This road is the lifeline of Kurram Agency.
The Taliban blocked this most important road for almost four years from to
Because whenever there was a fight in Upper Kurram…
…people from their allied Shia tribes would reach Upper Kurram through this road.
To stop them and enforce their writ, the Taliban kept the blockade for four years.
Several jirgas were also held to remove barricades on Thall Parachinar Road.
The most important Jirga was held in October at Murree, kilometres from Parachinar.
In it, the political administration and the opposing tribes signed an agreement called the Murree Agreement.
Under this, it was decided that Thall Parachinar Road would be opened.
The territories the opposing tribes have taken away from each other will be returned.
Displaced persons will be brought back and resettled in the area.
This agreement was reached but it could not be implemented for many years.
In February the Haqqani network, the Taliban’s most powerful group, finally…
…reached a peace deal with the Shiite Turi tribe.
It was originally a deal to formally implement the Murree Agreement.
Haqqani Network was the guarantor of this deal.
The security establishment was also on board in it.
For this deal, two members of parliament who were elected from the area…
…deposited Rs million as security with the Haqqani network.
Under this agreement, Thall Parachinar Road was opened.
But even after that, the attacks did not stop.
In March the month following the contract, people were killed…
…and were kidnapped in an attack on a convoy.
Officially, this road is still open, but there is no complete peace in that area.
People travel on the road even during the day escorted by the military convoys.
Muaz Hussain of Kurram Agency said that…
…they can travel in caravans at day time to and fro.
And even they are not usually safe either.
So this is the second angle of the Kurram Agency and Parachinar faultline in brief.
The third angle is related to the land disputes that have been going on since the British era.
Because when the British acquired these areas after the Anglo-Afghan wars,…
…the decision of the British in many land disputes was not recognised by many people.
It is said that the British adopted the principle of divide and rule in this area.
The less populated Shia tribes were given more land in the Kurram Agency…
…and the majority populated Sunni tribes were allotted less land.
Still, there was a huge land which remained undecided as to which side it would go.
Maybe there is another reason for it, old inheritance disputes or something. But…
…the result of this division was a permanent rift and clashes.
The tribes who got less land…
…pressed for a Jirga decision as per the ancient tradition instead of accepting the division of the British government.
Those who got large land deemed it as their legal right according to the English Land Records.
Over the years, this conflict has become highly complex passing through many generations.
Its most recent manifestation is in the village Bushehra of Parachinar…
…where a dispute took place over kanals of land in ..
…on which claim was made by the Malikhel of the Shiites and the Madgi Khel tribes of the Sunnis.
In the two tribes clashed over this issue,…
…in which at least people were killed and injured.
After that, army and FC troops were deployed in the area.
Jirga was held.
It was decided to determine ownership of this land from the Land Records of the Finance Department.
The ownership of the land will be accepted by the people of either group.
When the ownership was checked from the official documents,…
…it turned out to be the property of the Malikhel tribes.
It meant the land was owned by the people of the Shiite tribes.
Now another jirga was held for how to transfer the land.
The Jirga decided that the land would be leased to a third party for one year.
After one year, when the lease period expires,…
…this third party will hand over the land to the original owners, the Malikhel tribes.
So according to this prescribed procedure, this land was given to a third party for one year.
This third party paid the lease amount for one year to the Malikhel tribes.
After a year, the lease term expired…
…and it was time for the land to be transferred to the Malikhel tribes as per the agreement.
But the rival Madgikhel intervened and retook the land.
On it, both sides clashed.
The parties gave a communal colour to the issue and invited their fellow religious tribes to fight.
Following this, the fight spread to many areas of Kurram Agency.
The militants opened fire on Parachinar from Para Chamkani, which is located at a considerable height.
At least people were killed and more than injured in the clashes.
At present a jirga held in Parachinar has got a temporary ceasefire.
No one knows how long this peace will last. Hope it works long.
A question arises when different groups fight,…
…why does the state fail to stop them and establish its writ?
You can get the answer from a statement by Nisar Ahmed Khan, District Police Officer, Kurram.
He says the government acted quickly when the current clashes started.
But it took several hours to reach due to lack of manpower and difficult mountainous passes.
He said since the Afghanistan border is closed therefore many people have modern weapons,…
…that is, better weapons than the local security agencies,…
…due to which it has become very difficult to stop the militants.
Kurram district and its surrounding areas have now become the hideouts of Daesh, TTP,…
…and many other militant groups…
…which also have their havens across the border in Afghanistan.
Communication between the two is through Afghan communications networks,…
…which the local agencies cannot control.
These people take advantage of it and successfully plan.
Mismanagement and failure spread over three centuries cannot be fixed in a few days or a few years.
However, if initiative is taken to control religious politics in the country…
…the problem creators who use the religious colour, would have little chance to execute their plans.
Besides better relations with Afghanistan, the political process in the Kurram district…
…and provision of better facilities to security institutions, can also go a long way to improve things.
