The first-ever election for representing Pakistan’s former Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) in the northwestern province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa has generated considerable interest and raised hopes.
The merger of Pakistan’s western Pashtun tribal regions into the adjoining province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa last year raised hopes that its long-suffering residents would gain more rights by joining the country’s political, economic, and administrative mainstream.
Turkistan Bhittani says he now regrets fighting for the military. He even warns others against taking up arms for the Pakistani Army, which admits to having lost thousands of soldiers and officers in quelling a decade-long Taliban rebellion in the province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
As millions of Pakistanis prepare to vote in the July 25 election, residents of one remote village in a restive northwestern corner of the country are boycotting the polls.
An estimated half a million Mehsuds are once again threatening to abandon their towns and villages in South Waziristan if authorities fail to clear landmines and unexploded ordinance from the mountainous regions.
A Pakistani official says members of a Pashtun tribe lost more than 11,000 homes in the restive Waziristan region after the government’s military offensive forced out nearly half a million Mehsud tribespeople in 2009.
Civilians in a remote northwestern region of Pakistan have rejected government claims that airstrikes targeting their community are killing militants.
In what is seen as a major embarrassment for Islamabad, thousands of Pakistani tribespeople have now crossed into Afghanistan in the wake of a major Pakistani military offensive launched in their North Waziristan homeland in mid-June.
An RFE/RL correspondent recounts what he saw in North Waziristan after traveling across the beleaguered region recently.
Years after fleeing a major military operation, Pakistani tribesmen are still waiting for government help to rebuild their shattered lives.
