Umar Daraz Wazir is a correspondent for RFE/RL's Radio Mashaal in North Waziristan, Pakistan. His reporting focuses on militant violence and the challenges of rehabilitating the region after nearly two decades of insurgent violence.
Authorities in Pakistan’s northwestern city of Bannu have closed a female-only park following protests by Islamists. The decision has sparked uproar among women.
Seven Pakistani soldiers have been killed in an attack in the country’s restive North Waziristan tribal region.
A Pashtun clan in Pakistan wants Islamabad to honor its words by cracking down on Taliban factions in Jani Khel. Yet a two-week sit-in protest demands Islamabad avoid an all-out military offensive and turn its back on all militants -- even those fighting for the government.
Residents of a remote region in western Pakistan say Islamabad’s failure to enforce a cease-fire between two clans threatens their security and encourages further violent clashes over conflicting land ownership claims.
A major gathering of two Pashtun tribes in western Pakistan has requested that the government give their restive homeland its resources if security forces fail to establish peace in the region reeling from years of militant attacks and military operations.
A large number of the more than 10,000 Waziristan families who fled into the adjacent southeastern Afghan provinces of Khost, Paktia, and Paktika in 2014 are waiting to be allowed back into their homeland.
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.
Thousands of families remain displaced nearly five years after Pakistan's military offensive against militants in North Waziristan. Officials are defending conditions at the Bakakhel Camp.
Authorities and the family of Tahir Dawar, a senior police officer in northwestern Pakistan, are struggling to determine his whereabouts after he mysteriously disappeared in the capital, Islamabad, on October 26.
The Pakistani village Shah Hassan Khel is struggling to move on eight years after a devastating suicide attack killed more than 120 spectators and players at a volleyball match.
The reopening of a major trade route connecting western Pakistan’s North Waziristan region with southeastern Afghanistan was touted as a major step toward stabilizing the restive border region, which is still reeling from years of terrorist attacks and the military’s counterinsurgency sweeps.
Waziristan protestors say that while authorities have accepted to investigate whether security shot dead a protestor and injured several more in the northwestern North Waziristan tribal district last week, a top military spokesman said such a probe will only “ascertain facts” and the security forces hadn’t killed or injured anyone in the restive region.
The estimated 3,000 displaced families from Shawal are part of 14,369 families still awaiting government permission and assistance in returning to North Waziristan.
Thousands of residents in northwestern Pakistan are staging a sit-in protest to pressure authorities into arresting those responsible for a string of recent murders.
Early this month, military authorities in South Waziristan ordered more than 1,100 Shabikhel families in leaving their homes once again. The displaced families were residents of the Shaktoi, Smaal, and Bobarh villages in Ladha.
Khan Beguma’s story is a tale of unending agony and inspiring courage and resilience.
Noor Kalam Wazir had to abandon his dream of becoming a scientist after fighting forced his family to abandon their North Waziristan homeland in northwestern Pakistan three years ago.
Residents of North Waziristan, one of the seven districts in western Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas, are sick of long queues, unending questions, lengthy paperwork, and long delays to visit their homeland or even leave it.
North Waziristan residents say the region is now militant-free and a tenuous peace has returned to towns and villages where civilians were tormented by suicide bombings and assassinations, Pakistani military counterterrorism sweeps, and U.S. drone strikes targeting militant leaders.
The likely reopening of a major trade route with Afghanistan has brought joy to North Waziristan, a beleaguered tribal district in northwestern Pakistan.
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