The district of Kurram, in Pakistan’s northwestern tribal region, has been under siege for the past three months due to the closure of the main Thal-Parachinar Road, a key route connecting the region to the rest of the country. Besieged communities in the district have been facing severe shortages of essential supplies, including food and medicine.
The road has been closed since late November, when sectarian violence broke out in Kurram. The first three days of fighting killed more than 80 people.
A series of sit-ins were organized across the country, including in Karachi, to show solidarity with rival sects. Similarly, a delegation of Pashtun elders, formed during the Pashtun Tahafuz Movement (PTM)’s October national jirga, visited the district and held meetings with elders from the rival Sunni and Shia tribes. However, the delegation returned without achieving any fruitful results.
Recently, the government succeeded in signing a fragile peace agreement between the warring tribes after weeks of bloodshed that claimed around 130 lives, raising cautious hopes for stability in this historically volatile region.
Authorities had placed their hopes on a government-protected convoy scheduled for January 4. The convoy was tasked with delivering essential supplies to the besieged communities. Its successful passage was expected to provide much-needed relief and signal the possibility of reopening the road for future movement – a critical lifeline for the region.
However, these hopes were violently dashed.
As the district’s deputy commissioner, Javedullah Mehsud, and his team were traveling to clear the route for the convoy, unidentified assailants launched an attack in Bagan, a Sunni-majority area, leaving Mehsud and several others severely injured. The attack starkly illustrated the fragility of the ceasefire and the enduring challenges of restoring peace to Kurram.
It has been a violent year for the district. Over the course of 2024, three major clashes broke out between the rival Sunni and Shia tribes in Kurram, claiming more than 200 lives.
The violent clashes in Kurram have sparked widespread debate among activists, politicians, academics, scholars, and journalists, raising pressing questions: Is this a sectarian conflict? A dispute over land? Or a resurgence of Taliban-driven violence? These interpretations have been fiercely contested and amplified by members of the Shia and Sunni tribes in Kurram, who have taken to social media to campaign for their respective communities.
Both rival tribes have clashed over competing narratives, claims of victimhood, and accusations. Each side has accused the other of instigating violence, harboring militant groups – such as the Taliban and Zainabiyoun Brigade – stockpiling heavy weaponry, and receiving support from foreign countries, including Iran and Afghanistan.
The scenery in Kurram District, Pakistan. Photo by Hassan Turi.
Post-FATA Merger Reality in Kurram
After intense violence between 2007 and 2011, Kurram enjoying a lull of several years. However, the security situation in the district has steadily deteriorated since the merger of the former Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) into Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province in 2018.
This merger, once hailed as a historic step toward mainstreaming the tribal areas, was celebrated widely across the region. For many in the former FATA, it symbolized hope for a peaceful future and an end to years of violence. People were looking forward to a new beginning where they could rebuild their lives and return to their war-torn villages.
Unfortunately, the optimism surrounding the merger was short-lived. Instead, the merger prompted a new wave of violence around disputed lands generally throughout the former tribal region and more specifically in the district Kurram. Disputes over the communal lands among rival Sunni and Shia tribes soon engulfed the whole district.
These intermittent clashes over land disputes would be followed with sit-ins and protests in their respective towns. The disputes over the land between rival tribes’ villages were transformed deliberately into sectarian conflicts via these sit-ins and protests.
While Kurram grappled with the resurgence of internal land-related conflicts, the broader former FATA region witnessed the re-emergence of Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP)-led attacks. These attacks, originating from neighboring Afghanistan, intensified following the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan after the collapse of Ashraf Ghani’s government in 2021. The spillover effects of this regime change were acutely felt in Kurram, where TTP activities surged dramatically. By 2024, the frequency of these attacks had escalated, with Central and Lower Kurram becoming hotspots for TTP-led violence.
Adding to this precarious security landscape were clashes along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. The region saw several confrontations between the Pakistani military and the Afghan Taliban, primarily over the construction of border check posts. These border skirmishes further strained the fragile stability of Kurram and the wider former FATA region.
Displaced Communities
Research in post-conflict literature indicates that displaced populations often become more educated and aware of their rights during their time in urban areas. However, this heightened awareness can lead to renewed tensions, especially over disputed land, when the displaced return to their villages.
Such disputes frequently become a significant source of conflict between returning populations and communities that remain. One prominent example is the post-1993 return of Hutu migrants in Burundi, whose land disputes with the Tutsi population escalated into full-scale ethnic conflict in subsequent years.
In the case of Kurram, the Pakistani government has largely failed to rehabilitate displaced populations in their respective villages. Many Sunni tribes displaced from Upper Kurram due to violence since 2007, as well as Shia communities expelled from Sadda in the 1990s, remain unsettled. This failure to address resettlement has deepened existing grievances and fueled ongoing disputes.
The government has also failed to arrange a prompt land policy to cope with land-related disputes. The Pakistani state introduced Alternative Disputes Resolution jirgas to deal with land disputes, but they remained unsuccessful. This failure of state institutions has led to widespread accusations of bias, with claims that the state favors one community over another. Disparities in the recognition of ownership and victimhood claims have increased tensions further.
A Lack of Resources and Authority
The merger of the former FATA into Khyber Pakhtunkhwa brought hopes for improved governance and stability. However, the new political setup, comprising the district administration and police forces, has struggled to exercise authority and maintain order in Kurram. These institutions lack resources and still are not equipped technically to hold the writ in the district. The police force is mostly comprised of former military troops. The majority of police officers struggle with basic tasks like registering FIRs. Further, these institutions lack resources.
Initially, the merger was envisioned as a gradual process. However, the resurgence of PTM-led protests expedited the implementation, leaving local systems ill-prepared for the transition. The region’s population, accustomed to swift and often harsh justice under the collective punishment ordinance, has found the new system slow and ineffective.
Though a series of political, judicial and governance reforms were extended to the former FATA, in reality the Pakistani military has not devolved the power to these institutions. Therefore, the district administration and police force have lost credibility in the eyes of former FATA residents. Meanwhile, the security forces, who actually continue to govern the merged districts, lack the tools and mechanisms needed to address the ongoing land-related disputes.
Competing Narratives
The Kurram violence has received coverage in the national media, where political commentators from various backgrounds debated the root causes of the violence in the district. The myriad analyses mostly focused on the geopolitics, sectarian dimensions, and land disputes. However, these analyses were challenged by the rival tribes for the lack of local perspectives.
The rival sects strategically set different narratives to mobilize their own community and to seek solidarity from the broader society. These local narratives of victimhood, suffering, and injustice are then juxtaposed with national-level frames. Hence, the violence in Kurram has turned into a war of narratives, with both social media and mainstream national media amplifying these conflicting stories. This has created widespread confusion among the people of Pakistan.
One reason for this confusion and ambiguity is the general lack of awareness among Pakistanis about smaller provinces, particularly Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and its former tribal areas. While the former FATA remained in the news throughout Pakistan’s military-led operations until 2018, much of the coverage was filtered by the military’s strict control over information. Media access to the region was highly restricted, and the flow of information was tightly monitored, limiting the coverage of events in these areas. Similarly, the region’s limited access to the internet has kept people in larger provinces and cities largely unaware of the issues affecting these areas.
Moreover, the Kurram district has a long history of violence, and the current unrest is a complex amalgamation of various factors, including land disputes, sectarian tensions, and the return of the Taliban. Each of these causes of violence is deeply contested, and rival communities frame these issues differently, strategically highlighting certain aspects over others.
This phenomenon is not unique to Kurram but is part of a broader, global pattern. For example, in 1994, when the Zapatista Army of National Liberation, composed of Mayan peasants, captured land from non-Indigenous landowners, the movement initially focused on agrarian issues. However, national and international solidarity movements reframed the struggle as an Indigenous rights movement, which the Zapatistas ultimately embraced.
The conflict in Kurram is multifaceted, shaped by a long history of strategic importance, from the “Great Game” between the Russian and British empires to the Cold War dynamics between the Soviet Union and the United States, and later, the U.S.-led “War on Terror.” The district, with its significant Shia Turi and Bangash tribes, also brings sectarian dimensions to the violence. Moreover, Kurram’s land revenue records and its distinct political landscape set it apart from neighboring districts in former FATA, further complicating the situation.
Neglect and Politicking
The clashes in Kurram at the end of December 2024 garnered significant attention in national media. This coverage, however, was not purely driven by concerns over the deteriorating security situation but was fueled by the political dynamics surrounding the unrest. The conflict in Kurram became a focal point for political posturing under the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI)-led provincial government in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
Despite the severity of the violence in Kurram, the provincial government seemed to deprioritize addressing the crisis. Instead, it directed its attention toward organizing large-scale protests in Islamabad, demanding the release of PTI’s jailed founder, Imran Khan. The unrest in Kurram, with its humanitarian and security implications, took a back seat as political battles over Khan’s detention dominated the party’s agenda.
The situation in Kurram was further politicized as opposing factions used the conflict to advance their own narratives. Critics accused the PTI-led government of ignoring the needs of a conflict-ridden region, while supporters deflected blame onto federal authorities, arguing that the central government’s policies had weakened the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa administration’s ability to govern effectively.
Military equipment laid out in a home in Kurram district. Photo by Hassan Turi.
Local Alliances in the Conflict
The violence in Kurram should be viewed as a cocktail of conflicts in which the local actors have made alliances with national and international stakeholders. For example, local Sunni groups in Kurram, who harbor land-related grievances, have allied with the Taliban against the Shia Turi community. The Taliban, seeking to control the strategically significant Kurram region and recruit fighters for its war in Afghanistan, have played a role in exacerbating sectarian tensions. In response, the Turi Shia community formed alliances with the former Ashraf Ghani government of Afghanistan, positioning themselves in resistance to the Taliban.
In recent years, the Sunni tribes – particularly the six tribes of Upper Kurram (Mangal, Zazai, Muqbal, Kharoti, Bangash, and Parachamkani) – mobilized in the aftermath of the Pewar-Giddo clashes, forging an alliance against the Turi Shias, framed within a sectarian context. These Sunni tribes each have their separate land-related disputes with different subsections of the Turi tribes.
On the other hand, the Turi tribes view the conflict primarily through the lens of land disputes rather than sectarianism. The Turi sub-tribes, representing different villages, have attempted to limit the violence to individual sub-clans, not even to the Turi tribe. They have demanded these disputes be resolved based on the land revenue records, arguing that the issue should not be framed as a sectarian struggle and spread to the rest of the valley.
However, the Sunni tribes have rejected this approach, instead broadening the violence across the district in an attempt to exert pressure on the Turi community.
The Kurram Sunnis frame the presence of the Iran-supported Zainabyon militant group as the major hurdle to peace in Kurram. They are demanding a military operation against the Kurram Shias. This framing situates the ongoing violence in Kurram in the broader geopolitics of West Asia and South Asia. But the Shias reject these accusations and see peace in Kurram as contingent on the resolution of the land-related disputes.
This dynamic highlights the complexity of violent conflicts, which often involve multiple layers and cleavages – both local and national. Actors on the ground interpret the situation according to their own interests, forging alliances with national-level forces and framing the conflict in ways that best serve their agendas, as demonstrated by the alliances and narratives described above.
These framings change strategically with each violent event. The violence in Kurram is framed according to the context by the local actors.
Conclusion
The easy way to achieve peace in Kurram district is by devolving power to the local administration. The local administration then has the arduous but not impossible task of restoring their credibility in the eyes of the residents. The police and district administration should take strict action against any actor disrupting the peace on the ground and social media.
Even before the latest fighting broke out, the government was already trying to make a new land commission to resolve the land-related disputes. The commission should be allowed to work in all the disputed areas. The conflict resolutions reached by the jirgas should be implemented, and the military and Frontier Corps should not interfere in the local disputes.