In yet another tragic incident, three young seminary students lost their lives in a mortar shell explosion in Bannu on Monday. The boys—two of whom were brothers, Zeeshan and Wahab, alongside their friend Alamzeb—were innocently playing in the Janikhel Sen Tanga area when they stumbled upon the deadly shell, mistaking it for a toy.
The boys had just left their seminary and were on their way home when the tragedy occurred. What makes this horrifying event even more infuriating is that residents had reportedly informed the local administration about the presence of the mortar shell in the area, but their warnings were met with inaction. Such negligence has tragically become a pattern in Pashtun regions.
Just last week, a similar incident occurred in Lower Kurram Tehsil of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, where a live mortar shell claimed the lives of three more children and left five others critically injured. In both instances, the victims were under the age of 11—innocent children paying the price of a system that views Pashtun lives as disposable.
These so-called “accidents” are emblematic of a larger, sinister pattern of Paki establishment repression against the Pashtun community. The Pak Army and its intelligence apparatus, the ISI, have long maintained an oppressive grip on the tribal regions, deliberately fostering unrest to further their own interests. By sowing chaos and leaving behind the remnants of their military operations—like the unexploded ordnance that killed these children—they continue to endanger the lives of ordinary Pashtuns.
For decades, the Army has used Pashtun lands as a playground for its experiments in fostering and weaponizing extremism, turning young boys into pawns of militant ideologies. The policy is as cynical as it is brutal, with the aim of exploiting the region for geopolitical leverage while crushing any semblance of resistance or nationalism.