BannuBannu’s jirga-backed Police Peace Committee launched anti-militant sweeps Saturday.
Community elders and Pakistan’s police vowed operations until militants’ “complete elimination” in the district.
The committee plans to reclaim gathering spaces allegedly used by militants and screen suspected sympathizers.
Sources: Dawn
WHAT A JIRGA IS
A jirga is a council of elders that resolves disputes by consensus under Pashtunwali, the unwritten Pashtun code. It predates the Pakistani state by centuries and operates parallel to formal courts — a parallel legitimacy the state alternately suppresses and conscripts.
BANNU'S GEOGRAPHY
Bannu sits on the edge of the former FATA, a gateway between the settled districts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and the tribal belt running to the Afghan border. Every Pakistani counterinsurgency since 2004 has staged through here, and every militant network has used it as a fallback corridor.
THE TTP
Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan formed in 2007 as an umbrella of militant factions opposed to the Pakistani state — distinct from the Afghan Taliban despite shared ideology and porous personnel. After the 2021 Kabul takeover, TTP attacks inside Pakistan roughly tripled; the safe haven moved closer, not further.
THE LASHKAR PRECEDENT
Arming tribal militias to fight militants — lashkars — has been state policy since 2008. The results are mixed: lashkars cleared villages but their leaders were systematically assassinated, and weapons handed out for one fight tend to surface in the next.
WHY COMMITTEES, NOT TROOPS
Formal military operations in KP require political cover the civilian government rarely has the appetite for — they displace populations, draw IMF scrutiny on costs, and expose the army to attritional losses. A jirga-backed police committee outsources the legitimacy and the casualties to the community itself.
THE SCREENING PROBLEM
"Screening suspected sympathizers" is the hinge phrase. In a district where extended families straddle the militant–civilian line, screening by neighbors can mean justice or it can mean settling decades-old land and blood feuds under counterterrorism cover. Which one it becomes depends entirely on who sits on the committee.