On Saturday, as the holy month of Ramadan drew to a close, in the shadowed hills of Katlang, Mardan, the Pakistani military, under Shehbaz Sharif’s federal government, unleashed a deadly strike—eleven lives extinguished, shepherds, women, and children of the Gujjar community reduced to “collateral damage.” The official line touts an “intelligence- based operation” against militants, but locals cry “drone strike,” their anguish echoing through the Shamozai valley. The federal government, led by a military that has long treated its people as expendable, bears the weight of the trigger.
The military’s disdain for civilian lives is no surprise. This is the same institution that has, for decades, danced to the tune of foreign governments, unaccountable and unapologetic, whether under dictators or figurehead democrats like Sharif. Drone strikes, secret ops, and “neutralized targets” are its currency—Pakistani flesh is the price it pays without a blink. The shepherds of Katlang—Hazrat Bilal, Noor Muhammad, Wazir, Amroz Khan, Shahazada alias Shah Da—were just another tally in its grim ledger. That the federal government could bomb its own, then shrug it off as the cost of war, is as predictable as it is vile. But the PTI provincial government, led by Khan’s heirs in KP, had a choice. It chose cowardice.
Yet the true scandal lies not just in the act, but in the silence—or worse, the tepid acquiescence—of the PTI-led Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government. The PTI KP government has traded Imran Khan’s principled roar—that bastion of defiance against such atrocities— for a whimper of complicity, staining its hands with the blood of its own. Barrister Saif, KP’s PTI spokesperson, delivered a statement so spineless it could double as a military press release: “The complex terrain, the deliberate tactics of militants to embed within civilian populations, and the fog of war can sometimes lead to unintended consequences.”
Unintended consequences? Tell that to Jannat Gul, whose kin wielded sticks and sickles, not rifles. Tell that to Jalat Khan, pleading for justice as his Gujjar brethren block the Swat Motorway with their dead. Saif’s platitudes—“deepest condolences,” “we stand with the affected families”—reek of a casualness that mocks the carnage. This isn’t sympathy; it’s a press conference dodge, a betrayal of the Imran Khan who once marched to the tribal edges, raging against the US drones that left many hundreds dead between 2004 and 2012.
Khan’s PTI was forged in that fire of the War on Terror. In 2012, he called Obama’s drone campaign ‘illegal and counterproductive,’ a sovereignty-shredding horror that bred extremism. He led thousands—Pakistanis and US peace activists alike—to protest the slaughter, demanding a ceasefire, a chance for peace. That was a PTI with a spine, a party that saw its people not as pawns but as the heart of its fight. Now, under its watch in KP, the federal military bombs shepherds, and PTI’s response is to nod along, offering ‘relief and compensation’ like a landlord tossing coins to a beggar. So sorely missed is Khan’s fury. The man who stared down the world’s mightiest power and said, ‘No more,’ languishes in a cramped jail cell while his party’s government tarnishes all that he stands for.
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The KP government could have screamed bloody murder. It could have rallied the province, demanded accountability, and refused to let the military’s butchery stand unchallenged.
Instead, it parrots excuses—terrain, militants, fog—as if these absolve the sin of shredding innocents. This isn’t just a failure of nerve; it’s a failure of soul. The military may have pulled the trigger, but PTI’s silence pulls the shroud over the graves. Khan’s legacy—his sympathy for the shepherd, the farmer, the forgotten—lies gutted, replaced by a provincial government that shrugs while its people bleed.
As Ramadan ends and Eid arrives, Pakistan goes through the motions with timeless rituals— prayers, feasts, the fleeting warmth of renewal. But in Katlang, renewal is a cruel jest. The Gujjar families will kneel not in festivity but in despair, their Eid a requiem for the butchered. The federal government delivers death; the KP government, a limp shrug. Imran Khan once pleaded for peace and would still roar if he were a free man, his voice a thunderclap against the drones that scarred his land. But for now, his disciples muffle that cry, complicit in the echo of slaughter. So, to the shepherds’ kin, to the mourners of Shamozai, an Eid Mubarak— of ashes, of silence, of a nation that feasts while its own bleed.
Miyamoto Musashi carves through the chaos of markets and power, wielding a pen as sharp as his blade. A veteran of the financial dueling grounds—decades spent as an I-banker and pol. strategist—he now stalks the shadows of economics and governance, exposing cowardice and cutting down complacency.