A fact-based understanding of the Tirah Operation is essential amid propaganda that distorts its intent by exploiting civilian suffering. Tirah’s rugged terrain and strategic location allowed militant groups to entrench themselves and evolve into a protected terror–crime nexus linked to external actors, posing a severe threat to national security and local communities. To counter this, the state relied on precision-focused intelligence-based operations, but the militants’ deliberate embedding among civilians created serious ethical constraints. Authorities therefore engaged tribal elders through jirga consultations, and after peaceful efforts to persuade militants to leave failed, the elders themselves proposed temporary, voluntary civilian relocation to protect lives and enable security actions, a community-driven decision formally presented on December 26, 2025.

Based solely on this documented decision, the provincial government approved four billion rupees to support voluntary relocation and humanitarian assistance, but severe mismanagement and administrative failures prevented effective delivery, compounding civilian hardship and later fueling politicized narratives. It is unequivocal that the Pakistan Army neither demanded nor enforced relocation; the process remained voluntary, with elders determining timing and pace, resulting in an agreed relocation of about 19,000 families from Bagh Maidan, of whom roughly 65 percent have moved while others remain. Contrary to claims of large-scale military operations, the security strategy has consistently prioritized intelligence-based operations, which have proven effective in dismantling terrorist networks while avoiding mass displacement, as reflected in the extensive nationwide use of this approach and the significant degradation of militant capabilities through targeted actions.

Past national experiences, notably from earlier operations in the tribal districts, have taught searingly hard lessons about the profound and long-lasting human, social, and economic costs associated with large-scale kinetic operations. Such broad-spectrum military actions inevitably and inexorably lead to massive, often chaotic population displacement, long-term or permanent disruption of civilian agrarian and economic life, the destruction of critical community infrastructure, and the creation of severe, multi-generational humanitarian challenges for internally displaced persons (IDPs), including issues of trauma, lost education, and broken social networks. Moreover, from a tactical intelligence perspective, large-scale conventional operations are typically preceded by visible, detectable, and extensive troop deployments, logistical buildup of ammunition and supplies, and the conspicuous movement of heavy armor, artillery, and engineering equipment—all indicators that are nearly impossible to conceal. No such strategic indicators were ever observed by credible monitors in or around Tirah, which further reinforces the operational reality that no large-scale action was ever planned, prepared for, or imminent. Additionally, the notoriously harsh, unpredictable, and isolating weather conditions of Tirah’s high-altitude terrain present another major, almost insurmountable logistical and operational obstacle to the execution of any broad, sustained military campaign, making the continued reliance on agile, targeted, intelligence-led operations not only a more humane choice but also the only pragmatically viable one from a strict military standpoint.

The overall operational and post-conflict framework governing the state’s approach in Tirah is holistically guided by a comprehensive policy document known as the Bagh Joint Action Plan, a multi-agency, phased approach that thoughtfully integrates kinetic (military) and non-kinetic (developmental, political, legal) measures into a coherent whole. This enlightened plan explicitly recognizes the timeless strategic truth that lasting peace and sustainable security cannot be achieved or purchased through the application of brute force alone. Alongside necessary and precise security actions, the plan places a co-equal emphasis on accelerated socio-economic development, the strengthening of local law enforcement and judicial infrastructure, political reconciliation where possible, and the comprehensive restoration of normal civic and economic life following the eventual return of displaced persons. The ultimate, stated objective of this grand strategy is not the temporary imposition of military control but the fostering of sustainable stability, the rule of law, and tangible economic prosperity for the long-neglected region and its people.

Despite these documented, sequential, and locally-rooted realities, following the sovereign decision taken by the local elders, the political entity known as the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), which held the provincial government at that critical juncture, initiated what can only be described as an organized, systematic, and malicious political campaign aimed primarily at defaming the legitimacy and intentions of the federal government and, in particular, the integrity and professionalism of the Pakistan Army as a national institution. Rather than focusing its administrative energies on utilizing the already-approved four-billion-rupee fund in an efficient, transparent, and compassionate manner for the immediate welfare of the suffering people, the PTI provincial government deliberately, through acts of omission and commission, allowed the complex relocation process to descend into avoidable chaos and administrative failure. This manufactured and amplified mismanagement was then theatrically projected in the media and political discourse as a humanitarian tragedy of the state’s own making, a narrative carefully framed and edited to serve a pre-existing political narrative of victimhood and to cast aspersions on state institutions. By engaging in this cynical political maneuver, the very real and poignant suffering of the people of Tirah was coldly converted from a humanitarian challenge into a crude instrument for political point-scoring and partisan mobilization.

The PTI political machinery actively attempted to sow seeds of deep mistrust between the general public and the state’s core security institutions by falsely and repeatedly attributing the voluntary relocation decision to coercive, heavy-handed actions secretly orchestrated by the federal government and the army high command. This fabricated narrative deliberately and conveniently ignored the extensively documented chain of events and the formal minutes of meetings which proved that the entire two-pronged strategy of calibrated security operations coupled with development initiatives was predicated upon, and originated from, the elders’ own sovereign decision in the jirga. The entrenched, shadowy nexus of certain political interests, organized crime, and terrorism has always fiercely resisted genuine, effective counter-terrorism efforts for a simple reason: such state measures directly threaten their illicit financial flows, their illegal business monopolies, and their hard-won, malign political influence within the region.

In the single-minded pursuit of these nefarious political and economic objectives, these elements demonstrated a callous and complete indifference to the genuine, acute suffering of the people of Tirah, whose lives were treated as expendable pawns in a larger political game. A matter as profoundly sensitive and vital as national security and counter-terrorism was deliberately and systematically distorted through a sophisticated propaganda apparatus into a fabricated narrative of human tragedy specifically designed to malign the state and its institutions in the eyes of the world. Anti-state social media accounts, partisan television commentators, and suspected external informational facilitators continue to this day to spread exaggerated, misleading, and provocatively edited narratives, not out of any authentic humanitarian concern to help the people of Tirah, but primarily to conceal their own demonstrable failures in governance, their alleged involvement in illegal activities, and to advance their own subversive political and geopolitical agendas.

The verifiable facts, however, remain clear, documented, and increasingly visible to the resilient people of Tirah and to the impartial observers within the nation as a whole. These irrefutable facts categorically expose, dismantle, and condemn the malicious propaganda ecosystem being propagated by a handful of anti-state elements and their unwitting or willing amplifiers. Objective truth, when examined carefully, methodically, and honestly, leaves absolutely no room for reasonable doubt about the legitimate intentions, ethical constraints, and operational necessities behind the Tirah Operation, nor does it leave any ambiguity about the nature and motivations of the political forces that actively seek to undermine it for their own narrow, partisan, and ultimately destructive interests.