Any government in Pakistan, elected or not, must act in the national interest. But the national interest cannot come at the expense of ordinary citizens' livelihoods, especially in a country where millions are already fighting to survive below the poverty line.

We’re now told Afghan front companies have been looting KP’s mines. That would be in a province that has been through 22 major military operations and more than 14,000 intelligence-based operations since 2002, where soldiers man the checkposts from Bajaur to Waziristan, and where nothing moves without the Army’s say-so. Somehow the Afghans slipped past all of it. Nobody making this claim has named a single company, and they don’t need to guess, because KP’s mining register is public. Every title in it names its holder, and there is no Afghan company in it. What it shows is the Army, under names that don’t say Army. FWO holds KP’s only working large-scale mine, 30 sq km of copper in North Waziristan, through a company called Degan Exploration Works. It pays the province 10% of the profits (some argue its actually 5%). The Army Welfare Trust has held limestone and shale leases in Nowshera since the early 1990s. Its Askari Cement held more Nowshera titles before it was folded into Fauji Cement, a Fauji Foundation company, in 2021. The army-run NLC applied for a lease in Swabi last month. The elite aligned civilians took their cut too. In 2024 the provincial titles committee approved a consortium with a firm called Sky Link Communication for 51 sq km of metals and stone, and another with BM General Order Suppliers for 30 sq km of river gold. In July, KP’s elected assembly ordered a review of every lease in the province. On October 11, Islamabad shut that assembly down and called it a fight against terrorism. Within a week the governor was inviting foreign companies to extract and sell KP’s minerals, and PEMRA had banned TV channels from showing terror attacks. Islamabad’s minerals investment forum opens on November 12. Terrorism and bad governance are the cover story. Governor’s rule is the theft of KP’s copper, gold, lithium, etc, plain and simple.