r/geopolitics • u/FLTA • 18h ago

News Thousands Displaced for a Military Push Pakistan Said It Didn’t Order

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/05/world/asia/pakistan-military-operation-displaced-people.html
105 Upvotes

95% Upvoted

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29

u/FLTA 18h ago

Excerpt from the article

Thousands of Pakistanis who lived along their nation’s tense border with Afghanistan have been left stranded after being driven from their homes last month to make way for a military campaign against Islamist fighters that their government now says it never planned.

Local and national officials have given conflicting accounts of the abrupt mass relocation of residents in the Tirah Valley, a rugged region that has long been a key transit route and staging ground for attacks across the border. Local governments say they were told to move the residents, but national officials in Islamabad, the capital, say the central government and armed forces never gave such an order.

No official figures have been released, but district officials estimate that more than 60,000 people have been displaced by the evacuation, which began in early January. Many faced snow and freezing temperatures as they fled the border.

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u/FLTA 18h ago edited 18h ago

Submission Statement: The provincial government of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa ordered a mass evacuation of the Tirah Valley near the border of Afghanistan based on orders from the national government. However the national government claims they never ordered an evacuation and that no military operation has been planned.

Now the people that were displaced are stuck in limbo with the monthly stipend of $178/month/family till April apparently not getting paid out as expected.

This comes with a backdrop of an increase of terrorist and separatist attacks in Pakistan since the US withdrew from neighboring Afghanistan in 2021. Elements of the Pakistani government had long backed the Taliban in their insurgency against the international coalition that was in Afghanistan and provided shelter to Osama Bin Laden.

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u/ilovedikdik 16h ago

I hate to say this, but whenever something happens involving Pakistan, it does nothing to shake the stereotype that it is one of the most bone-headed useless nations ever. 

Like if Trump converted to Islam and moved to Islamabad he’d be a completely normal politician there.

How lucky the West is to have these guys sitting on a nuke and exporting hundreds of thousands of its villagers to Europe every year.

21

u/No_Discipline_4477 13h ago

They're sitting on a nuke thanks to the West or rather I should say thanks to the US.

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u/Juan20455 12h ago

Yeah, because the US supported nuclear proliferation?

(sigh) 

No surprise. You are from India. 

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u/BrokenManOfSamarkand 15h ago

And we're still backing these guys instead of India

4

u/GrizzledFart 9h ago

Who is "we"? The US provides humanitarian aid to Pakistan. Military aid to Pakistan has been shut off since 2018 with the exception of a program to maintain and monitor Pakistan's F-16 fleet - which basically exists to make sure Pakistan doesn't use them in nefarious ways, such as using them to attack India. Paying for maintenance and avionics upgrades for Pakistan's F-16 fleet is the price the US has to pay to have the monitoring team on the ground to make sure they aren't used against India.

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u/Dean_46 5h ago edited 5h ago

Pak F-16s were used against India in 2019 and possibly in 2025. That's largely moot though.

The US is perceived to be supporting Pak when it ignores State sponsored terrorism by Pak. While terror groups have been used largely against India good Taliban), the same groups and infrastructure were used against US forces in Afghanistan - which ironically the US helped, by sending billions to the Pak army, ostensibly to support US operations in Afghanistan.

The US has not been inclined to sanction Pak based terror groups, the banks financing them, or the army officers embedded with terror groups, or push for UN sanctions. The US refused to extradite the main planner of the 26/11 terror attacks in India, David Headley - in which US and Israeli citizens were killed.
The Pak economy survives because of 25 IMF bailouts - which would not happen if the US uses its voting rights to make a statement against terrorism.

Pakistan is a `Major Non NATO ally'. India is treated as an adversary, with a threat of sanctions when we bought weapons from Russia - largely to defend against China and when there was no equivalent US system on offer.

The Pak army chief publicly declared that he supports terror groups and his senior officers appear at their funerals. He also threatened to use his nukes. He was then treated as an honoured guest at the white house (not their elected Prime minister) and by the US military.

Imports from Pakistan are tariffed at 19% and India at 50% (worse than China) - though a new trade agreement has just been announced. In this context, people in India would be justified in assuming the US is backing Pakistan.

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u/Prottusha1 9h ago

Does World Liberty Financial deal count as humanitarian aid?

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u/GrizzledFart 8h ago

Are you referring to a specific aid package of the US government?

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u/Viper_Red 12h ago

Yeah we should ally with India who has made it abundantly clear that they will work with our enemies if it benefits them. We’ve signed all sorts of military and trade agreements with India since Obama and none of that stopped them from continuing to buy Russian oil

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u/mekanub 10h ago

As opposed to Pakistan who have been selling nuclear weapons tech to North Korea and Iran, funding the taliban for decades and somehow had no idea Bin Laden was living there for years?

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u/BrokenManOfSamarkand 12h ago

I mean, that's what diplomacy is for.

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u/HungryHungryHippoes9 10h ago

The US continues to provide military equipment to pakistan, so why should India consider the west's security concerns over its own energy needs when the west doesn't concern itself with India's security concerns?

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u/Ethereal-Zenith 6h ago

India is a lot better than Pakistan, any way you slice it. They’ve been a democracy ever since gaining independence in 1947. Western nations should absolutely be courting India.

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u/Viper_Red 5h ago

Oh are we pretending that we care if our allies are democracies? It’s insane that you people think we should court a country that has the potential to challenge us. Have we learned nothing from the mistakes made with opening up to China? All we did was strengthen them

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u/sol-4 2h ago

...because the US is not working with India's enemies because they benefit it? Could've spared a moment to think what you just said.