by Nilesh Kunwar

“It is important to understand (that) we are just bombing our people, just think about the immorality of bombing villages with the women and children.” - Imran Khan, PTI Chief

“This (drone attack) has become the new normal in our area.” - Hayat Wazir, PTM member, May 2025 Hurmaz Village, North Waziristan.

“Recurrent drone strikes in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa signal alarming disregard for civilian life.” - Amnesty International statement, June 2025

A Barbaric Airstrike

While the recent missile attack on Matre Dara village of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KPK) carried out by the Pakistan Air Force (PAF) in which at least 30 people including women and children were killed may have come as a shocker to the uninitiated, but for Pakistan watchers it was just a replay of Rawalpindi’s cavalier approach and total disregard for the safety of Pakistani citizens while carrying out anti-terrorist operations.

As part of its damage control effort, the Pakistan army’s media wing Inter Services Public Relations (ISPR) claimed that the houses targeted by eight Chinese made JS 6 missiles were actually being used by the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) rebel group to fabricate improvised explosive devices (IEDs). To buttress this dubious claim, it even claimed that two high profile TTP commanders (Aman Gul and Masood Khan) overseeing this enterprise along with 14 TTP fighters had been neutralised in this attack.

Unconvincing Narrative

Even if one accepts ISPR’s unsubstantiated claim that TTP lost two commanders and 14 fighters in this attack, it still emerges that 14 innocent civilians were also killed in the Matre Dara airstrike carried out by expert PAF pilots flying the much acclaimed J17 fighter jets of Chinese origin and using Chinese made precision guided munitions (PGMs) believed to hit the targets with pin point accuracy.

ISPR wants the world to believe that the innocent villagers of Matre Dara killed in the PAF air strike died because they were being used by TTP terrorists as ‘human shields’ and were exterminated, not by missiles launched by PAF but not due the secondary explosion that occurred when explosive material used to make IEDs stored within these dwelling units exploded after being hit by missiles.

In short, Pakistan army’s media wing has tried to suggest that the death of civilians came under the purview of ‘collateral damage’, and as the deceased civilians were being used as human shields by TTP their extinction was unavoidable. However, as is its wont, ISPR invariably ends up tying itself in knots by relying on rhetorical overdrive in order to conceal the truth.

Purely for the sake of discussion, let’s accept ISPR’s account of the Matre Dara airstrike. Since there is no mention of any intelligence or execution failure, it would be fair to assume that Rawalpindi had specific and extremely accurate information regarding the target. Hence it’s axiomatic that definite information of TTP using civilians as human shields too would have been available.

So, it would be logical to conclude that the likelihood and anticipated quantum of collateral damage would have come up for serious deliberation when this airstrike was being planned and subsequently approved. Going by ISPR’s claim, collateral damage in terms of civilian deaths during this operation accounts for nearly 47 percent of the total fatalities and this raises a very pertinent question-was the airstrike that resulted in deaths of so many innocent men, women and children morally justified?

However, since the Pakistan army has a long recorded history of exhibiting extreme apathy towards the people of KPK and Balochistan, expecting Rawalpindi to ensure safety of its own countrymen by postponing an airstrike or considering other alternatives that would not result in such massive civilian fatalities would be futile.

Dubious Deal

While there are several instances that explicitly expose Rawalpindi’s lack of concern for civilians in KPK and Balochistan, one illustrative incident relates to a secret agreement between Gen Pervez Musharraf and Washington. Sealed in 2004, this shady deal covertly allowed armed CIA drones the covert use of Pakistani airspace -a decision that would terrorise the residents of KP and result in the death of several hundred innocent Pakistani nationals (400 as per a UN report and 407- 963 as determined by the Bureau of Investigative Journalists).

As it was evident that this arrangement would result in the death of Pakistani citizens, the CIA official negotiating this deal was worried about the secrecy of this clandestine drone programme being compromised. However, Gen Musharraf reassured him saying, “In Pakistan things fall out of the sky all the time.” Doesn’t such a callous remark by a Pakistan army chief on a programme that would go on to claim several Pakistani lives reflect Rawalpindi’s lack of concern for the safety of civilians?

Targeting Civilians

In March, nine innocent members of a shepherd community were killed in a Pakistan army drone attack on Babozai village in Katlang area of KPK. While the KPK provincial government spokesperson Barrister Muhammad Ali Saif tried to defend this drone strike by claiming that it was “based on credible information about the presence of terrorists,” he nevertheless admitted that “unarmed people were killed in the operation, including women and children.”

In its June 24, 2025 report, Amnesty International (AI) has observed with concern that Last Friday’s (June 20) drone strike, killing one child, is part of an alarming series of attacks which have escalated since March of this year (and) use of drones and quad-copters to conduct attacks resulting in unlawful killing of civilians violates international law.” And its assessment that “Reports that the strikes have hit homes and volleyball games indicate a reckless disregard for civilian life,” leaves no doubts about Rawalpindi’s abject apathy towards its fellow citizens.

In an undated video that surfaced on social media in 2019, PTI chief Imran Khan can be heard saying, “Our army (is) bombing people in Balochistan; how can we bomb our own people, is there any army you are bombing? It is our own people with their children, but it is important to understand that we are just bombing our people, just think about the immorality of bombing villages with the women and children.” Though this video recording predates Khan’s tenure as Prime Minister, it does expose Rawalpindi’s repulsive underbelly.

Study In Contrast

Although a case of comparing chalk with cheese, it may yet be worthwhile to examine the Indian army’s counter terrorism strategy and the manner it conducts anti-terrorism operations with what the Pakistan army is following. For one, even though J&K is experiencing a proxy war sponsored by Rawalpindi, unlike its Pakistani counterpart, the Indian army implicitly follows a stringent ‘minimum use of force’ policy.

While the Pakistan army relies on indiscriminate use of ‘area weapons’ and stand-off attacks using aerial means and heavy artillery, the Indian army doesn’t- simply because munitions thus delivered have an inherent ‘circular error probability’ and hence cause widespread destruction and an illustrative example is the elimination of all three perpetrators of the April 22 Pahalgam carnage.

Thanks to its sustained efforts, the Indian army was able to apprehend locals who in exchange of money were supplying food to these terrorists. Even though the India army had the capability to neutralise these terrorists through an array of extremely accurate standoff weapons, due to the omnipresent one percent probability of some nomads being present in their immediate vicinity or the remote likelihood of mistaken identity, the Indian army decided to use its commandos to close-in and eliminate the terrorists.

Since the terrorists responsible for the Pahalgam massacre had taken refuge in the thickly forested Dachigam National Park and Dara areas, many military analysts would opine that establishing contact with the heavily armed terrorists was suicidal. But since safety of fellow countrymen is paramount and an article of faith for the rank and file of the Indian army, the terrorists were ultimately killed in a close quarter encounter.

KPKs Killing Fields

Details of a few recent drone strikes carried out by the Pakistan army that caused civilian casualties:

• September 2024- one civilian killed and three injured in Sararogha Tehsil of South Waziristan
• March 29- 11 civilians killed in Katlang, Mardan district, KPK.
• May 19- four children killed and five other injured in Hurmuz, Mir Ali, North Waziristan.
• May 28- 22 civilians injured at a volleyball match venue in Wana, South Waziristan.
• June 20- one child killed and five other injured in Makeen Tehsil, South Waziristan.

So, while Pakistan army chief Field Marshal Syed Asim Munir may repeatedly boast of how the Pakistan army would defeat terrorism with cooperation of the people, the hostile attitude of his soldiers towards the local population in KPK and Balochistan don’t inspire much confidence.

Au contraire, Rawalpindi’s cavalier ways of conducting anti-terrorist operations and concealing its complicity in causing civilian casualties by passing these off as collateral damage may fool the world but not the locals and this is unsoldierly action is not only further alienating the public but also creating a hostile environment in which terrorism will definitely flourish.

Nilesh Kunwar is a retired Indian Army Officer who has served in Jammu & Kashmir, Assam, Nagaland and Manipur. He is a keen ‘Kashmir-Watcher,’ and after retirement is pursuing his favourite hobby of writing for newspapers, journals and think-tanks. Views expressed above are the author's own