Labels Are Not Evidence

Pakistan’s terrorism rhetoric, its frontier provinces, and the standard of proof the state set for itself

In late September, Information Minister Attaullah Tarar described the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf as the “B-team” of the banned Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan, and later as its “C-team.” He also accused the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government under Chief Minister Sohail Afridi of facilitating militants. The remarks came days before PTI’s planned march on Islamabad. PTI rejects the charge outright and has told its supporters not to carry weapons.

It is worth being precise about what this is. It is not a proscription, a court finding, or a published investigation. It is political language, delivered by a minister, about a rival party, in the middle of a confrontation. Language of that kind deserves scrutiny precisely because it is cheap to produce and expensive for the people who absorb it.

The standard Pakistan set for itself
Nobody seriously disputes that the TTP is a terrorist organization. Pakistan banned it on 25 August 2008 under the Anti-Terrorism Act, and the government of the day justified the ban by pointing to a series of suicide attacks that had killed more than 1,200 people, the group’s own claims of responsibility, and a named leader operating from South Waziristan. The United States designated the TTP a Foreign Terrorist Organization in 2010. The UN Security Council’s 1267 sanctions committee listed it in 2011. Each of those decisions rested on specific acts.

Pakistan has applied the same logic since. When it banned Tehreek-e-Labbaik in 2021, and again in October 2025, the notifications cited concrete violence: deaths of police officers and bystanders, arson, attacks on public property. Whatever one thinks of those decisions, they followed a recognizable pattern: name the acts, then name the organization.

Measured against that pattern, the accusation against PTI has not yet met its own country’s bar. No financing trail has been published. No command links, no joint operations, no attacks claimed by or attributed to the party as an organization. “Similar views” and “looks like a commander” are characterizations, not evidence. If the state believes it has more, it knows how to present it. It did so in 2008.

A question the government should answer
There is also a tension that officials should be asked to resolve. If the argument is that militancy threatens not only Pakistan but Western capitals, then evidence linking a party’s overseas supporters to that threat should be put before the governments that host them. That is how the TTP listings were secured. If no such evidence exists, the label is domestic messaging and should be understood as such. It cannot be a transnational security threat when that helps the argument and a figure of speech when proof is requested.

Pakistan understands this standard when it is on the receiving end. At the UN General Assembly, the prime minister warned India that any attempt to divert Pakistan’s water would be treated as an act of war, and Pakistan has argued for years that the Indus Waters Treaty is a binding legal arrangement, not a matter of discretion. A state that insists on rules and proof in its disputes abroad stands on firm ground asking for the same at home.

Why the words matter on the ground
Rhetoric is not harmless just because it never becomes law. Labels set the threshold of suspicion. They shape which communities are stopped at checkpoints, whose raids are treated as routine, and whose complaints are heard sympathetically. Pashtun communities in the former tribal areas and in KP have raised this for years, notably through the Pashtun Tahafuz Movement, pointing to enforced disappearances, deaths in custody and collective punishment. Human rights organizations, including the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, have reported similar patterns. A political vocabulary that casts a province’s elected government as a terrorist auxiliary does not create those abuses, but it lowers the cost of committing them and raises the cost of objecting.

That cost falls on a population already under pressure. The information minister himself cited 2,456 terror attacks in KP this year. Its residents are among the most affected by militancy and, too often, among the first suspected in the response to it.

The resource question
There is a second reason the frontier deserves attention, and it concerns what lies beneath it. The merged tribal districts and KP hold substantial mineral deposits, and reporting has put the number of dormant or unregulated mines in the tribal areas at around 3,500. Pakistan’s total mineral wealth has been estimated at more than $200 billion. In June, Pakistan reportedly sent its first enriched rare earth shipment to the United States under a $500 million framework, routed through the Special Investment Facilitation Council’s single-window mechanism.

Against that background, the KP Mines and Minerals Bill of 2025 became a flashpoint. Critics, including allies and opposition parties, argued that it left the classification of strategic minerals to executive notification with weak oversight, and that it created a special force to police mining in tribal areas. Rights lawyer Moniza Kakar called it “recolonisation.” After the backlash, the bill was halted in January 2026. Whatever its drafting merits, the controversy showed how little trust exists between the frontier and the institutions that would manage its wealth.

Balochistan offers the cautionary precedent. Gas, copper and gold there have long coexisted with a heavy security presence and persistent grievance. The pattern is not partisan: Balochistan and Sindh are both governed by the PPP, which supports the federal coalition. KP is the only province governed by the main opposition party, and it is also the one where the terrorism label is being applied to the elected government.

Structure, not conspiracy
I do not argue that the PTI-TTP language was designed to clear the way for mining. I have seen no evidence of that, and an argument that depends on proving intent is an argument that can be dismissed. The case rests on structure. When a region is framed mainly as a security problem, when its resources are being fast-tracked for geopolitical deals, when decisions about “strategic” minerals are made far from the people living above them, and when its political representatives are labeled as suspect, the conditions for the resource curse are assembled whether or not anyone intends them. Extraction without benefit-sharing leaves poverty deeper than before, and a population told it is a security threat has few avenues to object.

What would help
Four steps would not require anyone to concede anything about PTI. First, if the government has evidence of links between a political party and a proscribed organization, it should publish it or put it before a court. If it does not, officials should stop using the language. Second, any move to proscribe a party or its leaders should rest on evidence tested in an independent forum, not announced at press conferences. Third, a mineral policy for the frontier should guarantee provincial consent, transparent contracts and a defined revenue share for host districts before extraction scales up. Fourth, complaints of checkpoint abuse and enforced disappearance should have a credible, independent mechanism for investigation.

Pakistan has fought a real and costly war against the TTP, and it has earned the right to demand seriousness about terrorism. It has also set its own evidentiary standard, in 2008, in 2021 and in 2025. Holding every accusation, including those against its political opponents, to that standard is not a favor to PTI. It is how a state protects the meaning of the word “terrorist” for the cases that deserve it.