Resisting the New Colonialism of Minerals and Militarism
In Islamabad’s gleaming hotels, behind security checkpoints and diplomatic smiles, a summit unfolded that had little to do with development—and everything to do with dispossession. The Minerals Investment Forum 2025, held with fanfare and heavy foreign participation, was presented as a milestone in Pakistan’s economic roadmap. But for the Pashtun people of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, it marked something far more dangerous: the transformation of ancestral lands into corporate extraction zones.
The recently passed Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Mines and Minerals Act 2025 deepens this betrayal. Far from empowering local communities, it clears the legal path for corporations and federal authorities to grab indigenous land and resources—often under military oversight and without consent. Beneath its bureaucratic language lies a disturbing truth: the colonial playbook has returned, updated for the global minerals race.
In North Waziristan, the pattern is already visible. Operation Zarb-e-Azb, launched under the guise of counterterrorism in 2014, displaced entire communities. The military-run Frontier Works Organisation (FWO) and companies like Mari Petroleum soon moved in, occupying copper and oil-rich lands. Today, civilians live under surveillance, their children’s education disrupted, and their futures restricted by checkpoints and curfews. The language may have shifted from “security operations” to “investment zones,” but the reality remains one of exclusion, trauma, and resource theft.
To global observers and investors, this moment may look like opportunity. Reports of a phone call between U.S. Secretary of State Mark Rubio and Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar, where access to critical minerals was allegedly tied to improved diplomatic ties, suggest otherwise. This is not partnership—it is pressure. Pakistan is being maneuvered into a new kind of geopolitical subservience, and once again, it is Pashtun soil being sold to the highest bidder.
This is not merely a provincial concern. Across Pakistan, from Gilgit-Baltistan to Sindh, Balochistan, and Azad Kashmir, similar stories emerge: displacement disguised as development, state-backed extraction disguised as reform. In Kurram, people have lived under siege for over 190 days. In Bannu, Lakki Marwat, and Dera Ismail Khan, the war-era violence of the early 2000s has returned in new form.
And yet, as power outages persist in mineral-rich zones, as water grows scarce and forests are cut down, the mainstream narrative continues to celebrate “progress.” The Special Investment Facilitation Council (SIFC), now granted sweeping powers, is at the heart of this trend—a civilian-military alliance tasked with facilitating what can only be described as a new economic occupation.
We, the Pashtun people, reject this paradigm in full. We reject the 2025 KP Mines and Minerals Act. We reject the Minerals Investment Forum as a corporate-colonial venture. Our land is not for sale, and our silence is not your consent.
To foreign investors: do not become complicit. Development without justice is domination. Economic growth that silences native voices is not progress—it is plunder.
What remains of our daily bread must not be taken from us in the name of reform. The mainstream elite must look beyond state press releases and rhetorical shootouts. Truth and justice demand independent investigation, not nationalistic applause.
Now more than ever, Pakistan’s oppressed nationalities must unite. Pashtuns, Baloch, Sindhis, Kashmiris, Gilgitis—we must raise one voice against this extractive order. The fight is not just for minerals—it is for dignity, sovereignty, and the right to exist on our own land.
Down with colonialism. Down with corporate loot. Long live the resistance of the colonized.
Levsa Bayankhail is a member of the PTM International Advocacy Committee. She also serves as the Convener of the Pashtun Security Dialogue at the Indic Researchers Forum and advocates for human and women’s rights. Bayankhail writes for various online newspapers in Denmark and internationally