On November 12, 2025, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s Pakistan Tehreek-e- Insaaf (PTI) of Sohail Afridi convened what it called a grand “peace” jirga in Peshawar. It brought clerics, tribal elders, civil society figures, political activists and students under the banner of dialogue to discuss a worsening security environment amid tensions with the Taliban-led government in Afghanistan.

While the language of peace, consultation and consensus filled the halls of KP government, but it rang hollow for the hybrid government of Islamabad and Rawalpindi. Two student activists from the University of Peshawar, Khubaib Wazir and Adnan Wazir, who attended the jirga never made it back to their hostels. According to local reports and eyewitness accounts, the duo, associated with the Waziristan Student’s Society, were intercepted and abducted on their way from the jirga by men in plain clothes believed to be state security personnel. Since then, they have vanished without charge, warrant or acknowledgment. Their families have received no official notice. Their university has no explanation. The state insists on silence.

In Pakistan, this pattern has a name and is called enforced disappearance. It is a policy so entrenched that it no longer shocks, only confirms. And the irony is brutal. A meeting convened in the name of peace ended with the disappearance of those who believed participation itself was an act of citizenship.

While the family and fellow students continue to seek answers, many state-aligned voices quickly floated insinuations that the two students may have been taken away because of alleged links to the proscribed Pashtun Tahafuz Movement (PTM), a rights movement that emerged from student activism in the former tribal areas. The accusation itself........

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