I have spent more years than I care to count tracing the messy political tides of Pakistan, and there is no place that gets under your skin quite like Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. It is a tough and resilient corner of the world where history feels thick enough to touch, and I have always found that the line between a citizen’s anger and a government’s responsibility there is rarely drawn in straight lines. Lately however, watching Chief Minister Sohail Khan Afridi, I have this nagging feeling that something fundamental has broken. We are not just watching standard political rough-and-tumble anymore because it feels like we have swapped proper governance for a bit of street theatre. The leadership seems far more keen on applause than the boring and crucial work of actually running the state. The cost of this performance is high as we are losing the truth and quite frankly neglecting the very people we are meant to serve.

There is no starker example of this mess than what is happening right now in the Tirah Valley. In recent weeks the provincial government and its cheerleaders have kicked up a proper storm. They are aggressively peddling a narrative that the military and the federal government are forcing a mass exodus by kicking people out of their homes. They portray themselves as the last line of defense against a cruel system and have cast themselves as tragic heroes standing between the helpless citizen and a tyrannical machine. It makes for a cracking story doesn’t it? It certainly does the job of........

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