On Saturday, as the holy month of Ramadan drew to a close, in the shadowed hills of Katlang, Mardan, the Pakistani military, under Shehbaz Sharif’s federal government, unleashed a deadly strike—eleven lives extinguished, shepherds, women, and children of the Gujjar community reduced to “collateral damage.” The official line touts an “intelligence- based operation” against militants, but locals cry “drone strike,” their anguish echoing through the Shamozai valley. The federal government, led by a military that has long treated its people as expendable, bears the weight of the trigger.

The military’s disdain for civilian lives is no surprise. This is the same institution that has, for decades, danced to the tune of foreign governments, unaccountable and unapologetic, whether under dictators or figurehead democrats like Sharif. Drone strikes, secret ops, and “neutralized targets” are its currency—Pakistani flesh is the price it pays without a blink. The shepherds of Katlang—Hazrat Bilal, Noor Muhammad, Wazir, Amroz Khan, Shahazada alias Shah Da—were just another tally in its grim ledger. That the federal government could bomb its own, then shrug it off as the cost of war, is as predictable as it is vile. But the PTI provincial government, led by Khan’s heirs in KP, had a choice. It chose........

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