By Kousar Khan
“A lie, repeated enough, can turn a square into a circle.” Joseph Goebbels perfected this dark art for Hitler, and the world saw the destruction it unleashed. The words by Joseph Goebbels resonates with the contemporary situation of erstwhile FATA.
Joseph Goebbels, Nazi Germany’s Minister of Propaganda, is widely quoted on manipulation. His toxic strategy fueled blind loyalty to Hitler and dragged nations into ruin. Today, Pakistan is witnessing a disturbingly similar playbook. PTI, with its cult-like politics, is weaponizing propaganda, religion, and ethnic fault lines in the same way and nowhere is this more dangerous than in the erstwhile FATA, where militants exploit these lies to tighten their grip.
PTI has consistently played the religious card, and in the ex-FATA, this card is dangerously widened with appeals to Pashtun nationalism. Here, propaganda is deliberately fueling ethnic tensions, framing the state as a “Punjabi oppressor” and the Pashtun population as perpetual victims. This toxic narrative has created fertile ground for militants – the Khawarij – who exploit these sentiments to find safe havens among locals.
The reality is grim: Khawarij embed themselves in villages, manipulate families, and thrive because a significant part of the population has been misled. PTI’s rhetoric against the military, opposing check-posts, intelligence-based operations (IBOs), and security measures, provides indirect legitimacy to these militants.
Just yesterday in Tirah, Khyber, an explosion inside a militant commander’s house killed several of their own, yet within minutes, Khyber’s MNA and all 3 MPA’s rushed to call for protests against the state, without even bothering to verify facts. And guess what? All 4 hails from the cult-party, PTI. This puts a huge question make on leadership of these politicians that puts propaganda above truth and politics above Pakistan.
Tribal belt, once the frontline of the war on terror, is again becoming a breeding ground for extremism because political actors are playing a double game. Militants exploit propaganda that paints every security operation as “anti-Pashtun” and every check post as “Punjabi oppression.” PTI leaders amplify this instead of exposing the real oppressors, the terrorists hiding behind women and children. The result? A dangerously polarized environment where the line between political activism and facilitation of militancy blurs.
The question arises: is PTI deliberately cultivating this anti-Army narrative to polish the image of their cult leader, or is it inadvertently facilitating terrorism? Or perhaps, most dangerously, is it both?
What cannot be denied is that the cost of this political propaganda is being paid in blood by the people of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. The same Pashtun families being manipulated by false narratives are also the ones who suffer when Khawarij set off bombs in markets, mosques, and homes. The same Army that PTI demonizes is the one burying its soldiers while trying to protect civilians from militant attacks.
If history teaches us anything, it is that propaganda unchecked can destroy nations from within. PTI’s current trajectory, echoing both Goebbels’ tactics and militants’ messaging, risks undoing decades of sacrifices made to bring relative peace to ex-FATA. Leaders who should be guiding their people toward stability are instead turning them into pawns of a narrative war designed to weaken the state.
We as a nation must ask itself; will we allow political opportunists to use propaganda as a weapon that strengthens our enemies? Or will we expose and reject these lies before they consume us the way Goebbels’ lies consumed an entire world order?
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