13/04/2025
DECLARATION OF PASHTUNS REGARDING THE COLONIAL MINERALS SUMMIT ISLAMABAD 2025 AND KHYBER PAKHTUNKHWA MINES AND MINERALS ACT 2025.
In a bold and unified voice, the Pashtun people categorically reject the so-called Minerals Investment Forum 2025 held in Islamabad and the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government Mines and Minerals Act 2025, which
together represent a dangerous escalation in the corporate and colonial plunder of Pakhtunkhwa’s land and resources.
Echoing the historical memory of the 1885 Berlin Conference—the notorious gathering that launched the Scramble for Africa—the Islamabad summit is not a development dialogue but a colonial-style assembly aimed at opening the gates for systematic exploitation of native’s lands.
In a disturbing development, U.S. Secretary of State Mark Rubio, in a phone call with Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar, reportedly stressed that improved Pak-U.S. relations depend on American access to Pakistan’s deposits of critical minerals. Once again, the proverbial counter-terrorism rhetoric is being used to criminalize the natives and legitimize the looting of the peripheries.
A HISTORY OF PLUNDER, A FUTURE OF RESISTANCE
“Historically, resource extraction in the Global South has never uplifted indigenous or native communities. Instead, it has dispossessed, displaced, and devastated them,” sub-Saharan Africa is the prime example.
The extractive logic being pushed today has four brutal outcomes:
Dispossession, displacement, militarization and ecocide.
In North Waziristan, the 2014 military operation Zarb-e-Azb paved the way for corporate occupation. A copper mine was handed to the military-run FWO and Mari Petroleum seized lands rich in oil and gas— displacing entire communities who now live under constant surveillance. Even basic civic activities like matriculation exams have been cancelled under the guise of “security threats”.
“This is not an isolated case. Across ex-FATA and Pakhtunkhwa, mineral extraction and military occupation go hand in hand—wrapped in the sacred narrative of the ‘War on Terror.’”
PASHTUNKHWA: FROM WAR THEATRE TO EXTRACTION ZONE
Since 2002, the so-called War on Terror has functioned as a war on Pashtuns—to break their spirit, restrict their movement, rob them of their land, voice, and future.
Today, the ground reality includes:
Target killings, staged encounters, unnecessary civilian shootouts, enforced disappearances,
Death squads, military checkpoints, blockades, roads closures, curfews and security sieges.
*Kurram under blockade for 190 days
*Bannu, Lakki Marwat, Dera Ismail Khan and Tank resembling ex-FATA of 2002.
*Power outages despite generating electricity.
*Water scarcity worsening
*Environmental destruction intensifying.
All while Pakhtunkhwa’s minerals are being paraded in luxury halls of Islamabad for foreign investors.
A NATIONAL PATTERN OF ECOCIDE
The Pashtun declaration situates this plunder within a nations pattern of exploitation:
*Diamer Bhasha Dam protests in Chilas.
*Peasants of Bhit Shah Sindh rejecting canal projects.
*22-hour load shedding in Gilgit-Baltistan
*Baloch literally on highways against brutal oppression.
*Kashmiris continuing their struggle for dignity and rights.
*Under slogans like “Green Pakistan” and the unchecked power of the SIFC (Special Investment Facilitation Council), a new wave of corporate land grabs is being launched—backed by military authority and neoliberal greed.
The PTI-Government amendments to the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Mines and Minerals Act 2025 further legalize this dispossession, giving federal and corporate actors a free hand to exploit even tourist sites and community lands.
Even according to UN, indigenous or native peoples have the right on their ancestral lands and resources which they have owned or acquired.
PASHTUN PEOPLE'S STAND
“We, the Pashtun people, categorically reject the Islamabad Minerals Investment Forum 2025,” the declaration states.
“We reject the colonial-style amendments to the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Mines and Minerals Act 2025, designed to legalize the exploitation and plunder of our resources.”
SIFC (Special Investment Facilitation Council) and the amendments in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Mines and Minerals Act 2025 is clear cut attempt to revert back to the controversial ‘One Unit Scheme ‘of 1954.
WE DECLARE :
Our land and minerals are not for sale.
We reject all forms of corporate and colonial exploitation.
We warn foreign investors and multinational companies: Do not become complicit in the dispossession of our people.
“What remains of our daily bread must not be snatched from us in the name of ‘development.’”
We also ask the mainstream that such colonial garb never going to end the perennial debt trap as the officialdom says since years.
The mainstream or chattering classes sitting in glass houses need to investigate and look beyond the ISPR narrative and reporting. They need to look beyond the Pakistani media reporting in which the holy guardian had daily sent some bad guys to hell. Such shootouts need proper investigation and independent reporting.
A CALL FOR UNITY
The declaration ends with a rallying cry for all oppressed nationalities and peripheries to stand together:
“It is time for the peripheries to unite—Pashtuns, Baloch, Sindhis, Kashmiris, Gilgitis, and others—to resist this endless cycle of violence, dispossession, and displacement. We must raise a collective voice against this new extractive order imposed upon us.”
DOWN WITH COLONIALISM. DOWN WITH CORPORATE LOOT. LONG LIVE THE RESISTANCE OF THE COLONIZED.
