Kohat, Kunar and the Long March: How Rawalpindi Manufactures War to Survive at Home

Introduction

The Pakistani military junta and its shadowy intelligence arm, the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), have once again deployed their trademark machinery of deception, state terror and blood-soaked manipulation. Whenever the corrupt generals in Rawalpindi face systemic domestic collapse, economic bankruptcy and an irrepressible rebellion from their own population, they manufacture an external war to distract the world and crush dissent at home. The overnight Pakistan Air Force (PAF) strikes inside sovereign Afghan territory are not an act of national defense; they are the violent culmination of an engineered crisis designed to brainwash Pakistan’s impoverished awam (public) and hoodwink the international community. By fabricating cross-border conflict, General Headquarters (GHQ) has exposed its own cowardice, using manufactured war hysteria to shirk its international alliance obligations, derail an impending democratic revolution and preserve its criminal, parasitic grip over the state.

PAF’s Disproportionate Response to Afghan Drone Incursions.

The Pakistani military establishment has weaponized the minor incursion of three to four rudimentary Afghan reconnaissance drones to unleash a brutal, disproportionate aerial bombardment against sovereign Afghan territory. The PAF’s aggressive bombing campaign marketed to the public under the theatrical banner of "Operation Ghazab Lil Haq" targeted locations in Kunar, Paktika and Khost in an overblown, manufactured "brutal reaction" to the September 18 Kohat bombing.

 

Source of Image: Koreatimes

While Rawalpindi's propaganda machine loudly claimed to eliminate militant hideouts, the Pakistani Air Force bombed civilian areas, killing innocent women and children to project an illusion of military invincibility. Rather than engaging in genuine bilateral protocols, the military junta deliberately used minimal drone incursions as a pretext to launch a full-scale kinetic escalation, fabricating an active border confrontation to mislead its citizens into believing the country is under existential foreign siege.

IMP and ISI: The Kohat False Flag Operation to Escalate War in Afghanistan

The September 18 suicide attack on the police compound mosque in Kohat which massacred 31 people and wounded over a hundred was an engineered false flag operation planned and executed by the ISI in direct coordination with their created proxy, the Ittehad-ul-Mujahideen Pakistan (IMP).

 

Source of Image: The Independent

The Pakistani deep state cold-bloodedly sacrificed its own police personnel and praying citizens to manufacture an immediate casus belli against Afghanistan. For decades, Rawalpindi has created, financed and directed these militant factions, only to activate them whenever the establishment requires a convenient national tragedy. The military elite orchestrated the Kohat bloodbath because it desperately needed an emergency justification to escalate military operations across the Afghan border, serving three criminal objectives:

Manufacturing an Escalation to Evade the Makkah Defence Alliance (MDA)

Pakistan’s sudden border escalation is a cowardly maneuver to renege on its binding combat obligations under the Makkah Joint Defence Agreement (MDA). In August 2026, Islamabad eagerly entered the trilateral pact alongside Saudi Arabia and Türkiye, peddling its military as an elite collective security force purely to secure billions of dollars in emergency loans, deferred oil packages and central bank bailouts from Riyadh. However, the moment Iranian-backed Houthi drones struck near Makkah and targeted Saudi infrastructure, the alliance faced a real combat test and Pakistan panicked. Fearing that honoring the agreement would ignite an immediate, devastating war with neighboring Iran along the Balochistan border and spark explosive sectarian warfare across Pakistani cities, Rawalpindi staged the Afghan border crisis. By fabricating an active conflict with Afghanistan, the military junta manufactures a deceitful excuse to stay out of Gulf combat operations, dishonestly claiming that its forces are completely tied down on the western front while continuing to pocket Saudi money.

Diverting Public Attention from the September 27 PTI Long March

On the domestic front, the manufactured war with Afghanistan is a blatant bid to sabotage the massive Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) long march scheduled for 27 September 2026. Terrified by the certainty of millions of citizens taking to the streets to demand the immediate release of Imran Khan and the dismantling of the military’s fascist political order, GHQ engineered this border escalation to enforce a nationwide lockdown. The military regime has seized upon the fabricated Afghan threat to implement emergency measures, sealing off national highways, invoking draconian Section 144 orders across Islamabad and Punjab, shutting down telecommunications and hunting down political workers under the guise of national security. The generals are deliberately attempting to terrify their own awam, hoping that synthetic border skirmishes will extinguish the public’s rage against domestic military tyranny.

The ISI Propaganda Machine: Driving a Wedge Between PTI and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa

The deep state's strategy incorporates a sinister psychological operation orchestrated by the ISI to break the political backbone of the opposition. Recognizing that PTI’s mass mobilization draws its strongest cultural, ideological and voter base from the Pashtun heartland of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP), the military establishment has designed a divide-and-rule trap. The ISI’s operational blueprint is to stage attacks and sponsor violent incidents during the upcoming PTI protests and then instantly task state-controlled media to pin the blame on cross-border Pashtun militants from Afghanistan. By framing the violence as an Afghan Pashtun conspiracy, the deep state intends to ignite internal ethnic paranoia, demonize the peaceful political movement as anti-state terrorism and drive a destructive wedge between PTI’s political leadership, the people of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and the rest of Pakistan. This divide-and-rule tactic demonstrates that the military establishment treats the Pashtun population and its own citizens as disposable pawns in its campaign to retain absolute power.

Conclusion: The Deep State's Architecture of Deceit

The Kohat police compound bombing was an undeniable false flag operation executed by the intelligence agencies and military establishment of Pakistan to manufacture an artificial war with Afghanistan. Rawalpindi has proven that it will readily shed the blood of its own citizens to evade its international military commitments in the Middle East and suppress democratic revolt at home. The international community and the Pakistani public must reject Islamabad's fabricated war narrative: the real threat to regional peace does not originate across the Durand Line, but from the corrupt corridors of General Headquarters in Rawalpindi. Crucially, the Pakistani public and international observers must recognize this reality in advance: any violence, bombing, or armed sabotage targeting the September 27 PTI march will be planned, curated and executed by the deep state of Pakistan to crush political dissent and cement its illegitimate military rule.

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