Late in the evening of May 9, a vehicle packed with explosives hit a Police checkpoint in Fateh KhelBannu, in the Pakistani province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Armed men followed. By the time the shooting stopped, as many as 15 police officers had been killed; some of the named victims included officers Rehmat Ayaz and Sanaullah, as well as drivers Niaz Ali and Saadullah Jan. The attack was claimed by Ittehad-ul-Mujahideen Pakistan.
The next morning, the news cycle had continued. The graves remained.
It is tempting to view the bloodshed of May 9 as an isolated horror. That would be dangerously wrong. Of the 2,330 police officers in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa killed since 19701,961 (84 percent) have decreased since 2007. According to Inspector General of Police Zulfiqar Hameed, 159 were killed in 2025 alonein more than 500 attacks.
From the 437 security personnel killed in terror attacks in Pakistan last year174 people – the largest contingent – wore the green and blue of a provincial police force, not the khaki of the army. Most fell in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. The only registered Bannu district 134 attacks against its police, including 27 fatal.
These are not anonymous statistics; these are the men who lead from the front. In January 2023, when the terrorists fled the Sarband police station, Deputy Commissioner of Police Sardar Hussain chased them on foot and was shot down by sniper firealongside gendarmes Irshad and Jehanzeb. In August 2025, Constable Rooh Niaz Khan and three colleagues 40 to 50 attackers resisted the assault on a Bannu checkpoint. In January this year, Ishaq Khan, station officer and six of his men were killed when an IED destroyed their armored personnel carrier in the Gomal area of Tank. In April, when the Domel police station in Bannu was hit by a vehicle suicide bomber, the barricades kept all the officers inside alive, although five civilians, including four members of the same family, were not so lucky.
The list of deaths spans Lakki Marwat, Dera Ismail Khan, Karak, Bajaur and Wana districts. Senior officers also die; Among the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa police officers killed by terrorists are two other Inspector Generals Safwat Ghayur and Ashraf Noor.
The force has also adapted, often without being aware of it. In 2025 alone, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Police conducted 3,277 intelligence operations, arrested 1,300 terrorists and defused 110 improvised explosive devices and 385 grenades. Its dispute resolution councils have resolved more than 6,300 community disputes, a counter-radicalization tool that is quietly more effective than many kinetic operations. In December 2025, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa became the first province in Pakistan to establish a division dedicated to counter-drone at the Nowshera Police Training Center, in response to the wave of quadcopter strikes that hit Bannu in 2025.
And yet, it is this force that the central government of Pakistan has chosen to underpay, underfund and leave exposed. Khyber Pakhtunkhwa has the Lowest police salaries in Pakistan. An agent in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa earns around Rs 69,000 per month. A deputy superintendent in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa earns Rs 184,867; a deputy superintendent in Balochistan earns Rs 453,727, almost two and a half times more. The Inspector General of Police (IGP) of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa has formally written to the chief minister seeking ‘hard zone’ status to bridge the gap, at an annual cost of around Rs 2.2 billion. The Shuhada scheme for Khyber Pakhtunkhwa martyrs, the IGP himself confirmed, is also the lowest in the country.
The most killed Pakistani security force is the cheapest force. Arithmetic is indefensible.
At the same time, the prosecution process collapsed. Out of 100 terrorism cases prosecuted in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa anti-terrorism courts, only 17 end in conviction; thousands more remain under investigation in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa alone, while the National Anti-Terrorism Court’s backlog exceeds 2,200 cases. THE Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Witness Protection Actadopted only in 2021, eight years after Sindh’s version, remains barely operational, with the number of active cases a fraction of that of Punjab.
Three years later 84 worshipers killed in Police Lines mosque in Peshawarthe trial hasn’t even started. The man suspected of facilitating this attack from inside the mosque grounds was a serving police officer of the same forceallegedly paid 200,000 rupees by Jamaat-ul-Ahrar. He was arrested at the end of 2024. The case is still in the preliminary phase.
The reforms required are not exotic. Grant Khyber Pakhtunkhwa the hard zone status that its IGP has formally requested. Standardize the Shuhada program nationally at the highest existing rate, disbursed without political conditions. Restore and close the federal vehicles and equipment withdrawn from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa in October 2025 in the middle of a political conflict in which Bannu’s agents took no part. Procure counter-drone systems for each Western Border Police division. Build a forensic science laboratory in Peshawar. Strengthen the anti-terrorism law so that cases brought before the courts result in convictions.
Khyber Pakhtunkhwa is not the only one bleeding. January 30 Baloch Liberation Army hit a dozen districts of Balochistan simultaneously. In March, the Sindh Anti-Terrorism Department seized 2,000 kg of explosives outside Karachi. But it is in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa that the risk/reward ratio is most obscene. The men buried this week in Bannu were paid less than they should have been for what they did. The least the State owes them, as well as their colleagues who will replace them tomorrow, is the truth about what their lives cost.