Pakistan: Wounds reopen as sectarian clashes flare in border region

Once again, Ali Ghulam receives mourners at his home -- his brother and nephew killed 40 years apart in the same sectarian conflict that was reignited this year in northwest Pakistan, claiming 200 lives since July alone.

Thousands of residents are stranded without food and medicine in parts of remote Kurram district, which borders Afghanistan, as the government struggles to end clashes between Sunnis and Shias stemming from decades-old tensions over farmland.

"Our generations yearn for peace," 72-year-old Ghulam told AFP at his home in Parachinar, the main town and a Shia bastion of the restive district.

The latest flare-up of violence has "reopened wounds" he said, recalling how his brother was killed in an attack in 1987 that also wounded another three of his brothers.

Kurram, known as the "Parrot's Beak" for its protrusion into neighbouring Afghanistan, is bounded by dizzyingly high mountains, the northern flank of which includes the Tora Bora caves where Al Qaeda founder and 9/11 mastermind Osama bin Laden once hid.

Pakistan's northwestern border districts have long been a haven for various militant groups, with militants and weapons able to flow largely unchecked in and out of Afghanistan.

"I have never experienced peace in my life and have no hope my coming generations will live free of fear," Ghulam said.

Tribal and family feuds are common in Pakistan.

But they can be particularly protracted and violent in the mountainous tribal northwest, where communities live by traditional codes of honour and revenge.

The latest round of violence in Kurram erupted in May and intensified in July, when gunmen opened fire on a council of elders attempting to settle the latest round of disagreements over land.

Various truces announced since then have held for only weeks or days at a time.

More than 300 shops and over 200 homes in Sunni areas have been destroyed, often by fire, and hundreds of families have fled.

Pakistan is a Sunni-majority country with Shias making up 10 to 15 percent of the population, or at least 25 million people.

Members of the two sects have periodically clashed in Kurram, where Shias are particularly vulnerable as they must pass through Sunni-majority neighbourhoods to access essential services.

Kurram's location on the frontier of Pakistan and Afghanistan put it at the heart of the religious and political upheavals of the last five decades.

In 1979, Shias led a revolution in Iran and later that year the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan, prompting Sunni hardliners there to rise up against them.

"It became a hub for arms supply to Afghanistan, including landmines, mortar shells, and weapons of all kinds. Every household in Kurram had a stockpile of weapons," Malik Attaullah Khan, a local tribal elder told AFP.

Khan, who signed a 2007 agreement aimed at bringing peace to Kurram, criticised the government for failing to "fulfil in its responsibilities" in enforcing land settlements.

The ethnic Pashtun heartland was merged into the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province in 2018, but the Pakistani state maintains limited control in the merged districts.

In rural areas of Pakistan, villages often bypass the formal justice system and men-only "jirgas" or councils made up of respected village elders resolve disputes, sometimes in the form of fines or land reallocation.