Manzoor Pashteen and Amnesty International

Human-rights advocacy is credible only when it applies one moral standard to every victim and one evidentiary standard to every actor. Amnesty International’s criticism of Pakistan’s March 16 counterterrorism strike in Kabul therefore deserves a wider examination. Amnesty has called for an investigation, arguing that the strike on the Omid drug rehabilitation centre may amount to a war crime. Pakistan rejects that conclusion, maintaining that its operation targeted military and terrorist-support infrastructure in self-defence. These competing accounts should be investigated, but the incident cannot be discussed as though Pakistan’s security crisis began with its response rather than with the terrorism that preceded it.

Pakistan’s losses cannot be treated as a footnote. Pakistani sources place the cumulative death toll from terrorism at more than 94,000, including civilians, police officers, soldiers, teachers, religious scholars and children. Behind that number are families destroyed by suicide bombings, attacks on schools and mosques, assassinations of tribal elders and repeated assaults in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan. Pakistan also endured an exceptionally violent 2025, when conflict-related deaths rose sharply, and hundreds of civilians and security personnel were killed. Any human-rights analysis that begins only when Pakistan uses force produces a distorted record.

This is where Manzoor Pashteen’s rhetoric requires scrutiny. He has every constitutional right to raise legitimate grievances concerning Pashtun communities, demand due process and seek accountability for alleged abuses. Yet rights-based politics loses credibility when criticism falls overwhelmingly on the state’s response while terrorist organizations, their financiers and their cross-border sanctuaries receive far less attention. The question is not whether state institutions should be accountable; they must be. The question is whether accountability is demanded consistently or selectively used to portray counterterrorism itself as persecution.

Pakistan’s Armed Forces are fighting terrorist organizations, not the Pashtun people. Pashtuns have been among the principal victims of militant violence, displacement and intimidation, while thousands of Pashtun soldiers and police personnel have died protecting their communities. Recasting the conflict as a confrontation between the state and an ethnicity is dangerously misleading. It erases Pashtun victims of the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, weakens social cohesion and provides propaganda value to militants who survive by converting security operations into ethnic grievances.

The same evidentiary discipline must apply to allegations about foreign sponsorship. Claims that Pashteen or networks around him receive support from India’s Research and Analysis Wing, Afghanistan’s General Directorate of Intelligence or associated intermediaries are extremely serious. Such allegations should be tested through admissible evidence, financial trails and lawful judicial processes, not repeated as settled fact. But the reverse standard is equally unacceptable: allegations against Pakistan’s institutions cannot become unquestionable truths merely because they circulate through social media or advocacy networks. Evidence cannot be optional depending on who is accused.

Amnesty’s findings warrant attention. Its investigation reportedly used satellite imagery, more than 60 photographs and videos, and interviews with people associated with the Kabul facility. The United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan independently verified at least 269 civilian deaths and 122 injuries. Yet Amnesty’s assessment is not a judicial verdict. Open-source material and witness testimony may establish important facts, but they do not necessarily reveal classified intelligence, targeting assessments or the operational context available before an attack. This is why an independent and technically competent investigation is preferable to instant political certainty.

Pakistan, however, cannot rely solely on national-security assertions. If it maintains that the site had been converted into military or terrorist-support infrastructure, it should disclose as much corroborating material as operational security permits. Accountability strengthens legitimate counterterrorism. A transparent review can distinguish between a lawful target, an intelligence failure, disproportionate force and deliberate wrongdoing, while preventing civilian casualties from being exploited to delegitimize Pakistan’s entire security campaign.

Accountability must also begin before the retaliatory strike. It must examine the attacks that killed Pakistanis, the commanders who ordered them, the sanctuaries that protected them, the training facilities that prepared fighters and the weapons routes that supplied them. The United Nations lists the TTP as a terrorist entity, while Pakistan has repeatedly raised the threat of cross-border militancy in international forums. Ignoring that infrastructure while examining only Pakistan’s response presents half the evidence and encourages a predetermined conclusion.

Human rights belong to Pakistanis too. The child murdered in a classroom, the constable killed at a checkpoint, the worshipper targeted in a mosque and the labourer executed on a roadside possess the same human dignity as civilians harmed during military action. Their deaths do not excuse violations of law, but neither can allegations of violations erase the state’s duty to protect society from organized terrorism. A principled position must defend civilian protection and the legitimate right of self-defence.

Selective outrage is not universal advocacy. Manzoor Pashteen, Amnesty International and Pakistan’s institutions should all be held to consistent standards: verifiable evidence, legal accountability, recognition of every victim and unequivocal condemnation of terrorism. Pakistan must investigate credible allegations and minimize civilian harm, but international advocacy must also confront the networks that have spilled Pakistani blood for decades. Anything less is not a complete human-rights narrative; it is a selective political account.