The Kurram valley: Parachinar, Thal, Sadda and the Turi and Bangash

At a glance

• The Kurram river rises in Afghanistan, enters Pakistan at Kharlachi and runs about 55 miles through the valley to Thal, where Kohat district begins. The Safed Koh, which Pashtuns call the Spin Ghar, closes the valley on the north. [1]

• Upper Kurram, around Parachinar, is the country of the Turi, the only Pashtun tribe that is wholly Shia. Lower Kurram, around Sadda, is mostly Sunni and includes Bangash clans. [3]

• A British army under Frederick Roberts came up the valley in November 1878 and took the Peiwar Kotal on 2 December. [1, 2]

• Sunni and Shia communities have fought over land, water and the road since at least the 1930s. The Thal to Parachinar road was closed from late 2007 to 2011 and again in the autumn of 2024, after a convoy attack on 21 November that killed at least 43 people. [3, 5, 9]

• Kurram became a tribal agency in 1892 and a district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa after the merger of 2018. [1, 11, 23]

The valley and its river

The Kurram rises in Afghanistan, enters the Turi country near Kharlachi and flows south-east for about 55 miles through what was the Kurram Agency to Thal. From there it turns south through the country of the Kabul Khel Wazirs and Bannu and reaches the Indus opposite Mianwali. [1] Pakistan's 2023 census report describes it as draining the southern flanks of the Spin Ghar. [4] The wider geography is in the Pashtun lands, and the river's lower course is in Bannu.

The 1908 Imperial Gazetteer of the North-West Frontier Province, a British compilation, measures the agency at about 1,278 square miles, 72 miles from Thal to the Peiwar Kotal as the crow flies and 12 to 24 miles across. [1] The Spin Ghar, whose highest peak in the agency it gives as Sikharam at 15,620 feet, bounds it on the north. A spur through which the river seems to have cut a passage opposite Sadda divides the valley in two. [1]

Upper Kurram is a wide open valley, almost ringed by hills, with Parachinar, Shalozan, Kirman and most of the villages on the sloping plain under the Spin Ghar. Lower Kurram is narrow and, in the Gazetteer's description, barren except for strips of cultivation along the river. Upper Kurram is never unpleasantly hot, and in winter snow covers the ground for weeks. [1] Parachinar lies 16 miles from the Peiwar Kotal. [1]

The people of the valley

The Gazetteer's 1901 count was 54,257 people in the agency, of whom nearly 44,000 were Pashtun. The Turi, at nearly 12,000, were the largest tribe, then the Bangash at 6,000, with the Chamkanni, Ghilzai, Mangal and Orakzai after them. [1] A journalist writing in 2023 lists the district's tribes today as Bangash, Turi, Orakzai, Ali Sherzai, Mamozai (Masozai), Muqbil, Zazai, Mangal, Ghilzai, Para Chamkani, Hazara and Afridi, with the Persian-speaking Khoshi, and gives the population as about 60 per cent Sunni and 40 per cent Shia. [11] Mariam Abou Zahab, who has written on the region's sectarian history, put the Shia share at around 40 per cent of about 500,000 in 2009. [3] Al Jazeera, reporting in 2011, called the Shia "a slight majority". [6] The sources give different shares.

On the map the tribes sit like this. The Turi hold Upper Kurram. [3] The Bangash live in Lower Kurram and Shalozan, and Abou Zahab says the Lower Kurram Bangash clans are Sunni while other Bangash clans are Shia, Sunni or mixed. [3] The Gazetteer places the Masozai section of the Orakzai and the Zaimusht on the east side of the agency, and the Jaji and the Mangal towards the Peiwar Kotal and the Shutargardan. [1, 2] The Muqbil, with the Mangal and Jaji, live on both sides of the Afghan border. [25]

How the Turi came to hold the upper valley is told differently. Abou Zahab writes that the Turi were under Bangash domination until the eighteenth century, when they attacked the Bangash, made them hamsaya (dependants) and pushed them into Lower Kurram. [3] The Gazetteer says the Bangash tribes who remained in the valley are clients of the Turi, and calls the Turi "a tribe of Turkish origin"; the Turi page on this site sets out what the other writers say. [1]

Before the British

The Gazetteer dates the written history of the valley to 1148, when Bahram Shah of Ghazni fled to Kurram after a defeat and came back to take Ghazni again. Muhammad of Ghor halted at Kirman on his yearly way into India and named Taj-ud-din Yalduz his successor there, and Kirman was for a time Taj-ud-din's capital. [1] Under Akbar the valley was Upper Bangash. Its Karlarni Pashtuns followed Pir Roshan, and Kurram was one of the Roshani strongholds, so that the Mughal faujdars at Kohat held it only loosely. [1] Afterwards it passed to Afghanistan, with its governor at Sadda. [1]

The Turi's quarrel with that government is recorded for 1877. The Gazetteer calls the administration of the governor, Shahbaz Khan, oppressive. When the amir demanded Rs 50,000 from the Turi, a poll tax of Rs 5 on every adult man, and 6,000 recruits for his war against the British, the Turi revolted and went to the hills. A jirga went to Kabul, the Turi paid Rs 25,000 and the governor was recalled. [1]

1878: an army comes up the valley

Britain invaded Afghanistan in November 1878; the war and its causes are told in the three Anglo-Afghan wars and in Sher Ali's article. One of its columns, Frederick Roberts's, entered Kurram from Thal and occupied Kurram Fort on 25 November. [1] The instructions Roberts carried, as the British official history prints them, said that the Kurram district "must be held to extend to the watershed of the Kurram River", and told him to notify the people of Dawar that British supremacy had replaced Afghan supremacy. [2]

The Afghan force, under Muhammad Zaman Khan, was reported to number about 18,000 infantry with guns; it fell back over the Peiwar Kotal as Roberts approached. [2] The Official Account describes the kotal as a narrow gap commanded from pine-covered heights on both sides, reached by a steep zigzag path covered in rock fragments, with breastworks of pine logs and stones across every point of the climb. Besides the regulars it counts a large number of Jajis and other tribesmen, who it says may have numbered at least 4,000. [2]

Roberts did not storm the path. A turning force marched out silently at 10 pm on 1 December by the Spingawai kotal, and fought along the Afghan left through the next morning. At about 1 pm Roberts decided the kotal could not be reached from that side and sent a column towards Zabardast Kala to threaten the line of retreat. When the Afghans saw it their withdrawal became a rout, and by half past two the British held the Peiwar Kotal. [2] The Afghan dead could not be counted. The Official Account says the loss was believed to have been large, lists seventeen guns taken, and gives British losses as two officers and 18 men killed. [2] It adds that levies of the Turi (spelt Teri) and other friendly tribesmen did not show much eagerness to come to close quarters and arrived as the Afghans left. [2]

The Turi's own part is told from two sides. The Gazetteer says the Turi supplied the force with provisions, that their levies escorted its convoys, and that with the Bangash they asked the British to take over the valley and free them from Afghan rule. [1] That is the British account of why the valley came under them. In January 1879 the Official Account notes reports of intended Mangal attacks on the Peiwar Kotal and Ali Khel posts, and says the tribesmen disappeared without hostile action. [2] The Zaimusht, whom the Gazetteer calls hostile after the murder of a British officer, Lieutenant Kinloch, faced a British and Turi expedition in September 1879. [1]

Britain left in October 1880 and declared the Turi independent. Over 1882 to 1884 the Turi fought one another, the Jaji and the Zaimusht. [1]

From agency to district

In 1892 the British government took over the administration of the valley, at the request of the Turi themselves in the Gazetteer's wording. It occupied Parachinar in 1893 and built roads to Peiwar, Kharlachi and elsewhere in the same year. [1] A militia of 1,466 men did the police work, and the Political Agent settled cases under the Turizuna, the unwritten customary law of the Turi, which the maliks were expected to know. In 1901 only 1.88 per cent of the population could read and write, and Parachinar, in the Gazetteer's own phrase, "has no trade". [1]

Kurram was one of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas, which the Twenty-fifth Amendment merged into Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. On 27 May 2018 the provincial assembly passed the bill by 92 of its 124 votes, with Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam (F) opposed, and the President signed it on 31 May. It amended Article 246 so that the tribal areas stood merged with the province. [23, 24] Kurram is now a district of three tehsils, Upper, Central and Lower Kurram. [11]

Shia and Sunni in Kurram

Abou Zahab traces disputes over land and water between Sunni and Shia tribes, with sporadic communal violence since the 1930s, mostly around Muharram or Nowruz. [3] In her account two changes came in the 1980s. Afghan refugees brought a militant strain of Sunni preaching, and the Shia of Parachinar, led by Allama Arif Hussain al-Hussaini, who trained at Najaf and Qom, were radicalised by the Iranian revolution. Modern weapons arrived. In 1986 the Turi stopped Sunni mujahideen going through to Afghanistan, and she says General Zia ul-Haq allowed a "purge" of the Turi by the mujahideen with local Sunnis. Hussaini was killed in 1988, and the Turi held Zia responsible. [3] In 1996 more than 200 Sunnis and Shia died after a college principal was murdered by Shia activists. [3]

After 2001 the Shia of Kurram did not give shelter to al-Qaeda and the Afghan Taliban, and Abou Zahab says Punjabi sectarian groups settled in Lower Kurram and Orakzai. [3] The violence of April 2007 began when a procession in Parachinar was fired on. She cites 215 dead in the clashes that followed, with mortars and rocket launchers in use. [3] Each side says the other has outside backing: the Shia say the Sunnis are backed by the Taliban, the Sunnis say the Shia are backed by Iran and the Afghan Hazaras. She also wrote that traditional leaders on both sides had lost control of very young fighters. [3]

The closed road, 2007 to 2011

The Thal to Parachinar road shut in late 2007. A Peshawar University teacher writing in Dawn in November 2011 reckoned that the half-million people of Parachinar had lived in isolation since. [5] They went down country by way of Paktia, Kabul and Torkham, which took about 18 hours instead of under four, or paid for a small plane from Peshawar. The fare by road had been Rs 200 in 2007 and was Rs 1,500 after November 2007. [5] Abou Zahab says Sunnis controlled the road from Parachinar to Thal and Shia drivers were abducted and beheaded, and she quotes Dawn on travellers through Kohat and Darra Adam Khel being made to take off their shirts so that Shia could be picked out by the marks of Muharram mourning. [3] The Dawn teacher says the Taliban, Afghan and Pakistani, "had a big hand". [5] Zulfiqar Ali, a Kurram journalist, told Al Jazeera that "the whole Kurram region has turned into a detention centre for the people", and that local sectarian groups lacked the means to close the road: "It is purely a militant issue now." [6]

Peace came in pieces. In late 2008 the Shia and Sunni tribes signed the Murree agreement and the road reopened. About a month later two brothers were killed on it and it closed again. [5] In February 2010 a suicide attack on a private convoy killed 15 civilians. [5] On 25 March 2011 Taliban fighters stopped three vans on the road and abducted 45 passengers; seven, some say ten, were killed, and a ransom of at least 30 million rupees was reported before 22 captives were freed in June. [6] A peace jirga of 50 members from each community reopened the road in the autumn of 2011 under troops at checkposts. The Dawn teacher, noting that the militants had not been at those talks, asked whether peace could last without dealing with "the third party". [5] A Peshawar journalist writing in Dawn in December 2024 called the Murree agreement something "extracted under duress from a desperate, besieged population" under the influence of the Haqqanis, and said it had "delivered little" in peace. [7]

2023 to 2025

In 2023 fighting began at Boshehra in Upper Kurram between the Sunni Bangash and the Shia Turi. An Islamabad journalist wrote that it lasted five weeks, that officials counted about 120 casualties and residents said more than 200, mostly Shia, and that the trigger was a leaked video that offended religious feeling. [11] He also reported what each community said. The Sunnis he spoke to wanted a military operation in Upper Kurram, saying the Turi had stockpiled weapons. The Shia he spoke to called the charge baseless. [11]

On 21 November 2024 a convoy of about 200 vehicles carrying Shia passengers from Parachinar to Peshawar came under fire in Lower Kurram, at Mandori Charkhel in Dawn's first report and at Bagan in its next. [8, 9] Dawn first counted 39 dead, among them seven women and a nine-year-old girl, and then 43. [8, 9] Witnesses disagreed on how long it lasted: Ajmeer Hussain, 28, said the shooting went on for about five minutes, and a 14-year-old survivor said about 30. [8, 9] No group claimed it. [8] Officials attributed it to a land dispute, and Chief Minister Ali Amin Gandapur called Kurram's trouble a conflict between two groups and not militancy. [7, 8] The provincial law minister said the land disputes were being given the colour of sectarian riots, which he called wrong. [10] Jalal Bangash, a Tori Bangash elder, blamed the state for failing to secure the road. [8] The Dawn journalist who wrote in December thought "two groups" misdescribed a conflict that locals blamed on a "hidden hand" of militants. [7]

By Saturday 18 more people had died in fresh clashes. [10] The bazaar of Bagan, over 500 shops and houses, was destroyed in an attack after the ambush. [15] Around 130 people died in the fighting by 1 January 2025. [12] Dr Qadar Orakzai, a Lower Kurram member of the jirga, said that "Bagan people are themselves the victims of violence and are ready to prove their innocence", and wanted the bazaar rebuilt. [13] Sajid Turi, a former minister, said Upper Kurram's markets had run out of necessities. [13]

On 1 January 2025 a three-week jirga at Kohat ended with a 14-point agreement between the sides from Upper and Lower Kurram: a permanent ceasefire, a bar on displaying weapons, a fine of Rs 10 million on a village that breaks it, and a land commission to settle disputes in named areas by revenue records and local tradition. It bound both sides to the Murree agreement of 2008, banned sectarian organisations from opening offices, and asked local elders to protect teachers and other staff "in line with the Pashtun tradition of hospitality". [12] The road stayed shut. On 4 January gunmen fired on the deputy commissioner's convoy, wounding him and six others. [14] A relief convoy of 40 trucks reached Parachinar on 8 January, the first in more than three months. [14] On 16 January another convoy was attacked at Bagan, trucks were looted and burned, and four drivers were found dead with their hands tied. [15]

Kharlachi reopened for trade on 9 May 2025 after six months. [17] The News reported that, according to some officials, at least 1,000 bunkers had been demolished, and wrote that both sides had given up arms. [18] The main road reopened in part on 1 August 2025, from 9 am to 3 pm, though the deputy commissioner's office said residents hesitated to use it for fear and mistrust. [16]

Trade with Afghanistan

The Gazetteer's remark that Parachinar had no trade describes 1908. A 2017 report in The News counted four customs stations in Kurram: Kharlachi, Burki, Terimengal and Shaheedano Dund. In the period to June 2016, 42,583 trucks carried exports worth $323.69 million into Afghanistan; a year later, with the crossings repeatedly closed, 21,202 trucks carried $158.12 million. [19] The exports were mainly flour, rice, cement, potato, milk, rock salt and poultry, and the imports dry fruit, potato, tomato, onion and hides. [19] The Model Customs Collectorate told the reporter that after Torkham and the closure of Ghulam Khan, Kharlachi was the main crossing in the tribal belt. [19] Three of the stations stood in Shia areas and one in a Sunni area, and a customs collector argued that trade could help end the tension. [19]

Rice, fruit and peanuts

Autumn rice, maize and oilseeds paid two-thirds of the land revenue in 1908, and the Gazetteer lists apples, pears, grapes, cherries, pomegranates, peaches and a fruit it calls shalil, found only in Kurram and Tirah. [1] Kurram rice, Kurmawaale Ruje as Dawn's reporter wrote it, is cooked with black gram and served on large open plates called khaanak, to guests and at weddings, iftar and festivals. A Parachinar research officer told Dawn that only Begumai and Fakhre Malakand were then grown in quantity, in Karman, Sultan, Shablan, Sadda, Bagan, Alizai and Sambar, watered by the Kurram. [20] Shalozan is known for its apples. [21] The Directorate of Crop Reporting Services counted at least 4,392 tonnes of fruit from orchards on 381 hectares in one year, and in the year before listed 1,262 tonnes of peaches, 719 of apricots, 661 of walnuts and 621 of apples. A farmer from Shalozan with six acres of orchard described a year when spring hail took most of his crop. [21] Parachinar peanuts, 1,417 tonnes in 2024, go to Pakistani cities and into Afghanistan. [22]