Ten policemen died on the road home from a raid on illegal gold mining. Honoring them means treating unregulated extraction as what it has become: a funding line for violence.
The operation was over.
The police party and civil administration officials had finished their work in Kohat’s Darbukach area. They turned home. Then the fire began.
By the end of Wednesday, ten policemen were martyred, among them DSP Haidar Zaman. Twelve others were in hospital. Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Police say 18 attackers were killed in the exchange. TTP claimed the attack, according to AP.
The day before
One day earlier, the Kohat deputy commissioner had banned the parking of excavators in Blocks C and D of the placer gold area and nearby locations for 60 days. A second order banned the sale of fuel in open containers for illegal mining.
The order itself admitted something striking. Several operations to clear illegal sites, it said, had failed. Excavators kept in homes near the mines kept the digging alive. That is the state describing its own problem. Raids alone do not end this trade.
Honour comes before analysis. These officers walked into a hard assignment and did it. Governor Faisal Karim Kundi has vowed that their sacrifice will not go in vain. Parliamentary Affairs Minister Tariq Fazal Chaudhry called the police’s sacrifices a source of national pride. Both are right. The state’s writ must run in every district, including the ones where gold sits under riverbeds and guns sit behind it.
We want to be careful here. Police say the attackers acted “at the behest of criminal elements.” Authorities allege a nexus between terrorists and illegal mining groups. TTP’s claim of responsibility shows who fired. It does not show who paid, who supplied the excavators or who sold the gold. A nexus becomes policy only when a financial trial or a court record stands behind it. We call on the authorities to produce one.
A ban is not a plan
This is not the first 60-day ban. In November 2025, Kohat’s deputy commissioner imposed a 60-day excavator ban under Section 144, after earlier crackdowns failed. We will judge this order by what it delivers. When it expires in early January, the public deserves the numbers: excavators seized, arrests made, convictions secured, leases checked. A ban that cannot report them was theatre.
The scale of the problem is already on record. An FIR reported two months ago alleged that more than 1,500 heavy excavators were working the Indus and Kabul riverbanks in Nowshera, Swabi and Kohat. It claimed each machine earned between Rs500,000 and Rs700,000 a week, about Rs750 million a week in total. It also alleged the gold was untaxed and smuggled into neighboring countries through international networks, and it linked the digging to violence between rival groups.
These claims have not been independently established, and courts must test them. But the FIR raised a question that Wednesday has made harder to ignore: could this scale of digging and movement have continued without failures in enforcement and oversight? It also alleged that the suspension of five placer gold blocks during a NAB inquiry created a regulatory vacuum, and that unauthorized mining expanded to fill it. If that is true, the lesson is hard. Freezing legal mining without strong enforcement does not stop extraction. It hands the riverbank to whoever has the most excavators and the most guns.
Where the gold goes
Illegal mining thrives where nobody can see who holds a license. A government audit report made public last month flagged over Rs16.94 billion in irregularities in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s minerals sector in a single year. It put losses from illegal mining above Rs8 billion for 2022-23, and Rs3.08 billion more despite checkpoints and inspectors. Inspectors were present. The mining continued.
An independent review of provincial records found more than 4,600 mineral titles, with few holders named in any public document. A bill to create an online register of titles has sat in the provincial assembly since April 2025. In 2024-25, minerals brought in Rs10.7 billion, about 37 per cent of the province’s non-tax revenue. That is real money, and the public cannot see who holds the claims behind it.
Behind the numbers stand people. Last year, Dawn reported that laborers working placer sites on the Indus earned about Rs 1,500 to 2,000 a day. Many such men are not mafia. They are people looking for a wage. Enforcement that removes their only income without offering another hand makes the mafia a recruit.
What we ask
Finish the inquiry: Publish the NAB findings and set a deadline for the five suspended blocks. A suspension without an end date is a vacuum.
A joint task force: Police and the Mines and Minerals Department should work as one team, with shared intelligence, shared reports and shared accountability. A raid should never meet an ambush alone.
A public register of leases: Every lease should show the holder, the block, the area, the date and the royalty paid. If you can’t show a lease, you shouldn’t work it.
A fixed share for districts: A published share of legal mining royalty should go back to the district where it is dug, ring-fenced for roads, schools and clinics. A district that gains from the legal mine has more reason to defend it.
Critics say licensing can breed corruption, and the audit figures show they have a point. That is why the register must be public and the audit regular.
The police did their duty on Wednesday. The question now is whether the state will do its own. The gold will keep flowing out of Kohat. The only choice is whether it flows through a licensed mine, a published ledger and a district’s budget, or through a gunman’s pocket.
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