Know about Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, world's most disturbed region

New Delhi: The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa region in Pakistan, also called North-West Frontier Province, has been the most disturbed region of the world. With so many US drone attacks and Taliban militancy in the region, the place has witnessed unrelenting violence. Let us explore the reasons for the frequent incidents of terrorism in the area: The northwestern frontier areas were annexed to India by the British after the Second Sikh War (1848–49). The territories from then onwards formed part of the Punjab until the province, then known as North-West Frontier Province, was created in 1901. After Pakistan attained independence in 1947, the region continued to exist as a separate Pakistani province.However, the inhabitants of the tribal territories, the westernmost area along the Afghanistan border, were not made subject to the Pakistani legal code. During the 1980s the province was inundated by Afghan refugees seeking asylum from the Soviet occupation of their country. The tribal areas were also a major staging area for mujahideen fighters entering Afghanistan. Following the collapse of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan in 2001, the tribal areas became a refuge for Taliban and mujahideen fighters. In 2010 the name of the province was officially changed to Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. It is inhabited by the Pashtun tribes. Khyber Pakhtunkhwa has the second-lowest Human Development Index out of all of Pakistan's provinces, at 0.607.It is also the most conservative region for the women. This is due to Taliban presence and imposition of the blasphemy laws. There have also been innumerable drone attacks in the region due to US interference against the Taliban militancy.The US government has been using armed unmanned aerial vehicles, or drones, to carry out hundreds of covert missile strikes in northwest Pakistan since at least June 2004. In the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 attacks, the Bush administration began a campaign of ‘targeted killing' against suspected members of Al Qaeda and other armed groups in the region. For decades, and including back at least to the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the late 1970s and 1980s, northwest Pakistan has been the site of significant unrest.For the past decade, violence in northwest Pakistan has involved a range of armed non-state actor groups, Pakistani forces, and US forces (through drones). The armed non-state groups reportedly operating in the region include Al Qaeda, the Quetta Shura, the Haqqani Network, the Tehrik-i-Taliban, Pakistan (TTP), and Tehrik-i-Nifaz-i-Shariat-i-Muhammadi (TNSM).Some of these groups have been involved in attacks against Pakistani civilians and government targets, while others have engaged in battles with US and Afghan forces across the border in Afghanistan.