Fact-check: Pine nut orchards in North Waziristan are privately owned, not by Pakistan Army

Online posts claim that the Pakistan Army has established Asia’s largest pine nut orchard in the North Waziristan district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, which generates an estimated Rs2 billion in annual revenue for the armed forces.

The claim is false.

Claim

A social media user shared a more than three-minute video on X (formerly Twitter) with the caption suggesting that the military displaced people after conducting an operation in North Waziristan.

The post further states: "Afterwards, the army captured the land and set up a pine nut business there. Just last year, the army made over Rs2 billion from selling pine nuts."

The video, uploaded by the channel "Discover Pakistan," features an interview with a Frontier Corps (FC) officer, who discusses the exceptional quality of pine nuts grown in Shawal Valley, North Waziristan, located on the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan. The officer explains that these pine nuts are sold in Pakistan and exported abroad.

The FC official further states that the orchards span 650 to 700 square kilometers and that last year, they generated about Rs2 billion in revenue.

Identical claims also took off on Facebook here and here.

Fact

Four local officials and one pine nut orchard owner in North Waziristan confirm that the forests are privately owned, not by the Pakistan Army.

The orchards in Shawal Valley are privately owned, according to Khalid Imran, the assistant commissioner of Miranshah, a tehsil in North Waziristan. 

In a phone interview with Geo Fact Check, Imran clarified: “The majority of the land belongs to the Wazir tribe, while a smaller portion is home to the Mehsud tribe. The ownership of this land is entirely private and belongs to these tribes; it is not owned by the government.”

Imran explained that during the military’s anti-terrorism operation, Operation Zarb-e-Azb, which took place from 2014 to 2016, many locals were displaced. Some have returned, but areas like Shawal Valley remain off-limits due to security concerns.

“Due to these restrictions, people mistakenly assume everything in the area is controlled by the army,” he said. “However, during the pine nut season, locals are granted special entry, and the army facilitates their access to plant and harvest crops.”

Imran also pointed out that pine nut trees take around 60 years to mature, so even if the military had set up orchards in 2014, the trees would not have borne fruit after just 10 years. “The army's role is limited to providing security in the area,” he added.

Saeed Anwar, the district forest officer of North Waziristan, also confirmed this to Geo Fact Check, stating that while the army is deployed in certain areas for security, the land remains privately owned by local orchard owners.

“Once the owners collect the pine nuts, they hand them over to the forest department for transportation permit to the market,” Anwar explained. In areas not under military control, the owners are free to harvest the nuts themselves, he said. However, for regions under military jurisdiction, a specific procedure ensures security while allowing harvest.

Anwar also mentioned that last season, the forest department collected Rs838,900 in duties imposed on the pine nuts, which were remitted to the government treasury. He provided Geo Fact Check with an official receipt for the tax collected.

Geo Fact Check then spoke to Malik Naik Amal Khan Wazir, a pine nut forest owner in North Waziristan, who dismissed the online claims.

“The pine nut forests do not belong to the government or the Pakistan Army. They are owned by various local tribal communities,” Wazir said, adding that the army neither plants the trees nor provides water to them. “These forests have been passed down through our ancestors and have belonged to us even before the creation of Pakistan,” he added.

Wazir further shared that 80% of the pine nuts are exported each year to China and the Middle East.

This was also corroborated by Muhammad Javed Marwat, a senior member of the Board of Revenue (BOR) in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, and Muhammad Nasir Khan, the deputy commissioner of South Waziristan Lower district.

Geo Fact Check also reviewed the full eight-minute episode of Discover Pakistan, which aired on a local infotainment TV channel on June 30, 2023. In the episode, recorded in Shawal Valley, the FC official never stated that the pine nut orchards were owned by the Pakistan Army or that the military collected revenue from them.

Verdict: False. The pine nut orchards in North Waziristan are privately owned by local tribes, not the Pakistan Army.

Follow us on @GeoFactCheck on X (formerly Twitter) and @geo_factcheck on Instagram. If you spot any errors, reach out to us at [email protected]