Khyber Pakhtunkhwa

Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KPK) is Pakistan's northwestern frontier province—a 101,741 km² territory where the Pashtun ethnic majority shares cultural and kinship ties across the Afghan border. Renamed from 'North-West Frontier Province' in 2010 to reflect its Pashtun identity, KPK has borne the heaviest costs of Pakistan's involvement in the War on Terror: Taliban insurgency, military operations, and refugee flows from Afghanistan have shaped the province for two decades. Peshawar, the provincial capital, served as a staging ground for mujahideen during the Soviet-Afghan war and later became a target for retaliatory terrorism. The 2018 merger of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) expanded KPK's territory and incorporated historically ungoverned border districts into provincial administration. CPEC's western alignment routes through KPK, with at least seven special economic zones planned—infrastructure investment meant to bring development to historically marginalized areas. The Pakistan-Afghanistan power-sharing agreement reduced electricity shortages by 35% in KPK by 2022. The province's 40+ million residents combine agricultural production in valleys with remittance-dependent households whose family members work in the Gulf states.