There is a strange irony in the way some people choose to rewrite reality. A man who spent years climbing the ladder of privilege through state scholarships, government positions and social respectability is now being packaged as a victim of state oppression.
His name: Dr Muhammad Usman Qazi. On the surface, he is being described as a respectable academic. In reality, he was operating as a handler for the BLA’s suicide wing, the Majeed Brigade.
The story is not about one man. It is about how narratives are manufactured, how words are weaponised, and how terrorism is disguised as intellectual struggle. When Qazi was arrested in Quetta for orchestrating terrorist attacks, including the deadly railway station bombing in 2024 and a foiled plan to target Independence Day celebrations in 2025, he confessed to grooming suicide bombers and sheltering militants. Yet online, a parallel script is being spun, one in which he is portrayed as an innocent professor silenced by the state. This is not naive storytelling; this is narrative warfare.
And narrative warfare is no less lethal than bullets or bombs. It takes shape in carefully crafted social media campaigns, in op-eds that cherry-pick facts, in sympathetic hashtags that reduce terrorism into ‘dissent’. It thrives on emotional manipulation, exploiting society’s impulse to sympathise with the underdog.
For Qazi, the classroom was not a sanctuary of knowledge. It was a hunting ground, students being primed for extremism instead of critical thinking. To wrap that reality in the cloak of academic freedom is not just dishonest, it is a betrayal of every civilian who lost their life in attacks facilitated by him.
The betrayal cuts deeper when we remember that Qazi’s journey was paved by the very state he turned against. His higher education, including a PhD, was funded by government scholarships. He enjoyed a secure government job in Grade 19, while his wife also held a respectable position in Grade 17. This was not a man denied opportunity or crushed by deprivation. This was someone who used privilege as a launchpad to join hands with men like Bashir Zaib and Dr Hebatan Baloch, and to coordinate violence against the people whose taxes funded his career. What do we even call such a man – an intellectual or a traitor?
The dangerous part is not just his treachery. It is the way his story is now being rewritten. When journalists and influencers echo the narrative that Qazi was an intellectual ‘silenced’, they are not speaking truth to power but laundering terrorism. They are giving legitimacy to groups that thrive on chaos and blood. They are playing right into the strategy of narrative warfare: to blur the line between dissent and destruction.
The questions that follow are uncomfortable but necessary. Should society remain silent when public sympathy is manipulated into covering fire for terrorist organisations? And should we ever allow the exploitation of state resources like scholarships, salaries and public respectability to be turned into weapons against the very fabric of the state itself?
It is fashionable in some circles to dismiss facts as propaganda. But facts still matter. The fact is that Qazi confessed. The fact is that the BLA’s Majeed Brigade is internationally designated as a terrorist outfit. The fact is that dozens of lives were lost in attacks he facilitated. These cannot be swept under the carpet by clever words or selective narratives.
The battle we are witnessing is not just against guns and explosives. It is against distortions that seek to portray villains as victims. In this battlefield of perception, neutrality is complicity. When the stakes are the lives of ordinary citizens, the least we can do is to call treachery by its name and refuse to let fiction bury the truth.
The writer is a freelance contributor.
