By Khalid Khan
In the rugged and restive terrain of Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, where shadows of terror still loom, a single drone strike changed the course of a militant’s fate. Among the three slain insurgents in Dera Ismail Khan’s Kulachi region lay the body of a man whose past was entangled with power and bloodshed—Badruddin, known by his alias Yusuf. He was no ordinary militant. He was the son of Afghan Taliban official Maulvi Ghulam Muhammad Ahmadi, the Deputy Governor of Badghis Province.
Badruddin hailed from Ghormach, a district in Afghanistan’s Badghis province, a land that had long seen the tides of war. A trusted operative of the Afghan Taliban, he had transitioned into the folds of Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), where he became more than just a fighter—he was a trainer, a mentor of men who sought to sow terror across borders.
His allegiance had shifted, but his purpose remained the same—war, ideology, and bloodshed. At a secret TTP training facility, Badruddin imparted the art of insurgency, shaping a new wave of militants ready to unleash destruction. His connections ran deep, linking him to the notorious Zarar Gandapur Group, an offshoot of TTP feared for its deadly operations.
But the hunter soon became the hunted. Intelligence reports had marked his presence in Kulachi, a volatile region that had become a staging ground for TTP’s cross-border plots. The security forces moved with precision, and when the time was right, a drone was dispatched to the skies above.
The whirring blades of the copter drone sliced through the silence of the night, its sensors locking onto the coordinates of its targets. A calculated strike followed—a deafening explosion that sent shockwaves across the militant hideout. When the dust settled, three bodies lay still. Among them, Badruddin Yusuf’s chapter had come to a violent end.
For years, he had evaded the grip of fate, crossing borders, switching allegiances, and orchestrating deadly campaigns. But in the unforgiving terrain of Dera Ismail Khan, his past caught up with him. In the blink of an eye, a man who once moved in the corridors of Afghan power was reduced to just another casualty of war.
The security forces had sent a clear message: No matter the lineage or alliances, terror would meet its reckoning.
