The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government has not blocked the road leading to Kurram, Sunni Ittehad Council leader Sahibzada Hamid Raza said on Monday.

“No, it’s not a failure of the provincial government,” he said when asked if the Kurram situation worsened due to the PTI-ruled KP’s lack of attention.

Raza, who was on the Aaj News programme Spotlight with Munizae Jahangir, said that he, along with Majlis Wahdat-e-Muslimeen leader Raja Nasir, Shehryar Afridi, Yousaf Shah, Naseem Shah, and MNA Hameed Hussain had visited the area when the issue was started.

KP Chief Minister Ali Amin Gandapur was on board for the visit, he said.

The delegation visited the areas dominated by Ahle Sunnat jamaat and Ahle Tashi jamaat, he said and added that leaders from both sides were accompanied during the visit.

While quoting elders, Raza said that it was not a “sectarian issue” but was a 1.5 to 2 acres of land dispute. He claimed that the situation was exacerbated because of three social media activists or vloggers who uploaded “hate material on grounds of sectarianism” on social media.

“Unseen forces started killing after that,” he said and added that the social media users were from Parachinar. “It is still surprising they are not prosecuted and not arrested.”

He claimed that the border areas are under the control of security forces. “The opening or closing of the road is not under the KP domain. Border areas are never under the government. Our CM wants to open the roads but it is the federal government’s domain.”

The SIC leader added that the interior ministry was involved in it since the security institutions were controlling the border areas.

“The road is not closed on the KP government’s order. It is true we were not able to transport everything humanely, but where was the NDMA? Why the government did not send aid?” he asked and said that the security forces were involved in every decision-making process.

When asked that the federal government was the only one “powerless”, he agreed and said: “That’s the reality.”