Before the infantry advances, someone has to open the road. That was his job — and he was doing it when Shawal took him.
On 24 August 2015, Lieutenant Colonel Faisal Malik Shaheed of the Pakistan Army embraced shahadat in the Shawal area of North Waziristan. He was an officer of the Engineers — 96 Long Course, CED 42, 651 Sappers and Engineers, 108 Engineers Battalion. The arm that builds bridges, clears mines, and opens the way for everyone else.
Beside him fell Sepoy Zuhaib Shaheed of the 19 Sindh Regiment. Two men from two different arms. United in the same sacrifice, on the same day.
The Engineers’ War
Shawal — thick forest, steep ridges — was among the last and hardest redoubts of militancy in North Waziristan. The operations there demanded everything the Army had: infantry to clear, artillery to support, aviation to supply. And engineers to open the roads, breach the obstacles, and make the advance possible at all.
The Engineers’ work in the tribal districts was the unglamorous backbone of those operations: clearing routes, building infrastructure, making the ground safe for others to advance. Dangerous. Painstaking. Essential. Lt Col Faisal Malik was doing that work when he fell.
Officer and Soldier, Side by Side
There is something fitting in the pairing the tribute preserves: an engineer officer and an infantryman, fallen on the same day in the same valley.
The Engineers exist to serve the other arms — to clear the mines the infantry would otherwise step on, to bridge the gaps the advance would otherwise stall at. When an engineer officer and an infantryman fall together, it is the Army’s interdependence written in its starkest form. No arm fights alone. No arm bleeds alone.
A lieutenant colonel and a sepoy. Different ranks, different regiments, different arms — the same risk, the same fate, the same remembrance.
The Original Tribute
The tribute shared on the eleventh anniversary of their shahadat reads:
Today is 11th shahadat Anniversary of Lt Col Faisal Malik Shaheed 96L/C, CED 42 ex 651 S&E/108 Engr Bn and Sepoy Zuhaib Shaheed ex 19SR. Both embraced shahadat on August 24, 2015, in Shawal area of North Waziristan.
Eleven Years of Honour
Every year on 24 August, the anniversary is observed — the eleventh in 2026. Eleven years on, the 96 Long Course, the Engineers, and all who knew him continue to honour his name. The Army never lets a shaheed’s memory fade.
Eleven years is long enough for the valley they died in to change. Shawal today is not the Shawal of 2015. The operations succeeded. The militants were cleared. The ground the engineers opened is ground Pakistan holds. That transformation is the quiet vindication of sacrifices like theirs: the dangerous work was finished, the routes were cleared, and the valley is no longer what it was.
Lt Col Faisal Malik and Sepoy Zuhaib did not live to see it. But they made it.
Eleven years is also long enough for a certain kind of forgetting to threaten — the forgetting of peacetime, when the valleys are quiet and anniversaries can start to feel routine. The eleventh anniversary is the tribute’s answer to that threat: still observed, still named, still honoured.
The routes they cleared are roads Pakistan drives on today. The valley they died in is ground Pakistan holds today. That is the arithmetic of their sacrifice — and it balances in the nation’s favour, forever.
We salute Lt Col Faisal Malik Shaheed and Sepoy Zuhaib Shaheed. An officer and a soldier — side by side in life, side by side in martyrdom, remembered with pride by the nation they served.
