Khyber District — pass, tehsils and the 2018 merger

Khyber is the district that holds the pass the rest of the world already named. Until 2018 it was an agency of FATA. After the 25th Amendment it is a settled district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, same legal box as Mardan or Haripur. Building that in schools and a DHQ is the live work. The mountains did not become a city because the law changed.

Afridi clans are the main tribal names on the ground: Kuki Khel, Qambar Khel, Zakha Khel, Malikdin Khel, Aka Khel, Sepah, Adam Khel and the others listed in local administration notes. Pashto is 99 percent-plus of the mother-tongue row. That is not a slogan. It is the census.

2023 count

Households 166,805. Population 1,146,267. Urban about 94,700. Rural about 1.05 million. Sex ratio about 109 men per 100 women. Under-tens about 395,000 — more than a third of the surveyed people. Literacy 38.45 percent overall, 58.08 percent for men, 17.16 percent for women. That last figure is why a Khyber page that only describes Torkham trucks is unfinished.

Named towns in city lists: Jamrud municipal figures around 56,600 in 2023 compilations; Landi Kotal around 38,000. Bara is the heavy tehsil, not a municipal giant in those same city rows.

Four tehsils with printed 2023 rows

Bara — 1,430 km², 548,084 people (about 48 percent of the district), literacy about 34.7 percent. Largest tehsil. Mostly rural in the land-use notes.
Landi Kotal — 679 km², 312,313 people (about 27 percent), literacy about 38.9 percent. Pass town, Torkham side.
Jamrud — 311 km², 243,290 people (about 21 percent), literacy about 46.2 percent. Densest of the four. Closest to Peshawar’s western edge.
Mula Gori (Mula Ghori) — 156 km², 42,580 people (about 4 percent), literacy about 38.4 percent.

Later lists add names such as Bagh Maidan, Bazar Zakha Khel, Fort Salop and Painda Cheena. Those lines are still thin in the 2023 PBS extract used here. Name them as emerging tehsil titles. Do not invent populations.

Pass, school, hospital

Torkham is the crossing. Jamrud is the Peshawar-facing gate. Landi Kotal sits on the climb. Freight and passenger traffic are the cash the district sees; they are also why a closed border week hits shops immediately.

Degree colleges have been added since the merger. Many students still sit exams that point to Peshawar. DHQ-level care is the demand people make of the new district. Female literacy at 17 percent means a functioning girls’ high school in Bara and Mula Gori is the test, not a museum of the pass.

Site: khyber.kp.gov.pk. Sources: PBS 2023; KP tehsil literacy rows; district land-use draft figures for the four-tehsil split. September 2026.