Death comes via drones or bullets: “We have been caught between the earth and the skies,” says Sadat, who
has rented a house for his grandparents in Bannu and struggles to set up
a transport business there. “The Americans kill us by firing from the
skies and men with ugly faces (militants) have made our lives miserable
on the ground.”
Aam aadmi at the mercy of ruthless beasts: Young Taliban militants pulled him out of his
shop and dragged him across the road. “Amriki jasoosi, Ameriki Jasoosi
(American spy, American spy),” Sadat remembers the militants shouting as
they dragged his friend. “Two of them held his arms and the other two
his legs, and tied explosives around the whole body while my friend was
screaming.” The tribesmen, including Deen Wali’s family members,
gathered around but nobody dared to stop the Taliban militants. “The
militants walked backwards, moving away from Deen Wali, and pushed the
remote button. The explosives detonated, shredding him. His flesh and
body parts flew everywhere.” The militants left the scene in a convoy of
vehicles leaving behind the clouds of dust, despair and helplessness.
.
The temperature of hell is this warm: The tribesmen relate that every Waziristani keeps anti-depressant
tablets in their pockets. Sadat takes his grandmother Bi Jan for
psychiatric treatment every week.
The local clerics, whose influence has steadily grown over the years,
played on the religious sentiments of the tribesmen, calling on them to
host these “mujahideen” out of a sense of brotherhood. Others, who were
less idealistic, were lured with money. So the tribesmen welcomed these
war-battered and defeated warriors and offered them shelter, believing
that they would soon disappear back into the war-torn land of
Afghanistan. But the hordes kept coming, first a trickle, then a flood.
Everyday
there was a fresh convoy of militants of different castes, creeds and
colour. Low key and ‘quiet’, tall and athletic, Al Qaeda militants of
Morrocan, Egyptian, Algerian and Sudanese origin. The round-faced,
flat-nosed and ruthless Uzbeks; the fair-skinned Chechens. The short
Uighur Chinese with their thin scraggly beards. Muslim converts from
America, Germany and France known collectively as the ‘Gora Taliban’.
Thousands of local jihadis joined their ranks, distinct because of their
appearance and inability to speak Pushto, these were the long-haired
and short-tempered Punjabi Taliban.
The temporary shelters the
militants sought soon turned into entrenched sanctuaries as they allied
with local commanders Hafiz Gul Bahadur and Siraj Uddin Haqqani. After
forming the Tehrik-i- Taliban, thousands of fighters turned this tribal
belt into the world’s most dangerous labyrinth, threatening peace inside
Pakistan with suicide attacks and in Afghanistan by fighting US and
Nato forces.
“It’s an international war
which has engulfed us,” says North Waziristan’s influential tribal
elder, Malik Shad Ameen Wazir. “The volcano is in Afghanistan but it
erupts in our tribal areas.”
……
Link: http://www.dawn.com/news/1100938/the-walking-wounded-of-waziristan-the-lost-tribes-search-for-spring
……
regards