Malala Assassination Attempt Shows Talibans’ Intolerance

The life story of a 15-year Pakistani girl Malala who was shot by the Taliban will be published later in 2013, in a deal reported to be worth around £2m.

“I am Malala” will be published in the autumn and will tell the story ofMalala Yousafzai, who was shot by Taliban gunmen after she became an advocate for woman’s education in the Swat Valley. She now attends a school in Birmingham.

Yousafzai said: “I hope this book will reach people around the world, so they realise how difficult it is for some children to get access to education.

“I want to tell my story, but it will also be the story of 61m children who can’t get education. I want it to be part of the campaign to give every boy and girl the right to go to school. It is their basic right.”

The book, which will be published by Weidenfeld & Nicholson in the UK and Commonwealth and by Little, Brown in the rest of the world, is the latest stage of Yousafzai’s public life which almost ended in tragedy.

Yousafzai began writing a blog on the BBC Urdu service under a pseudonym about life in the Swat Valley in 2009. The Taliban were expanding their influence and at times banned girls from going to school and the Pakistani army fought to re-establish control.

Her real identity became known and she frequently appeared in Pakistani and international media advocating for the right of girls to go to school. In October 2011, Archbishop Desmond Tutu nominated her for the International Children’s Peace Prize and in December 2011 she was awarded Pakistan’s first National Youth Peace Prize.

In the book, Yousafzai writes: “I come from a country that was created at midnight. When I almost died it was just after midday. It was Tuesday, October 9, 2012, not the best of days as it was the middle of school exams, though as a bookish girl I don’t mind them as much as my friends do.

“We’d finished for the day and I was squashed between my friends and teachers on the benches of the open-back truck we use as a school bus. There were no windows, just thick plastic sheeting that flapped at the sides and was too yellowed and dusty to see out of, and a postage stamp.”

Since the shooting, Yousafzai has been awarded several peace prizes and is the youngest person to be nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. Ban Ki-Moon, the secretary general of the United Nations, announced that the UN will celebrate Malala Day on 10 November.

A spokeswoman for Weidenfeld and Nicolson could not confirm reports about the value of the publishing deal.

Arzu Tahsin, the deputy publishing director of Weidenfeld & Nicolsonsaid: “This book will be a document to bravery, courage and vision. Malala is so young to have experienced so much and I have no doubt that her story will be an inspiration to readers from all generations who believe in the right to education and the freedom to pursue it.”

Malala Yusufzai was shot in Mingora, Swat, a district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, was shot while returning home from her school. She is only 14.

What was her crime? She wrote a weekly blog for the BBC Urdu website in 2009 while the Taliban were occupying Swat and bombing schools and preventing girls from attending educational institutions.

She came into limelight after the ouster of Taliban from Swat. She started attending NGO meetings and making speeches for the right of girls to attain education. She was nominated for an international award and given one by the Pakistan Government.

The Islamic fundamentalists did not like it. On October 9,2012, two masked gunmen, apparently sent by the Taliban leadership to silence Malala forever, stopped her school van, identified her and shot her in the head. She is now fighting for her life and the doctors as of October 12 are saying that the next 36 hours are crucial for her as she fights for her life in a military hospital in Rawalpindi.

Why did the Taliban shoot this 14-year old girl?

“We had no intentions to kill her but were forced when she would not stop (speaking against us),” said spokesman Sirajuddin Ahmad, now based in Afghanistan’s Kunar province while talking to Reuters news agency.

Ahmed said the Taliban held a meeting a few months ago at which they unanimously agreed to kill her. The task was then given to military commanders to carry out.

Did they kill her because she was propagating against Islam? She was only talking about the right of girls to go to schools. Is this unIslamic?

The bottomline is that Taliban cannot stand criticism. They are not democrats and do not believe in any reasoning or freedom of expression or speech. They simply believe in silencing the critic by physically eliminating her or him for ever.

This threat of gun has made the whole nation hostage to these religious bigots.

Resultantly, religious intolerance, bigotry and terrorism have become  the wages of State’s policy of appeasement towards forces of obscurantism.

We know how the State is and we cannot and should not expect any miracles from it. The people will have to stop playing on the Islamic fundamentalists’ wicket. It is time that the secular and liberal forces come out in the open and let the nation know their numbers and worth. Otherwise, it may be too late for all of us.

We all hope that Malala will live to see the love and the respect the nation and even the world has given her. However, the war is not over. The Swat Taliban spokesman has now threatened to kill 14-year-old schoolgirl Malala Yousufzai’s father after a failed attempt to assassinate his daughter, as reported by Reuters.

The spokesman for “Radio Mullah” Maulana Fazlullah’s Swat Taliban which previously had control over the Swat region, told Reuters that two killers from Fazlullah’s special hit squad had been sent to target the young schoolgirl. The Swat Taliban militia, known to work under the Tehriki Taliban Pakistan (TTP) umbrella, has a force of around 100 men specialised in targeted killing, fighters said. They chose two men, aged between 20 to 30, who were locals from Swat Valley, Reuters quoted the fighters as saying.

A military offensive had pushed Fazlullah out of Swat in 2009, but his men had melted away across the border to Afghanistan.

Earlier this year, Fazlullah’s men kidnapped and beheaded 17 Pakistani soldiers in one of several cross border raids.

“Before the attack, the two fighters personally collected information about Malala’s route to school, timing, the vehicle she used and her security,” Reuters quoted the spokesman as saying.

They decided to shoot her near a military checkpoint to make the point they could strike anywhere, he said.

Ziauddin Yousufzai, the headmaster of a girls’ school, is on their hit list for speaking against them, his activities to promote peace in the region and for encouraging his daughter.

“We have a clear-cut stance. Anyone who takes side with the government against us will have to die at our hands,” spokesman warned. “You will see. Other important people will soon become victims.”

In the meantime, the propaganda by the conservative forces against Malala and her family is increasing. Why did the authorities not take Malala and her father into custody for taking part in a propaganda film, they ask?

How did he keep an Israeli in his home for six months to record a documentary? It is unlikely that any Israeli ever visited them or could even be granted visa to come to Pakistan and why would anyone live with the family for six months. However, the propaganda continues unabated.

This family is all drama, the Taliban claim. According to the religious forces, Malala just repeated the words her father taught her and that she is not brave.

The Americans gave her an award of bravery in return for her role and Zardari had to give one too, they say.

Lastly, they question the justification for attacking Waziristan by asking as to what the people of Waziristan have to do with Malala or her attackers?

Malala — Not The Broker, But The Breaker Of Silence

By Baseer Naweed

When a young girl led the way in the fight against extremism it is the duty of all to come out and show solidarity with her. This was the right time to come out against religious extremism and if they kill us then so be it. Hopefully, thousands of  other Malalas would continue the battle. This battle is also for my own children.

This determination is noteworthy as people generally have become dejected by the silence of Pakistani society. One can only hope that perhaps the new generation is taking the lead in what we, the present generation, and those before us, failed to do.

Malala at the age of 11 was nominated among five children from all over the world for the ‘Children’s Nobel Prize’ and came second. Malala was quick to praise the winner, a disabled child to whom Malala gave full credit. When asked what her reaction was when learning that she had come second she said, “I am happy for Michaela for winning the prize as she is a special child and is already working for the disabled children,” adding, in fact, “I couldn’t even stop my tears while seeing Michaela receiving the prize as it was hard for her to hold the prize due to her being a disabled child”.

Even at the tender age of 11 she adamantly stated, “To me education is the only tool that makes a man civilized, a good citizen and helps to develop the Pashtun society.”

The International Children’s Peace Prize is presented annually to a child who’s courageous or otherwise remarkable acts have made a difference in countering problems which affect children around the world.

Malala was one of the five nominees chosen out of 98 children that were put forward by organizations and individuals from 42 different countries. Archbishop Desmond Tutu, himself a Nobel Peace Laureate, announced the five nominees for the International Children’s Peace Prize 2011 in Cape Town. The prize is an initiative of the Dutch organization ‘Kids Rights’ and was launched during the 2005 Nobel Peace Laureates’ Summit chaired by Mikhail Gorbachev. That year, Michaela Mycroft (17) from South Africa was awarded with the Children’s Peace Prize.

Malala was attacked by Taliban to punish her for campaigning for the education of young girls. One thought that the reaction through emails, Facebook, and Twitter would dwindle after a few days and new issues would pop up. And, when that happened, who would care about Malala?

The so-called independent media, which is more tilted towards the right wing and military establishment, would ultimately give more coverage to the Taliban as they usually do and come out with some appeasing comments such as the attack was the result of drone attacks or a military operation. After all Taliban are Pakistani and the attack was carried out by someone else in order to discredit the Taliban.

However, the reaction to the attack did not lose force, but continues even till today. The media and the journalists, besides the teachers and professors, the parents and other sections of society did more than could be expected of ordinary persons, despite the overshadowing threat of religious extremism.

An attempt to kill a 14 year old girl from a remote area of Pakistan radically altered the thinking of an entire society and the silence that prevailed in that society since the 1980s was broken. The silence had remained since the army with the nexus of fundamentalist forces coerced the whole country into crushing the freedom of expression under the name of national security and in the greater interest of the country.

The establishment of Pakistan, which mostly consists of the armed forces, the judiciary, and the bureaucrats, has consciously prompted religious groups to form a “religious power center” to crush the freedom of expression in the country. The other purpose of the religious power center has been to make such a force where the democratic institutions like Parliament and elected bodies lose their bargaining power to confront the military establishment for its role in sordid politics.

The freedom of expression, which is said to be the mother of all human rights, was the first to be eroded through the religious power center, so that society be made to remain silent and people’s actions against corruption and misuse of power would be minimized. At the same time, the importance of education was also minimised. Also, the urge of the masses for a democratic society was strangled. In the span of just a few years, thousands of Madressas (Islamic seminaries) were built with black money and funding from Saudi Arabia. Hundreds of thousands of students were produced through the Madressas, which have swelled the ranks of the militants to crush independent thinking and free choice of judgment in the masses. The blasphemy laws were the best tool in the hands of the bigots to declare who is infidel and who is pious. Even the student’s examinations papers were checked by applying blasphemy laws.

There is no doubt that Malala must be given the credit for breaking the silence imposed by fear, coercion, and terrorism through her brave and untiring courage to speak out. After the attempt to kill her shook the society out of its indifference against the religious militancy and the religious power center, the school children throughout the country came out in her support. The country’s youth came onto the streets and every person participated.

All this was thanks to Malala, the first person to break the silence – the silence that the elected representatives and intellectuals failed to break, even after over 40,000 people have died in Taliban instigated violence.

All these have proved to be the ‘silent broker’ as this was the best way of opportunism to deal with wasted interests so that system based on strangulating society, on one or the other excuse, should remain intact and we should be claimed to be the champions of civil liberties, freedom and rights.

It is sad that this silence resounded even after the assassinations, in broad daylight, of the Governor of Punjab and the Federal Minister of Human Rights. No one came onto the streets in protest. Instead, the killer of the Governor was feted by lawyers, religions parties, and the people themselves. The retired Chief Justice of the Lahore High Court  went so far as to offer his legal services to the assassin, as the assassin was immediately symbolized as a hero for Islam. And, most shamefully, the government remained a silent spectator and left everything in the hands of the religious bigots, and this, even after the governor’ son was abducted from his house by the Taliban. Two years hence his whereabouts still remain unknown, and the government does not want to rock the boat.

This appalling silence was in stark contrast to the reaction of the people to the attack on this brave young girl, who, at the age of 11, started writing a weekly diary to the BBC. Her campaign for the right to education started long before the military operation in the Swat Valley in 2009. When the Taliban moved into the valley, over 2000 schools were destroyed by bombings and suicide attacks. The women were flogged in open places, barber shops were stormed, and anyone found with a hair cut was beaten. All this was done in the name of Shariah. At the age of only 11, it was Malala that said enough is enough and had the courage to speak out. She did this in her limited capacity, but it was enough to frighten the Taliban into taking action. The lava building up inside minds of 180 million people finally erupted after the attack.

The world has seen so many conquerors in its thousands of years of history, but it was the pen of a humble 14-year-old girl that conquered not only the minds and hearts of the people of Pakistan, but those of freedom-minded people all over the world. It is only now that the people are demanding that the terrorists are crushed. The government, military, and all other stakeholders, however, are adding to the confusion by saying that the attack was in retaliation to the drone attacks, military operation, and the policy of the United States towards the Taliban. The state of mind prevalent in Pakistan for the last 66 years still allows for conspiracy theories in favour of the Taliban – that Malala is funded by the US.

In one of her earlier comments, she said that she respected Obama and they are now using this as ‘evidence’ of their accusations. This was emphasised by the fact that when the Chief of Army Staff visited Malala, after the pressure of public opinion became too strong in her favour, he condemned the attack but made no condemnation of the Taliban. This lapse was obviously done in the spirit of appeasement, despite the fact that the Taliban boasted about their responsibility for the attack. They have publically stated that they will continue their murderous attempts if she recovers from her injuries and will not rest until she is dead. Since the attack, they have continued their assault on the local schools in Swat Valley. And, to-date two more schools have been destroyed.

What the Taliban and the Pakistani establishment have failed to see is that the one person unaffected by the conspiracy theories is Malala herself. Her message to the people of the country and the world in general is simply: every child has the right to education, regardless of whether they are male or female. She has presented this message bravely, willing to sacrifice her life and in doing so has completed the job started by numerous NGOs and INGOs with enormous budgets and the backing of the international community. She has become a symbol for students all over the world.

Malala was not the broker of silence but the breaker of silence.

A Severely Injured Girl Rescued by a Doctor in America

A doctor found a little girl in a trash bin in the Swat Valley. Her face and arms were severely burned. Her caretaker named her Shakira, which means thankful. Shakira arrived inTexasrecently for reconstructive surgery. She has eyelashes but no eyebrows. She has all her fingers but is missing four nails. Her skin is so taut now that she can no longer frown.but she can still smile. Her face tells a story of suffering.

Her caretaker, Hashmat Effendi, hopes will be the start of the rest of her life.

Shakira will undergo reconstructive surgery in January.

She will never look fully normal, but Effendi hopes the surgery will make it easier for Shakira to grow older and help others see what Effendi has seen all along: an effervescent bundle of love.

In 2009, Effendi was on a medical mission with Texas-based House of Charity in Pakistan’s Swat Valley. The region’s natural beauty was once compared to Switzerland’s, but by then it was a Taliban-infested area rife with violence.

One of the doctors found three little girls left in a trash bin. They’d suffered horrific injuries.

“Who are they?” the doctor asked.

Nobody knew.

Where were their parents? Where were they from? All anyone could say is that there had been a plane attack. The girls were likely hurt in the strike.

The doctor, who was traveling with House of Charity, took them back with him. They were in grave condition. Two of the girls died, but the littlest one had a chance of making it if she were treated right away.

She was only a year old, Effendi guessed, but small for her age. She was skinny. Dirty. Very bloody. She had fresh burns all over her face, her scalp and on her arms.

Effendi began searching for the little girl’s family. She needed their consent before doctors operated on her. But when no one stepped forward, doctors proceeded anyway to treat the burns.

Otherwise, they would have to amputate her arm. Otherwise, she might not survive.

“Life,” she said, “was a gift for her.”

Effendi continued to look for relatives, even scattered posters of Shakira everywhere and solicited the help of the Pakistani army and a government official. But still, no one claimed her.

Shakira was finally taken to ShalimarHospitalin Lahore, where she spent the next three years in a charity ward.

Effendi was finally able to bring Shakira back to Houston, where Effendi lives.

When the Qatar Airways flight landed, Shakira turned to Effendi, whom she calls Mummy.

“Are we in America?” she asked.

“Yes,” Effendi replied.

Shakira put her hands together and clapped.

On the plane, Shakira had learned to count from 1 to 27 in English. It was a good start, Effendi thought.

House of Charity has helped thousands of children with congenital birth defects or those who have been disfigured in war, but Shakira was special.

Effendi raised three sons, who are grown. Her house once again filled with the mirth of a youngster.

“She’s like my tail,” Effendi said. “She follows me around all day.”

She took Shakira to McDonald’s. Shakira gobbled up chicken nuggets. She learned that in America, chips were called French fries and tomato sauce was ketchup.

Effendi was ironing her clothes the other day when Shakira ran up to her.

“Mummy, do you love me?” she asked. “How much?”

“This much,” Effendi said, gesturing.

Shakira ran into the bathroom, stood in front of the mirror and started screaming.

It was then that Effendi realized Shakira was overwhelmed.

She had gone that day to meet her doctor, Robert McCauley, at the ShrinersHospitalfor Children in Galveston. He volunteered to do the reconstructive surgery.

Shakira arrived in a turquoise striped dress, black leggings and white lacy socks. She wore beads around her neck and a big pink ring that House of Charity volunteer Larry Maxwell gave her.

She called him “Nana,” the Urdu word for grandfather.

At the hospital, Shakira touched McCauley’s coat buttons; the nurse’s stethoscope. She referred to McCauley as her doctor and understood as best a child could that he was trying to make her well.

“It’s not easy and it’s not a single-day procedure,” McCauley said about the surgery. He will start January 16 with her right hand.

He will never be able to give her eyebrows or restore the missing nails on four of her fingers.

Sometimes, when Shakira eats spicy food, her flesh feels raw and irritated. She will have to always be careful about that.

He will never be able to fix the severe discoloration on her forehead. But he hopes to reconstruct her nose, fix her eyes.

Shakira took it all in stride at the hospital. But it was that sense of belonging and being loved that was alien for her, Effendi realized. It was overwhelming.

“She needs security,” Effendi said. “Yesterday was a very emotional day for her.”

Effendi had been working with children for 25 years. But Shakira was teaching her new things.

Effendi hopes Shakira will be adopted by a family in the United States. It would be unfair, she said, to send Shakira back to Pakistan. She has no one there.

For now, Shakira will adjust to life in Americain Effendi’s home.

Effendi may never know where Shakira came from or who claimed her as a daughter.

But she knows she was able to give Shakira new life — and a name that could not have been more fitting.

Taliban Have Left Swat & the Music Has Started Playing

By Manzoor Ali of Express Tribune/ Feb 16, 2011

On a chilly February evening, my friend and I knock on doors in localities in eastern part of Mingora, searching for Swat’s age-long culture, but there is no answer from any house. There is no electricity in the area and the narrow alleys are dark.

Occasional visitors brush past using their mobile phones as torches. Finally, there is a response as a young boy peeps out from a door. After an exchange of whispers we are led to a cramped room of a two- storey house. The room is bare and a tattered sofa lies in a corner. A gas burner dimly lights up the room.

The houses here are famous for their fair skinned dancing girls. Now the women, once targeted by the Taliban, are back in business and music reverberates till late at night.

After a few minutes, the young boy who had opened the door ushers two young girls into the room. Attired in black and red dresses, they say they are cousins and introduce themselves as Rani and Muskan.

In late 2008 at the peak of militancy, Muskan and Rani left their homes for Karachi to escape persecution from the Taliban.

Barely a month after their departure on January 2, 2009, Taliban knocked on a door opposite to their house and dragged out dancer Shabana to Green Chowk. Green Chowk remained true to its other name, Khooni Chowk, and Shabana was shot at the square famous for executions.

Shabana’s death created a ripple effect and almost all girls left their homes for safer places.

“We heard the news of Shabana’s death in Karachi. I was sad and scared.  We too, could have met the same fate if we had not left our homes,” Muskan told The Express Tribune.

In March 2009, authorities agreed with Sufi Mohammad to effectively remove the girls from Swat, following the short-lived peace deal brokered by Sufi.

The situation has improved now and we no longer fear anyone. Swat is our home and we cannot live somewhere else, said Muskan, who is also a model and appears in Pashto song videos.

Rani added that their business has improved and now musical events are arranged with no restriction from the police or maulvis.

We learnt dance from our cousin Laila. After her wedding, we started performing to feed our 18 member family, Rani said. “There are at least 20 houses associated with this business at Bunrh and now there is no fear of the Taliban,” her brother Ashfaq said.

But there is fear. The first door my friends and I had knocked at was slain Shabana’s, and no member of her family came to open the door. They do not want to talk about that incident, my friend said.

Pervesh Shaheen, a local historian told The Express Tribune that under the Wali of Swat, there was official patronage to the dancers and they were paid a fixed amount after a function. No one was allowed to throw money while they danced, Shaheen said, adding that the girls were not involved in prostitution.

The discussion with Ashfaq comes to end as two customers are waiting upstairs. “Hopefully with time, Swat will move on, leaving behind ghosts from the violent past.”

NYT Calls Pakistan’s Government Incompetent and Corrupt

By Adam B. Ellick 

People in Swat felt a surge of optimism in 2009 when the military declared the Swat Valley cleared of Taliban insurgents, who had bullied their way to power by publicly whipping and beheading opponents. 

But more than a year after millions of residents returned home, the absence of virtually any government follow-through has turned that hope into despair. 

Throughout the valley, tens of thousands of students are sheltered by broken-down walls and flimsy tents supplied mostly by international aid groups. The government has yet to rebuild even one of the more than 150 schools leveled by the Taliban in their methodical campaign to prevent girls’ education. 

Running water, electricity and school supplies are widely absent. The floods that ravaged the country this summer, and hit Swat especially hard, have only compounded the hardships and diverted money and attention away from reconstructing war-torn areas. 

The lack of any visible progress has fed the frustrations of local people and international donors over the government’s incompetence and corruption, raising fears that it has squandered a chance to win over a pivotal population in its war against militancy, which has been urged on by the United States. 

In the minds of these little kids, the frustration against our own government is developing, and against the West is developing. They’ll go into Talibanization or miscreants because that is their only option left. What do they have to lose? 

And who is the one to blame? 

School- going children have watched a parade of government leaders visiting their schools without removing even one brick from the rubble. 

The Taliban tightened their hold on Swat by exploiting class grievances. Many complain that the wealthy class and politicians, who are often the same, do not care for the poor or their schools. 

Pakistani officials defended their performance, saying that hiring engineers and architects to ensure that schools would be safe from earthquakes was a time-consuming process that was delayed two months by the floods. 

They also blamed foreign governments who, they said, failed to follow through on pledges made when several million people were displaced from Swat by the military’s campaign to oust the Taliban in 2009. 

Foreign government officials say they are reluctant to give money for fear it will be siphoned off by politicians. 

The provincial government of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, where Swat is located, was listed as the most corrupt provincial administration in the country by the global advocacy group Transparency International. 

“Donors need clarity,” said one foreign official who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the delicacy of the issue. “It’s unfortunate, but that’s where we are.” 

So far the United States is the only foreign government to contribute to the school cause. It gave $5 million in April and planned to release an additional $15 million if it was satisfied with the transparency of how its initial donation was used, and with the progress made. 

Officials said that the pledges would build 108 schools over roughly two years, but added that they were still $1 billion short of what was needed to restore the region’s infrastructure.

The United States was so concerned about corruption that it set up an elaborate system that tracks the funds, according to American and Pakistan officials.

Mr. Qadir, the rehabilitation agency director, said the Pakistani government had short-circuited many of those procedures to speed up reconstruction. However, he said, the United States’ insistence on financial safeguards has undoubtedly delayed progress.

“Is making compromises on financial controls a smart thing?” he said. “Is winning or losing the hearts and minds of the people a smart thing? You cannot have the cake and eat it, too.”

Another official from the relief authority in Mingora, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retribution, said international donors were wise to take the precautions. Despite the safeguards, he said, contracts for 68 schools were steered to a handful of construction companies with direct ties to politicians.

A top education official in Mingora confirmed that local politicians spent at least three months haggling over school contracts. He charged that they colluded to raise the bids and then split the profits.

“It’s an open secret,” said Fazle Maula Zahid, the coordinator of the Global Peace Council, an independent watchdog group based in Mingora, Swat’s main city. “These people, for their petty commissions, have destroyed our future, have destroyed our youth.”

Mr. Qadir said everything was aboveboard. “Politicians might like to get these contracts, but they have to follow the process, and that’s what they did, even if they have companies,” he said.

Highlighting the gap between government officials and the reality on the ground, Mr. Qadir said he recently received a field report indicating that students were no longer studying in tents. This month, however, four officials in Swat confirmed that tens of thousands of students remained in tents.

The government has yet even to verify the number of schools damaged over all, according to the relief authority. It has allocated $3.5 million for reconstruction, but that helped to repair dozens of damaged schools, which were cheaper and easier to fix than those completely destroyed.

Several hundred other schools were fixed by the army, which is concerned about its military gains going to waste. “Schools are a snapshot of the larger picture,” said Maj. Tahir Bashir, an army officer who until recently was based in Mingora.

“Time and again we discuss this with the provincial government,” he said. “It’s a lengthy procedure for them, and they’re not so capable.”

The government’s record contrasts with that of Pakistanis who have taken matters into their own hands.

A nonprofit organization called Sarhad Rural Support Program raised $400,000 in donations from wealthy Pakistanis, and rebuilt seven prefabricated schools in six weeks. It did so by putting money in the hands of community leaders, not government officials, and by recruiting local volunteers.

But even elite schools can do only so much in the absence of an energetic response by the government.

Ismail Khan, the principal at Sangota Public School and Excelsior College, a renowned semi-private school, said he tapped his endowment to rent a defunct hotel to hold classes. Teachers worked for free at one point.

Still, the hotel can accommodate only half of his 1,300 students. The school is running a $3,500 deficit each month. “Day by day, our problems are increasing,” Mr. Khan said. “It is destined to be doomed.”

Pakistani Troops Linked to Abuses Will Lose Aid

By Eric Schmitt and David E. Sanger 

The Obama administration will refuse to train or equip about a half-dozen Pakistani Army units that are believed to have killed unarmed prisoners and civilians during recent offensives against the Taliban. 

The cutoff of funds is an unusual rebuke to a wartime ally, and it illustrates the growing tensions with a country that is seen as a pivotal partner, and sometimes impediment, in a campaign to root out Al Qaeda and other militant groups. 

The White House has not told Pakistan of the decision, even though senior Pakistani military and civilian leaders are here for a series of meetings, according to officials from both countries. 

The administration has briefed a few senior members of Congress, but it has not given them details about which Pakistani units will be affected by the suspension. One senior administration official said there was “a lot of concern about not embarrassing” the Pakistani military, especially during a week in which officials are in Washington, DC for the third “Strategic Dialogue” in a year. 

The decision comes just as the two countries are trying to get beyond a sharp exchange after NATO helicopter gunships killed three Pakistani paramilitary troops, and Pakistan retaliated by shutting down a critical allied supply route into Afghanistan. 

President Obama met Oct 20 in Washington with Pakistan’s army chief, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, and other senior Pakistani officials before leaving on a campaign trip to the West Coast, but the White House provided only a vague description of their conversations. Most of the strategic dialogue is focused on a range of subjects, including counterterrorism, nuclear security, flood relief and trade. 

The officials who described the decision said it would affect some Pakistani Army and special operations troops supported by the United States that have conducted offensives against Taliban fighters in the Swat Valley and South Waziristan in the past year, the officials said. But the process is not over: some additional Pakistani units may yet be denied American aid, officials say.

The Leahy Amendment, a law that stretches back more than a decade, requires the United States to cut off aid to foreign military units that are found to have committed gross violations of human rights. It has been applied in the past to Indonesia and Colombia, but never to a country of such strategic importance to the United States s Pakistan. 

“I told the White House that I have real concerns about the Pakistani military’s actions, and I’m not going to close my eyes to it because of our national interests in Pakistan,” Senator Patrick J. Leahy, the author of the amendment, said Wednesday from his home in Vermont. “If the law is going to have teeth, it has to be taken seriously. Pakistan’s military leaders have made encouraging statements about addressing these issues, but this requires more than statements.”

The United States spends about $2 billion a year on the Pakistani military, including money specifically designated for counterterrorism operations. 

A senior Pakistani official who has been involved in discussions about the issue said the United States had conveyed its concerns about reports of extrajudicial killings, which he said Pakistan was addressing. But he said Pakistan had not been notified that any army units had been refused training or equipment. The United States government “has not threatened us with withholding of assistance or training for any of our military units on these grounds,” the official said. 

Much of the administration’s review has been overseen by Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, one of the administration’s direct contacts with General Kayani. Admiral Mullen has spoken to senior lawmakers, including Senator Leahy and Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, and assured them that the law would be followed, a senior military officer said. 

Once strictures are in place, the government conducts inspections to make sure that the sanctioned units do not receive American training or equipment. 

Admiral Mullen is acutely aware that the United States is in a difficult position on this issue, senior military officers said. He is pushing Pakistan to enter forbidding territory to take on Al Qaeda and the Pakistani Taliban — a point that Mr. Obama reinforced in his meeting with General Kayani — even as the administration is punishing Pakistani troops for human rights abuses. 

A spokesman for Admiral Mullen, Capt. John Kirby, said in a statement that the admiral had conveyed to General Kayani his “concerns about allegations surrounding the conduct of some Pakistani military units.” Captain Kirby said that Admiral Mullen “is comfortable that Gen. Kayani shares those concerns” and has taken steps to hold his commanders accountable for any abuses.

Part of the difference is a stark cultural gulf between Pakistani military units, especially the lightly trained Frontier Corps, and American troops. American officials have long suspected that some Pakistani units have killed unarmed detainees and their civilian sympathizers in revenge for attacks on military and police outposts. 

The absence of a reliable court system to handle detainees also encourages battlefield justice, American officials say. 

General Kayani, who is considered more influential than any civilian official in the weak Pakistani government, has begun to act on the American warnings, senior American officials said. He recently ordered an inquiry into an Internet video that shows men in Pakistani military uniforms executing six young men in civilian clothes. General Kayani said in a statement at the time that violations of army rules against extrajudicial killings “will not be tolerated.” 

The Pakistani military has been accused of hundreds of extrajudicial killings. The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, a nongovernmental organization, said in June that 282 had been committed in the Swat region in the previous year. 

But a senior State Department official said the Internet video seized the attention of senior officials at the White House and the State Department, and intensified discussions about how to deal with the issue. Some officials said the video might have also forced General Kayani to act.

“As General Kayani has said repeatedly in public and in private, professional standards and enforcement of those standards are the hallmark of a modern and successful military,” Tommy Vietor, a White House spokesman, said Thursday in a statement. 

The White House’s most recent quarterly report to Congress on developments in the region cited continuing reports of gross violations of human rights in Pakistan. “There was some evidence that the Pakistani military has made initial steps to stop those abuses,” the report said. “However, despite U.S. engagement on the issue, reports of ongoing abuses continue to surface.” 

Under pressure from the United States, the Pakistani Army in 2009 carried out an offensive in Swat in the northwest, and a year later in South Waziristan in the mountainous tribal regions along the border with Afghanistan. In each case, the army has struggled to conduct counterinsurgency missions that maintain public support while singling out insurgents and their sympathizers in the population.

Kalam Remains Cut-off from the Rest of the Country

Never before in my 70 years have I seen the river water flow at such a ferocious speed. It hissed like a black cobra,” said a resident of Kalam.

It was such a terrifying experience that people now stay away from the river bank, although the Swat river is now flowing normally.

Local people have never seen the river rise to the level it did in recent days.

It not only washed away all the five major bridges but also made massive inroads into the otherwise rocky embankments.

The valley, which till about two years ago was a popular tourist haunt, has suffered its second streak of misfortune in two years. Miles after miles of the road connecting Swat city with Kalam have been washed away by floods.

The valley is now cut off from the rest of the country. And its residents are trying to cope with the challenge of managing their lives. Because of lack of access, the information coming out of Kalam has been limited and the news of airpower — of the Pakistan army and US forces — being used to evacuate stranded people and deliver relief goods led to rumors and sparked fears of a widespread destruction.

Although people living on both sides of the river in the valley are safe, the missing road link is a major concern for them and for the government.

The damage has mostly confined to areas along the river banks. The major loss is of the road which runs alongside the river.

If the government starts building the road tomorrow, it will require at least three months to restore the road link to Kalam valley. Had it been an odd bridge and a few kilometres of road, the army would have done it immediately.

The residents are also aware that their crisis will not end in days.

Knowing that they will remain cut off from the rest of the country for months, people have already started stocking basic food items. And if the government does not find some alternative to supply flour, rice and sugar, things will be really scary in coming months.

The population of the valley is 600,000.

People also complain about lack of relief goods.

Everyday thousands of people turn up to receive relief goods, but supplies are inadequate.

The only way of transportation is through helicopters which has been made possible with the help of the Americans.

Aircraft for Pakistan Army are busy in other affected areas. The Americans have rushed 15 helicopters to the area for rescue and relief work. Based at the Ghazi Aviation base near Tarbela, they are transporting all sorts of goods, including flour, powdered milk, sugar, medicines and utensils, to the affected areas.

Human Rights Watch Accuse Army of Extrajudicial Killings in Swat

The Pakistani government should immediately investigate reports of summary executions, torture, and mistreatment perpetrated during counterterrorism operations in the Swat valley, Human Rights Watch has said.

Since September 2009, when the Pakistani military re-established control over the valley, Human Rights Watch has received numerous credible reports of extrajudicial executions allegedly committed by soldiers operating in Swat or police acting at the behest of the military. Human Rights Watch has since February researched alleged human rights violations in Swat based on an initial list of 238 suspicious killings provided by local sources.

Human Rights Watch has corroborated about 50 of these cases. In no case examined by Human Rights Watch was a killing falsely reported, suggesting that the total number of killings is as high as or greater than those reported. The information for each case includes names or numbers of victims, place names, and dates. To date, the Pakistani military has not held any of the perpetrators accountable for these killings.

“The Pakistani military has yet to understand that a bullet in the back of the head is simply not the way to win hearts and minds in Swat,” said Ali Dayan Hasan, senior South Asia researcher at Human Rights Watch. “Killing terrorism suspects and their relatives in cold blood is vicious, illegal, and constitutes an appallingly bad counterterrorism practice that just creates more enemies.”

On March 28, 2010, for example, Farman Ali, a resident of Matta sub-district, surrendered to the 12th Punjab regiment of the Pakistan Army during a search operation in the Kokari Jambeel area of Swat.

Witnesses told Human Rights Watch that two unidentified men were also taken into custody at the same time. The bullet-riddled bodies of the two unidentified men were later produced by the military authorities as those of Taliban fighters killed in a military “encounter” with Taliban fighters. Farman Ali remained in the custody of the 12th Punjab regiment, without access to family members.

In mid-May, local residents in Matta reported to Human Rights Watch that military authorities told them to “expect Farman’s body soon.”

On May 26, his body was found dumped in a field with a gunshot wound to the head. Human Rights Watch research indicates that from March 28 until the day his body was found, Farman Ali was continuously in military custody.

“It beggars belief that Farman Ali was killed by anyone other than members of the 12th Punjab regiment given that he never left their custody,” Hasan said. “Those responsible for ordering and carrying out Farman Ali’s execution need to be held accountable.”

Local residents also told Human Rights Watch that on February 21, the bodies of two wanted Taliban commanders, Mohammad Aalim (alias Mullah Banorey) and Shams ul Hadi (alias Mullah Shanko), were found in the Maidan sub-district along with the bodies of two men named Murad and Saleem. While the local residents agreed that the former were Taliban commanders, they said that Murad and Saleem had no connection or involvement whatsoever with the Taliban. Yet military commanders claimed at the time that all four men were killed in an “encounter.”

These residents told Human Rights Watch that all four men had been rounded up four months earlier in a military raid in the Fatehpur sub-district.

“I knew Murad and Saleem personally,” one resident said. “They were absolutely innocent. They had nothing to do with the Taliban. I saw them grow up.”

The residents said all four victims had been transferred to an unknown military detention center upon arrest.

Another resident told Human Rights Watch: “On February 16, 2010, the army shot all four dead in the area of the Grid Station in the town. We heard the shots that killed these individuals. The corpses of Mullah Banorey and Mullah Shanko were tied behind military vehicles and dragged publicly in the areas of Char Bagh, Bagh Dheri, and Matta as warning. The people were encouraged to spit at and throw garbage on the bodies of the two dead Taliban commanders, who were feared and hated. But the entire local population knew that Saleem and Murad were innocent. Why did the army kill them?”

The resident said that the local population was afraid to raise the case with the authorities.

“The local people are very angry at their murder but dare not say anything for fear of the army,” the resident said. “When the television shows these days that certain numbers of militants are killed during an ambush, this is not fact. We have seen so many people picked up from their houses by the army and then their dead bodies thrown in different areas.”

The reported cases of alleged extrajudicial killings in Swat follow a similar pattern. In mid-January, 12 corpses, including that of a prominent Taliban leader, Abu Faraj, were found near the Swat River riddled with bullets and bearing torture marks.

The other dead are believed to include nine villagers who had earlier been picked up by the army and remain missing. The body of Ghani, an alleged Taliban supporter picked up and publicly beaten by the army in July 2009, was found in a field in Kuza Bandi on January 10 with one bullet wound in the head and three in the chest. On January 2, the body of “Humanyun” (an alias) was found dumped outside his house, showing visible torture marks and broken bones; the military had detained him and his brother on October 27 on their return to Swat. Humanyun’s brother was released on December 29. He had been tortured, and both of his legs had been broken.

The army picked up Ayub Khan at his home in Lunday Kase, Mingora on November 23, badly beat him in front of his family, and took him away in a military vehicle. On December 28, local residents saying their dawn prayers heard a shot and found his body, covered in torture marks, in a nearby stream as an army vehicle drove away. Islam Khan was picked up in October 2009 from his house in Imam Dheri, Swat in an army raid. His body was found 15 days later near the Swat River with extensive torture marks and his hands and legs broken. Shortly after the body was recovered, a team of soldiers and police came to his house, told his family not to mention the incident or their house would be demolished, and took the body away.

“By abusing local people, the Pakistani military is perpetuating the lawlessness on which the Taliban thrives,” Hasan said. “Real peace and security will remain elusive in Swat so long as the military neither follows nor seeks to establish the rule of law.”

Human Rights Watch said that while reports of alleged summary executions linked to the military had declined in recent months, they had not ended. The military should investigate reported killings and send unequivocal orders down the chain of command that those responsible for such killings would be held accountable, Human Rights Watch said.

Human Rights Watch noted that since the military regained control of the Swat valley, there had been a marked improvement in the overall security situation. Public floggings and hangings perpetrated under Taliban control have largely ended. Local residents told Human Rights Watch that under military control, Taliban vigilante activities and tribunals have also largely ended.

Meanwhile, Taliban militants have continued to carry out suicide bombings and targeted killings, especially against police and civilians deemed to be army informants and members of local peace committees set up by the government. On July 15, at least five people were killed and nearly 50 wounded in a suicide bomb attack near a crowded bus stop in the main town of Mingora.
“By killing and abusing civilians, the Taliban are showing their desperation in the face of the Pakistani military’s success,” Hasan said.

The United States provides substantial military assistance to Pakistan, yet that support is conditioned on compliance with the Leahy Law. That law requires the US State Department to certify that no military unit receiving US aid is involved in gross human rights abuses, and when such abuses are found, they are to be thoroughly and properly investigated.

Human Rights Watch called upon the United States, the United Kingdom, and Pakistan’s other military allies to urge Pakistani authorities to end abusive practices in Swat and to hold accountable all personnel, regardless of rank, responsible for serious human rights abuses. Human Rights Watch called upon the United States to review the possible responsibility of military units receiving US military aid for alleged abuses in Swat and to take appropriate action.

“Civilians already enduring Taliban abuses should not have their misery compounded by the military’s behavior,” Hasan said. “Pakistan’s allies need to press the country’s military to ease the suffering of the people of Swat, not exacerbate it.”

When Will Things Change for the People of the Tribal Areas?

Amnesty International (AI) has criticized the Pakistani government and the militants it is fighting in parts of Khyber-Pukhtoonkhwa Province and the FATA on the border with Afghanistan for violating international humanitarian law and human rights, even though conditions in other areas, such as Swat, are improving. 
 
Nearly four million people are effectively living under the Taliban in northwest Pakistan without rule of law and effectively abandoned by the Pakistani government. 
 
The Pakistani government has to follow through on its promises to bring the region out of this human rights black hole and place the people of FATA under the protection of the law and constitution of Pakistan.
 
 Amnesty’s report, As if hell fell on me [http://amnesty.org.uk/uploads/documents/doc_20439.pdf], documents among other things the use of civilians as human shields by militants, restrictions by both the Pakistan army and militants on civilians leaving areas of fighting and “insufficient care” by the military to protect civilians. The government disputed this.
 
 The London-based rights watchdog also said more than a million displaced people were “in desperate need of aid” and narrated accounts of abuses by tribal lashkars (militias), set up with government support to keep the Taliban at bay. 
 
The lashkars are almost as bad as the Taliban. They use guns to threaten people and have killed in the past.  The Minister for Human Rights, Mumtaz Alam Gilani, called the report “unfortunate and incorrect”. Pakistani security forces had made significant gains against Taliban militants and had uprooted their bases in most parts of FATA, he said. “When there is war, there [are] no civil rights,” he told the media in Islamabad. [http://www1.voanews.com/english/news/asia/Pakistan-disputes-Amnesty-report-on-Taliban-Strength-in-the-Countrys-Northwest--96065654.html] 
 
There are targeted killings of those who oppose the Taliban. People have no idea when things will get back to normal. There is also no work as so many shops and businesses have closed down. 
 
 Positive Swat 
 In some areas of Khyber-Pukhtoonkhwa, notably Swat District, residents say their lives have greatly improved since the army drove out the Taliban in 2009. 
 
In an area where two years ago schools were being burned down and girls prevented from attending classes, 30-year-old school-teacher Fyza Akbar contends with a class of six-year-olds prone to giggling fits because she discarded her burqa two months ago, allowing her hair to tumble out from below her loose dupatta (head scarf).
 
 ”They have rarely seen women without veils, except their mothers or sisters inside their own homes,” Akbar said, adding that she took off her burqa because “the Taliban are no longer here to impose it”. 
 
The situation of human rights has improved in Swat and no incidents of public floggings or patrols by militants – a regular feature of life in Mingora, the principal city of Swat before the April 2009 military operation. [http://www.hrcp-web.org/showprel.asp?id=126].
 
 ”Things are better here and life is almost normal,” Salim Shaukat, a Mingora-based lawyer and social activist, said. He said about 20 percent of women had returned to work where they could opt to wear chadors (shawls) rather than burqas and most people were not as fearful as before.

Taliban Butcher Thrown on the Road-side

Mysterious death of high-profile terrorist in army custody
requires immediate investigation

The body of a high-profile Taliban commander, Sher Muhammad Qassab, was found on the roadside at his hometown, Charbagh, Swat valley on September 20, 2009, four days after his widely publicized arrest on September 16. The government had previously announced a head money of Rupees 10 million for his capture.

Qassab was the key commander of Taliban forces at the important
Charbagh area, the stronghold of Taliban militants in NWFP, and had allegedly confessed to being responsible for the beheading of 22 persons including Pakistani soldiers, according to the army. He was a butcher by profession and was the father of four sons, who were reportedly members of a banned Islamic fundamentalist organization, Tehreek-e-Nifaz-e-Shariat-e-Mohammadi (TNSM), led by Maulana Fazlullah.

According to a brief statement released by the Inter Services Public Relations (ISPR) and the Swat Media Cenre (formed by the army at the local level) on September 20, Qassab died of multiple injuries on September 20 morning after the doctors failed to resuscitate him. Further details as to why Qassab had suffered fatal injuries while in army custody, or why his body was disposed of on the roadside instead of being handed to his family, remain unknown.

The suspicious manner of his death, combined with the reluctance of the army to bring the details to light, creates speculation that Qassab was murdered to cover up connections between the Taliban militants on one hand and the army and the ISI agencies on the other.

Maulana Fazlullah

Amir, Tehrik-e-Nifaz-e-Shariat-e-Mohammadi
Popularly known as ‘Mullah Radio’, he’s the son-in-law of Maulana Sufi Mohammed, the TNSM founder whose ultimate goal is to enforce Shariat or Islamic law in all of Pakistan. Born on March 1, 1975, Maulana Fazlullah earned the sobriquet Mullah Radio for using illegal FM channels to broadcast vituperative speeches, threatening people with dire consequences should they not adhere to Shariat and instigating the residents of Swat into taking part in jehad. His 10,000 armed volunteers established a parallel government in almost 60 towns of the Swat valley, replete with Islamic courts delivering instant justice and gun-toting men directing traffic. His reign of terror saw officials flee Swat. He became a household name after the fierce resistance his men mounted against the Pakistan army, despatched there to dismantle the TNSM’s jehadi infrastructure following the collapse of a peace agreement between Sufi Mohammed and the government. Hundreds of security personnel lost their lives in a spate of suicide attacks masterminded by Fazlullah. And though the army reclaimed Swat, Fazlullah remains at large. Suspected of having strong links with the Al Qaeda and Taliban, he carries a reward of Rs 5 million on his head.