Thursday, July 19, 2012
Afghanistan insurgency threatens previously peaceful Bamiyan province
Concerns growing over violence in central highland province after two bombs killed nine police officers earlier this month
Emma Graham-Harrison in Kabul
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 19 July 2012 08.25 EDT
Afghan police officers train at a firing range in the central province of Bamiyan. Photograph: Ahmad Masood/REUTERS
The central highland province of Bamiyan has long been an island of security in the rising tide of Afghanistan's insurgency, largely insulated from the blasts and gunfire that have become commonplace across the rest of the country by its geography and a fierce strain of anti-Talibansentiment.
But concerns are growing over the government's ability to hold off insurgents in the region after two massive roadside bombs, just five days apart, killed nine police officers earlier this month.
It was an unprecedented toll for the area, and raised fears that violence will escalate as foreign troops withdraw.
The officers who died in two attacks on 3 and 8 July were the first Afghan casualties in Bamiyan since 2008, when a bomb killed a single policeman, according to Mohammad Ali Lakzi, the head of operations and archives for the provincial police force. A New Zealand soldier was also shot dead in 2010.
The area has remained so secure that it was chosen last summer to launch a gradual nationwide handover from Nato troops to Afghan forces, even though the nearest soldiers are in the next province. Armed police are the only security forces and they rarely have to make use of their guns.
But the people of Bamiyan have bitter memories of massacres in their valleys by Taliban troops, shortly before the hardline Islamists were ousted in late 2001, and the destruction of two giant Buddha statues that had gazed serenely out of a cliff for over a millennium.
And so the July bombs that detonated under two police vehicles have sent a chill through the province. The first set of buried explosives killed four officers and injured two, the second killed five.
"In the past few years we never faced such an incident," said the provincial police chief, Juma Guldi Yaardam, who has more than 1,000 officers at his command but says he needs army support in tackling the insurgent threat spilling over from less peaceful neighbouring areas – particularly Baghlan, Parwan and Wardak provinces.
"These provinces are unsafe and we have big concerns about the future. We think we need more troops to ensure good security for the borders."
The north-eastern district where the deadly bombs were buried has long been the riskiest part of Bamiyan, but the attacks were unusually bold.
"They were unprecedented in terms of the death toll and getting their targets," said a Foreign Official familiar with the province. The deaths rekindled concerns sparked by the kidnapping and murder of the head of the provincial council on the road from Kabul last year.
"Most of the province, in an Afghan context, is safe, but the north-east has this problem … Who knows whether this is the start of a pattern or not," the official added. "People are maybe getting a bit more nervous."
The provincial governor, the only woman in Afghanistan to run one of the 34 regional administrations, says the police are ill-prepared to handle battle-hardened insurgents.
"The number of guns that our police have is not really sufficient," Habiba Sarabi said in a telephone interview, in which she also stressed most of her province was still safe.
"Our military needs some more supplies, some more support for training and equipment."
Insurgents have attacked civilian supplies, including tankers of fuel, on the critical road through the northeast, and there are insurgents active along a southern route too. The violence pushes up prices in Bamiyan and limits travel out of the isolated province, she said.
"When they want to travel to Kabul … it's really bad for them to take either road," Sarabi said. "Sometimes even their gasoline trucks or some other supplies are stopped by these insurgents and also some of them have been burned, so this ensures the people of Bamiyan are suffering and not happy."
Most of the unrest is from small, mobile groups of less than 20 insurgents that cross into Bamiyan for brief attacks or to bury an IED before disappearing back into lawless areas where the government has little or no reach.
There are more checkpoints on the roads now as a stop-gap solution, but Sarabi said more co-ordination with officials in the troubled provinces, and help from the Afghan army, is critical to tackling the violence long-term.
The negotiations leading up to the security handover from New Zealand forces last July included a request for soldiers, but so far they have not been provided. A spokesman for the Afghanistan ministry of defence declined to comment on whether that might change.
"As a strategy of the ministry of defence, we check if there are threats and send forces where they are needed," said spokesman General Zahir Azimi.
Additional reporting by Mokhtar Amiri
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 19 July 2012 08.25 EDT
Afghan police officers train at a firing range in the central province of Bamiyan. Photograph: Ahmad Masood/REUTERS
The central highland province of Bamiyan has long been an island of security in the rising tide of Afghanistan's insurgency, largely insulated from the blasts and gunfire that have become commonplace across the rest of the country by its geography and a fierce strain of anti-Talibansentiment.
But concerns are growing over the government's ability to hold off insurgents in the region after two massive roadside bombs, just five days apart, killed nine police officers earlier this month.
It was an unprecedented toll for the area, and raised fears that violence will escalate as foreign troops withdraw.
The officers who died in two attacks on 3 and 8 July were the first Afghan casualties in Bamiyan since 2008, when a bomb killed a single policeman, according to Mohammad Ali Lakzi, the head of operations and archives for the provincial police force. A New Zealand soldier was also shot dead in 2010.
The area has remained so secure that it was chosen last summer to launch a gradual nationwide handover from Nato troops to Afghan forces, even though the nearest soldiers are in the next province. Armed police are the only security forces and they rarely have to make use of their guns.
But the people of Bamiyan have bitter memories of massacres in their valleys by Taliban troops, shortly before the hardline Islamists were ousted in late 2001, and the destruction of two giant Buddha statues that had gazed serenely out of a cliff for over a millennium.
And so the July bombs that detonated under two police vehicles have sent a chill through the province. The first set of buried explosives killed four officers and injured two, the second killed five.
"In the past few years we never faced such an incident," said the provincial police chief, Juma Guldi Yaardam, who has more than 1,000 officers at his command but says he needs army support in tackling the insurgent threat spilling over from less peaceful neighbouring areas – particularly Baghlan, Parwan and Wardak provinces.
"These provinces are unsafe and we have big concerns about the future. We think we need more troops to ensure good security for the borders."
The north-eastern district where the deadly bombs were buried has long been the riskiest part of Bamiyan, but the attacks were unusually bold.
"They were unprecedented in terms of the death toll and getting their targets," said a Foreign Official familiar with the province. The deaths rekindled concerns sparked by the kidnapping and murder of the head of the provincial council on the road from Kabul last year.
"Most of the province, in an Afghan context, is safe, but the north-east has this problem … Who knows whether this is the start of a pattern or not," the official added. "People are maybe getting a bit more nervous."
The provincial governor, the only woman in Afghanistan to run one of the 34 regional administrations, says the police are ill-prepared to handle battle-hardened insurgents.
"The number of guns that our police have is not really sufficient," Habiba Sarabi said in a telephone interview, in which she also stressed most of her province was still safe.
"Our military needs some more supplies, some more support for training and equipment."
Insurgents have attacked civilian supplies, including tankers of fuel, on the critical road through the northeast, and there are insurgents active along a southern route too. The violence pushes up prices in Bamiyan and limits travel out of the isolated province, she said.
"When they want to travel to Kabul … it's really bad for them to take either road," Sarabi said. "Sometimes even their gasoline trucks or some other supplies are stopped by these insurgents and also some of them have been burned, so this ensures the people of Bamiyan are suffering and not happy."
Most of the unrest is from small, mobile groups of less than 20 insurgents that cross into Bamiyan for brief attacks or to bury an IED before disappearing back into lawless areas where the government has little or no reach.
There are more checkpoints on the roads now as a stop-gap solution, but Sarabi said more co-ordination with officials in the troubled provinces, and help from the Afghan army, is critical to tackling the violence long-term.
The negotiations leading up to the security handover from New Zealand forces last July included a request for soldiers, but so far they have not been provided. A spokesman for the Afghanistan ministry of defence declined to comment on whether that might change.
"As a strategy of the ministry of defence, we check if there are threats and send forces where they are needed," said spokesman General Zahir Azimi.
Additional reporting by Mokhtar Amiri
Wednesday, July 18, 2012
Secret ASIS spy war on people smugglers
BY:PAUL MALEY AND BRENDAN NICHOLSON
From:The Australian
July 19, 2012 12:00AM
AUSTRALIA'S overseas espionage service is fighting a secret war on people-smuggling, sending small teams of officers into some of the most dangerous parts of Pakistan to work with local authorities and smash the trafficking rings.
The Australian Secret Intelligence Service is also playing a direct role in counter-terrorism operations overseas, a dramatic and significant evolution of its established role as an intelligence-gatherer.
ASIS director-general Nick Warner will today give the first public address by a serving head of the service in its 60-year history.
His speech comes as The Australian can reveal Australia's spies have been placed on the frontline of Canberra's fight against people-smuggling, arguably a distortion of its role as the overseas guardian of Australia's "vital interests".
In an address to the Lowy Institute in Canberra, Mr Warner will describe how ASIS officers are now involved more directly in counter-terrorist operations, where in the past they have mainly gathered intelligence.
The spy chief will tell the institute the "challenges of helping to prevent terrorist attacks and providing the intelligence edge to Australian soldiers in the field have impacted greatly on ASIS".
"Undertaking supporting operations that achieve a direct outcome, as distinct from our more traditional intelligence-gathering operations, is now of increasing importance," he will say.
The rare insight into Australia's most secretive intelligence agency comes as interviews with security officials in the Pakistani city of Quetta, the hub of the Hazara smuggling trade to Australia, reveal ASIS officers stationed at the Australian high commission in Islamabad travel regularly to Quetta, from where they pass intelligence on smugglers to Pakistan's Federal Investigations Agency.
That intelligence, much of which comes from asylum-seekers interviewed on Christmas Island, forms the basis of investigations or disruption activities undertaken by officials in Quetta, where most of the Hazara asylum-seekers arriving in Australia are from. The Australian has been told that two years ago, the FIA's Quetta zone established the Team for Hazara Illegal Immigrants, a taskforce focused on arresting, prosecuting or otherwise disrupting the people-smugglers - or agents, as they are known locally - responsible for sending thousands of Hazaras to Australia by boat.
The taskforce works with three or four ASIS officers stationed in Pakistan's capital, Islamabad.
The director of the FIA's Quetta zone, Shakeel Durrani, said his team worked closely with both the Australian Federal Police and ASIS but the spy agency was the main contact point for information.
Just one day before The Australian interviewed Mr Durrani, an ASIS officer travelled to Quetta for a detailed meeting on people-smuggling.
The day before that, an officer from the AFP met Mr Durrani's team on the same subject.
Mr Durrani said the information handed over by ASIS at least helped to "bog down" the smuggling agents if there was not enough evidence to prosecute.
"Sometimes we are not in a position to register the case and we have something against them so we register an inquiry," he said.
"We call them, we interrogate them, we take their statements. That really hampers their working. I believe that's what the AFP and ASIS has really appreciated.
"For the last few months, especially from this area of Pakistan, it has really come down quite a bit."
In 2009 ASIS was given an extra $21 million over two years to combat the boat trade to Australia. But the focus on preventing people-smuggling would suggest a distortion of the service's mission statement, which is to protect and promote Australia's "vital interests".
As is the case with the AFP, Customs and the navy, there is understood to be frustration within ASIS over the demands people-smuggling has placed on the service.
ASIS specialises in the collection of "HUMINT" - human intelligence derived from a network of locally cultivated sources.
Today, Mr Warner is expected to discuss the spectrum of threats it confronts. The career diplomat and senior public servant is the only member of ASIS who can be publicly identified. He will say it is time to shed light on work done by the agency and its unique contribution to foreign policy and security.
He is expected to discuss the "continuing and real" threat posed by terrorist groups who may seek to acquire weapons of mass destruction, which he describes as the "ultimate nightmare for security planners" and a prime concern for security agencies.
He will detail the service's approach to dealing with an operational sphere that is "more challenging, volatile and dangerous than at any time since the service's formation" in 1952.
He will say ASIS's core values are "integrity, honesty and trust" and stress that it does not use "violence or blackmail or threats".
His speech comes two years after the head of MI6, John Sawers, gave the first address by a serving head of Britain's spy service, which served as the model for ASIS.
One Pakistani security officer, who asked not to be named, said the quality of the information provided by ASIS was "very good".
"The main source of information they are getting is the victims that are getting to Australia," the officer told The Australian.
"We can't use it in evidence because there are two different laws operating. We can use it as a source of information."
Mr Durrani said his team were investigating 10 to 12 suspected smugglers.
Quetta, in Pakistan's Baluchistan region and 100km from the Afghan border, is the main point of origin for most of the Hazara asylum-seekers who arrive in Australia.
In its country advice, the Department of Foreign Affairs describes the region as "extremely dangerous" and warns Australians not to travel there, citing the risk of kidnapping and assassination.
Quetta has become the focus of myriad anti-people-smuggling initiatives run by the Australian government, from spying to law enforcement co-operation to public awareness campaigns about the dangers of illegal migration.
Ethnic Hazaras are at risk of persecution in parts of Pakistan, including Quetta, just as they are in Afghanistan.
But Canberra's focus on Quetta also reflects longstanding concerns within the Australian government that there is widespread rorting of the asylum program, with most Afghans not being from Afghanistan at all.
Rather, they are first or second-generation Afghans whose families moved to Pakistan decades ago and who are coached by smugglers.
Mr Durrani said smugglers there followed a standard modus operandi when moving people out of Pakistan.
"Out of Pakistan they travel absolutely legally," he said.
"They reach maybe Indonesia, Malaysia, (then) they destroy their documents and pretend . . . to be from Afghanistan."
It is understood the smugglers charge between $US8000 ($7768) and $US10,000 for a trip, although some smuggling sources put the figure higher, at about $US12,000.
A spokesman for ASIS declined to comment on this story.
From:The Australian
July 19, 2012 12:00AM
AUSTRALIA'S overseas espionage service is fighting a secret war on people-smuggling, sending small teams of officers into some of the most dangerous parts of Pakistan to work with local authorities and smash the trafficking rings.
The Australian Secret Intelligence Service is also playing a direct role in counter-terrorism operations overseas, a dramatic and significant evolution of its established role as an intelligence-gatherer.
ASIS director-general Nick Warner will today give the first public address by a serving head of the service in its 60-year history.
His speech comes as The Australian can reveal Australia's spies have been placed on the frontline of Canberra's fight against people-smuggling, arguably a distortion of its role as the overseas guardian of Australia's "vital interests".
In an address to the Lowy Institute in Canberra, Mr Warner will describe how ASIS officers are now involved more directly in counter-terrorist operations, where in the past they have mainly gathered intelligence.
The spy chief will tell the institute the "challenges of helping to prevent terrorist attacks and providing the intelligence edge to Australian soldiers in the field have impacted greatly on ASIS".
"Undertaking supporting operations that achieve a direct outcome, as distinct from our more traditional intelligence-gathering operations, is now of increasing importance," he will say.
The rare insight into Australia's most secretive intelligence agency comes as interviews with security officials in the Pakistani city of Quetta, the hub of the Hazara smuggling trade to Australia, reveal ASIS officers stationed at the Australian high commission in Islamabad travel regularly to Quetta, from where they pass intelligence on smugglers to Pakistan's Federal Investigations Agency.
That intelligence, much of which comes from asylum-seekers interviewed on Christmas Island, forms the basis of investigations or disruption activities undertaken by officials in Quetta, where most of the Hazara asylum-seekers arriving in Australia are from. The Australian has been told that two years ago, the FIA's Quetta zone established the Team for Hazara Illegal Immigrants, a taskforce focused on arresting, prosecuting or otherwise disrupting the people-smugglers - or agents, as they are known locally - responsible for sending thousands of Hazaras to Australia by boat.
The taskforce works with three or four ASIS officers stationed in Pakistan's capital, Islamabad.
The director of the FIA's Quetta zone, Shakeel Durrani, said his team worked closely with both the Australian Federal Police and ASIS but the spy agency was the main contact point for information.
Just one day before The Australian interviewed Mr Durrani, an ASIS officer travelled to Quetta for a detailed meeting on people-smuggling.
The day before that, an officer from the AFP met Mr Durrani's team on the same subject.
Mr Durrani said the information handed over by ASIS at least helped to "bog down" the smuggling agents if there was not enough evidence to prosecute.
"Sometimes we are not in a position to register the case and we have something against them so we register an inquiry," he said.
"We call them, we interrogate them, we take their statements. That really hampers their working. I believe that's what the AFP and ASIS has really appreciated.
"For the last few months, especially from this area of Pakistan, it has really come down quite a bit."
In 2009 ASIS was given an extra $21 million over two years to combat the boat trade to Australia. But the focus on preventing people-smuggling would suggest a distortion of the service's mission statement, which is to protect and promote Australia's "vital interests".
As is the case with the AFP, Customs and the navy, there is understood to be frustration within ASIS over the demands people-smuggling has placed on the service.
ASIS specialises in the collection of "HUMINT" - human intelligence derived from a network of locally cultivated sources.
Today, Mr Warner is expected to discuss the spectrum of threats it confronts. The career diplomat and senior public servant is the only member of ASIS who can be publicly identified. He will say it is time to shed light on work done by the agency and its unique contribution to foreign policy and security.
He is expected to discuss the "continuing and real" threat posed by terrorist groups who may seek to acquire weapons of mass destruction, which he describes as the "ultimate nightmare for security planners" and a prime concern for security agencies.
He will detail the service's approach to dealing with an operational sphere that is "more challenging, volatile and dangerous than at any time since the service's formation" in 1952.
He will say ASIS's core values are "integrity, honesty and trust" and stress that it does not use "violence or blackmail or threats".
His speech comes two years after the head of MI6, John Sawers, gave the first address by a serving head of Britain's spy service, which served as the model for ASIS.
One Pakistani security officer, who asked not to be named, said the quality of the information provided by ASIS was "very good".
"The main source of information they are getting is the victims that are getting to Australia," the officer told The Australian.
"We can't use it in evidence because there are two different laws operating. We can use it as a source of information."
Mr Durrani said his team were investigating 10 to 12 suspected smugglers.
Quetta, in Pakistan's Baluchistan region and 100km from the Afghan border, is the main point of origin for most of the Hazara asylum-seekers who arrive in Australia.
In its country advice, the Department of Foreign Affairs describes the region as "extremely dangerous" and warns Australians not to travel there, citing the risk of kidnapping and assassination.
Quetta has become the focus of myriad anti-people-smuggling initiatives run by the Australian government, from spying to law enforcement co-operation to public awareness campaigns about the dangers of illegal migration.
Ethnic Hazaras are at risk of persecution in parts of Pakistan, including Quetta, just as they are in Afghanistan.
But Canberra's focus on Quetta also reflects longstanding concerns within the Australian government that there is widespread rorting of the asylum program, with most Afghans not being from Afghanistan at all.
Rather, they are first or second-generation Afghans whose families moved to Pakistan decades ago and who are coached by smugglers.
Mr Durrani said smugglers there followed a standard modus operandi when moving people out of Pakistan.
"Out of Pakistan they travel absolutely legally," he said.
"They reach maybe Indonesia, Malaysia, (then) they destroy their documents and pretend . . . to be from Afghanistan."
It is understood the smugglers charge between $US8000 ($7768) and $US10,000 for a trip, although some smuggling sources put the figure higher, at about $US12,000.
A spokesman for ASIS declined to comment on this story.
Monster of sectarianism... By Hassan
18 July, 2012
The monster of sectarian killings is spinning out of control in the country with every passing day. After Parachinar, DI Khan, Hangu and Gilgit, it has now gripped Karachi and Quetta. Apart from common people, a number of renowned figures have been killed on sectarian basis since last month. A few days ago, Syed Ali Imran Jaffri, Deputy General Manager of KESC, Qamar Raza Drector IB and a scholar, Maulana Amini were targeted in Karachi, while Abrar Hussain, the Asian champion in boxing and six Shia students of IT University Balochistan were killed in Quetta. Moreover, a leading poet and literary figure Professor Dr Shabih-ul-Hassan Zaidi was gunned down in Lahore.
On July 11, the Imam of Satellite Town Imambargah, Quetta, Maulana Anwar Ali and a youngster, Haseeb Abbas Zaidi were slaughtered ferociously. Claiming responsibility for the said event, the spokesperson of Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ) accused that the slain people were involved in the target killing of Sunni ulema and bomb blasts; hence they were presented before the Sharia Court of LeJ, where the court announced to behead them.
He further added that they were slaughtered according to Islamic injunctions. He said that on the revelations made by the slain persons other culprits would also be arrested soon and brought to justice. This ferocious event shows the extent to which the sectarian outfits have become fearless in committing their evil designs.
M HASSAN SHERALIAT Islamabad
Sunday, July 15, 2012
The lost city
Muhammad Hassan Miraj
“And I reached there after travelling for days. The whole city wore a gloomy look. On the first night of the new month, everyone in the city gathered at the foot of the adjacent hill. Soon after, a strange looking monster descended from the top and everyone started running madly, until few of them panted and fell. The creature picked up the fallen and went back. I wanted to turn around but my host pulled my hand and took me away. On reaching the safe confines of his house, I asked him about this strange phenomenon? With swollen eyes, he replied: The city was a beautiful city with peace and tranquillity and suddenly we were cursed with this monster. He comes every month and takes few lives. The city is named as Neem Sheher”
This excerpt is from the famous “Qissa Chahar Dervaish” of Meer Aman’s book “Bagh-o-Bahar,” but the city is Quetta. Its famous Jinnah Road is dotted with flags coloured red, white and green. A remembrance for the lives lost in the blast yesterday. For as long as these dead bodies lived, they were Pashtuns or Hazara. Only when they died, they graduated to become human beings.
One day after the blast and two days after the dead bodies were recovered, Quetta wears a look of uncertainty. Promising panflex boards shadow closed shops. Everyone is rushing to nowhere. The shopkeepers talk to the customers but continue looking over their shoulders, searching for a probable assassin. The shopping area of Jinnah Road is few metres away from the safe haven of known as the Cantonment. On both sides of the security check-post, people live a life infested with fear. One side, however, is able to put up a brave front.
A young man in his early twenties, the shopkeeper wears a concealed look of Hazara but he does not respond when I greet in his native dialect, Persian. The language which was once a source of calm is now a motive for murder. Before I can ask more questions, he disrupts the communication and tells us that he is packing up. He works with one hand and with the other; he holds the keys of his motorcycle tightly. The reason for such behaviour, he says, is the impending fear of death. He believes that everyone here in Quetta awaits destruction.
Anytime anybody will appear from anywhere and it will all be over. Even the remains will have to wait for some time before rescue teams show up. His voice sends ripples across my nervous system; this is the terror that reigns supreme here.
The city derived its name from the Pashto word ‘fortress,’ yet insecurity dampens the air. The Hazara community are locked inside their housing societies. Their young are either moving to Australia where asylum is much easier or Scandinavia, the universal refuge of Pakistanis. Those who cannot afford the legal way, opt for the sea route of Malaysia- Indonesia-Australia. The poorest spend their time sitting in front of their houses, for regardless of the poverty their mothers still hold them valuable. Outside the society, they are chased after and eventually murdered. The menial workers from Punjab move without their ID cards under a constant threat and Pashtun killing is also on the rise. What remains behind is the Baloch community, the otherwise neglected fraction of largest province of Pakistan for the largest part of the history. Many in the privileged sides of the country ask for their responsibility and I am reminded of Dante Alighieri from Italy, “The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who in times of great moral crises maintain their neutrality.”
Amidst the closed shops, few aged shopkeepers have refused to succumb to fear. They sit in front of their shops with eyes swollen, only recalling the days when the city “was a beautiful city with peace and tranquillity and suddenly we were cursed with this monster. He comes every month and takes few lives. The city is named as Neem Sheher.”
The author is a federal government employee.
This excerpt is from the famous “Qissa Chahar Dervaish” of Meer Aman’s book “Bagh-o-Bahar,” but the city is Quetta. Its famous Jinnah Road is dotted with flags coloured red, white and green. A remembrance for the lives lost in the blast yesterday. For as long as these dead bodies lived, they were Pashtuns or Hazara. Only when they died, they graduated to become human beings.
One day after the blast and two days after the dead bodies were recovered, Quetta wears a look of uncertainty. Promising panflex boards shadow closed shops. Everyone is rushing to nowhere. The shopkeepers talk to the customers but continue looking over their shoulders, searching for a probable assassin. The shopping area of Jinnah Road is few metres away from the safe haven of known as the Cantonment. On both sides of the security check-post, people live a life infested with fear. One side, however, is able to put up a brave front.
A young man in his early twenties, the shopkeeper wears a concealed look of Hazara but he does not respond when I greet in his native dialect, Persian. The language which was once a source of calm is now a motive for murder. Before I can ask more questions, he disrupts the communication and tells us that he is packing up. He works with one hand and with the other; he holds the keys of his motorcycle tightly. The reason for such behaviour, he says, is the impending fear of death. He believes that everyone here in Quetta awaits destruction.
Anytime anybody will appear from anywhere and it will all be over. Even the remains will have to wait for some time before rescue teams show up. His voice sends ripples across my nervous system; this is the terror that reigns supreme here.
The city derived its name from the Pashto word ‘fortress,’ yet insecurity dampens the air. The Hazara community are locked inside their housing societies. Their young are either moving to Australia where asylum is much easier or Scandinavia, the universal refuge of Pakistanis. Those who cannot afford the legal way, opt for the sea route of Malaysia- Indonesia-Australia. The poorest spend their time sitting in front of their houses, for regardless of the poverty their mothers still hold them valuable. Outside the society, they are chased after and eventually murdered. The menial workers from Punjab move without their ID cards under a constant threat and Pashtun killing is also on the rise. What remains behind is the Baloch community, the otherwise neglected fraction of largest province of Pakistan for the largest part of the history. Many in the privileged sides of the country ask for their responsibility and I am reminded of Dante Alighieri from Italy, “The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who in times of great moral crises maintain their neutrality.”
Amidst the closed shops, few aged shopkeepers have refused to succumb to fear. They sit in front of their shops with eyes swollen, only recalling the days when the city “was a beautiful city with peace and tranquillity and suddenly we were cursed with this monster. He comes every month and takes few lives. The city is named as Neem Sheher.”
The author is a federal government employee.
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