Afghan Press Author: Rooh-ul-Amin

What is occurring around us is not something, which is unexpected and eccentric. A country, which has been 2nd biggest CIA camp outside USA, was, is, and would be vulnerable for such terror incidents as are surging around us. There is hardly and very hardly a day whose dawn has not witnessed news of violence. Pakistan, since the very day when it started poking its nose across its western border, invited the monster of terrorism to its own land. It entrapped its own public that curbing the USSR expansionist design was a holy war and the need of that times. Our textbooks and media at that time were replete with such kind of propaganda.

The then military dictator Zia-ul-Haq in Pakistan initiated a war against Communism. He was titled as Mard-e Momin Mard-e-Haq (a man of faith and a man of righteousness). Thus it produced a glut of religious fanatics at the name of Jihad among gullible and susceptible Pukhtoons. If we plow through the press of those times, we will fail to find out even a single news revealing the Soviet Union had violated the frontiers of Pakistan. If we go through the press of present times, it is hard to miss a single day where the US has not violated the frontiers of its non Nato allied Pakistan, where there is no news about suicide bombings and death toll as a result of military operations. Here the comparison between USSR and US must not be taken as appreciation of the former. For, USSR was also an imperialist power, which cannot be lauded in any form.

Only during the past 30 days the US drones have carried out more than eight air strikes in the tribal belt. Ironically the rest of Pakistan is totally dumb and numb over the occurrences in NWFP. Those, who think the fire erupted in the land of Pukhtoons will remain limited to this land are deluded.

A few days back I went to the land of Taliban where I heard an active leader of Taliban network, threatening through FM, those hidden hands with retaliation. It was easy to sniff an impression from his words that some hidden hands have been using them as a pawn in this great game of chess.

For the first time a Taliban leader overtly confessed that some one sitting behind a thick curtain of darkness has used them.

The words, gushing out of his mouth were full of rancorous feeling for trans-Attock Pakistan. Such a person who has been overtly announcing its exploitation, is easy to be used by CIA and other foreign secret agencies.

Whenever I visit the tribal area and hear their naïve notions about their invincibility, heroism and acumen, my heart sinks with grief and dolorousness. They have no sense that how in past they were exploited by state agencies in the war against Communism. And the same old game surged its head in the tribal belt after the US invasion on Afghanistan.

Thus both the countries, the US and Pakistan have tried to exploit the Afghan war and mentality of Pukhtoons towards their own ends and objectives. Here, Pakistan started using the same old card, which it had already used against Communism in 1979 till the disintegration of USSR in 1992. But this time it is not the Soviet Union, which was besotted with its power rather this time it is the US, who already has taken 47 nations in confidence under the ambit of Nato in present war on terror.

And using the old card in current flow of circumstances is tantamount to keeping the entire nation on the brink of hell and collapse. This is the same use of the old card that has aroused anti-Army and anti-establishment sentiments among its own masses. The elite class, which has been rearing under the thatch of west and western universities, has no knowledge about the ground realities, which is equally also responsible for the vacuum created by their unripe and so-called intellectual debates. The Inter Services Public Relation (ISPR) has been denying most of the news related with the US drones, which is nothing but escapism of the ground realties. The recent drones attack over the far-flung valley of Tirah of Khyber Agency, linked with the Nangrahar province, where eight people were died but Maj. Athar Abbas, the Spokesman for ISPR denied the incident. Among them was a 22-year old, nick named Qari, also lost his life. His aunt succumbed to the news of her nephew’s death. What is done cannot be undone with the denial of ISPR.

And this escapism has alienated even the non-violent population of the tribal belt also. This is the reason it considers Pak army its adversary instead defender. It is that detrimental trend of the two-segments, the tribal and the Army, which is responsible for all the chaos. It is a deliberate attempt to involve, the name of foreigners in the list of suicide attackers and those who die in the continued military operations in Swat and Bajaur. On the ground they’re the tribals who are involved in this series of violence. Why the foreigners are shown involved in the episode of terror? It is because; the establishment and Army can show it’s pubic and make it believe that it is our war. Beyond that there is no logic.

As a backlash, the militants carried out the past month more than a dozen terror plots. When indefatigable provincial sports and culture minister Syed Aqil Shah arranged inter-provincial games, personally I was very much upset and worried that amid such a crisis, arranging games will invite to militants attacks. Though behind it there was a positive logic to wash away the negative and demonised picture about Pukhtoons and can show the world community that they have a peace-loving nature but the law and enforcing agencies must have tightened the security measure. Their negligence was as if to put at risk the lives for more than 10,000 spectators and 1,200 sportsmen and sportswomen were participating in the games, who were there at the sports complex.

The target of the incident was apparently some high political figure from ANP.

Because for the suicide attacker it was easy to explode among the sportsmen and sportswomen but he was intended to kill another target.

The terror, smoked out of the incident was not disappeared that the militants murdered Stephen D. Vance, a contractor for USAID, assigned with bringing aid to the tribal belt. Contrary to the statements of government officials and those journalists, sitting in Islam, the possible factor behind Stephen D. Vance incident is the denial report of ISPR and the US drones attack on Khyber Agency.

The killing of the 52-year Vance gave birth to a contention that its name was not registered with police. Before Vance, the militants had attacked American Consul General Lena Tracy but she survived. America wanted to consume an amount of $ 750 million on developmental projects but Vance death will surely trammel the path. There has been a spate of kidnappings and killings of foreigners as well as Pakistanis. By now the militants have kidnapped Afghanistan’s ambassador-designate Abdul Khaliq Farahi, from Hayatabad a nearby posh township on Sept 22 and an Iranian diplomat, Hashmatullah Attarzadeh, a commercial attaché at Iran’s consulate in Peshawar from the same locality of Hayatabad. His security guard Sajjad Hussain, who was a Pakistani, was shot dead. Hayatabad is a favourite kidnapping spot for the militants, where, a Japanese journalist Yotsokura Matoki along with his Afghan friend Abdus Sami Yusafzai, received wounds at the hands of kidnappers at the same expansive and posh area of Hayatabad.

Peshawar ASP Jawad Qamar told a national news agency that the gunmen chased the journalists and started firing on them near Shakas, an appendage between Khyber Agency and Hayatabad. The Japanese journalist Motoki Yotsukura from the Asahi Shimbun newspaper was shifted to Islamabad while his friend Abdus Sami Yousfzai is under treatment at Lady Reading Hospital, Peshawar. Anwar-ul-Haq Ahadi’ who is finance minister for Afghanistan, his younger brother; Zia-ul-Haq Ahadi was also kidnapped from the same area. Looking and pondering over the incidents a question arises in most of the minds that whether it is the revivalism of Afghan Taliban story with the connivance of state agencies or whether it something coming with the backing of foreign agencies. No body is cocksure in pointing at one obvious factor but it is easy to say that it is the same old game once played in Afghanistan. One thing is clear that in yesteryear this land and Pukhtoons had been used in the game and even today it is the same land and population, which is under the monster of this terror game but this time by new players.