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Parachinar, decade of War and it’s Impact on Socio-Ecnomic Condition of The Valley.

On 13th December a bomb blast resulted in 25 fatal casualties and as many as 70 individuals were also injured. Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LEJ) claimed responsibility for the blast and in their message to the media stated that, “This was in response to Shias from Kurram participating in the Syrian war against Sunnis.” Similarly, a suicide bomber attacked Parachinar bound hotel in Qissa Khwani bazaar last year. Responsibility for this attack was claimed by a splinter group of the Taliban that said “It was revenge for the Rawalpindi mosque torching.” I will go on to explain the Parachinar’s link to events occurring outside of FATA but before that I would like to briefly explain the security situation in Parachinar.

Explanations concerning the security situation in Parachinar can be divided into three categories: (1) when there was an ongoing war in Kurram (2) road closures and attacks on convoys (3) bomb blasts in Kurram. Additionally, during all of these events, Turi tribesmen were relentlessly targeted through kidnappings, bomb blasts on Kurram bound hotels and mosques outside Kurram. Since opening of Thall-Parachinar road. Each year the area of Parachinar or other towns where members of the Turi tribe reside (In Kurram) came under attack. Likewise, earlier this year, two suicide bombers were killed when they were about to attack football ground in Alizai, Lower Kurram.

By examining the history of all attacks in Parachinar and on members of the Turi tribe outside Parachinar, there were two points of interest that require analysis:

(i)                  Responsibility claimed by unknown groups.

(ii)                Linkage to the Syrian War.

Responsibility claimed by unknown groups.

Last year an attack on the Pak-Hotel in Qissa Khwani bazar was carried out at the time when Pakistani authorities were arranging talks with the TTP. The TTP categorically criticized attack and said “It is ploy to derail the talks.” This time LEJ took responsibility. (Apart from the single instance when TTP Islami Fazal Saeed Haqqani claimed responsibility for a bomb attack in February, 2012. At that time, the road was newly opened and convoys still used to come under attack and the Haqqani Taliban’s movement through the Turi village was not as free as it is now). One very important aspect is that each time there is a blast in Parachinar or on Turis outside Kurram, responsibility is claimed by groups that are not widely known or active in the region, which indicates that the purpose is to delink these splinter groups from vast flow of terrorists (Haqqani Taliban) from Turi villages into Afghanistan.  This division among terrorists provides our state opportunity to diffuse the resentment of Turis against Taliban flow into Afghanistan and gives them a free hand to use terrorists and fight against them at the same time. This strategy has created confusion among Pakistanis and the deep state uses this strategy to accomplish its goals in Afghanistan.

Linkage to Syrian War.

In the context of the latest attack, more than carnage the message was important and the message was that it’s not only Sunni militants that are going to fight in Syria from Pakistan but that Shias have also joined them. I see this as ploy by our state to deliberately link war in Kurram with the Syrian war by framing it as an ideological war. Neither war in Syria nor war in Kurram is ideological though Islamists (Shias and Sunis) both posit them as ideological, as these narratives enable our state to use this framework for its own nefarious ends. Therefore, it is widely used and promoted by our state. Syria and Kurram are two different regions with totally different socio-economic and political conditions. I agree with Adam Hanieh analysis ISIS emerged out of dashed hopes of Arab spring, in his article in Jacobin magazine. As far as Kurram is concerned Prof Mumtaz Banghash has succinctly written that fighting in Kurram has material roots. The sub-tribe of Turis fight in Upper and Lower Kurram with Sunni tribes on issues related to water, land and forests. The only difference here is that sometime these fights escalates into sectarian wars. Historically, Turis have made alliances with other Sunni tribes against other Sunni tribes. This is even is mentioned orally as Thor Ghwand and Spin Ghwand. Then if tribal war escalated to sectarian war, there were other factors that contributed to this change. For instance, the 1987 sectarian wars occurred due to Zia Ul Haq’s support of Jihadist and Wahabbi ideology to counter Russiaian involvement in Aghanistan and to counter Shia radicalization after the ascent of Khomeini in Iran. Similarly, the 1996 war in Kurram was a continuation of the policy to occupy Kabul through non-state actors for which the adjacent border area of Kurram was used. Along with that it is important to bear in mind that Kurram is part of Fata, which has been governed through colonial law since 1901. Because of this, people have historically not had and continue to lack access to the basic amenities of life. People’s problems are exacerbated by the fact that the region is used as a nurturing ground for terrorists by our state. The purpose of the state is to provide justification for Sunni militancy in the region and to use Shia involvement as a pretext to absolve itself of its responsibility to protect its citizens against militancy.

Pakistan has always sent its army to the Middle East (ME) and has military ties with them, and on the 16th of December of this year, it confirmed its inclusion in the Saudi led anti-terror alliance.  Four years prior, when ME was going through the Arab spring, overseas employment services associated with Fauji Foundation was sending mercenaries to Bahrain in order to control the protest against Bahrain National Government.

The purpose is not to justify or reject the notion that Shias from Kurram are participating in the Syrian war but to understand why they have started to fighting in the first place?

Decade of war impact on Socio-ecnomic conditions in Kurram.

When most of Fata was transformed into a base camp for terrorists, Kurram remained comparatively peaceful. Military operations, drone strikes and the geography of Kurram forced the Taliban to use Kurram as shelter in the wake of operations in Waziristan, in order to increase their area of operation to adjoining provinces (Khost, Pakti and Nagrahar) of Afghanistan.

The Turis challenged the Taliban presence in Kurram and were left to fight against the Taliban as the Pakistan Army refused to take any action. The Turis refusal to let the Taliban enter their area and their retaliation was painted as a sectarian fight among Shia-Sunni tribes. Interestingly or rather appropriately, the Taliban blocked road only for Turi tribe while the Pak-Army used to commute on the Thall-Parachinar road without any danger. When the Taliban started an offensive against the Turis, thousands of Taliban Lashkar arrived in Kurram through roads on which FC and Police had check posts. The security agencies closed their eyes and allowed these Lashkars to make it into Kurram from all over Fata. This war continued for five years and contributed to militarizing a generation that has grown up after the Russian invasion. Jawans from Kurram that previously took pride in Kurram’s high literacy rate now takes pride in standing up against Taliban. Our state deliberately forced the Turis to take up arms the way that it did in other areas of Fata.

The only road that joins Kurram with rest of Pakistan remained blocked for five years. This blockade badly affected socio-economic conditions in Kurram. The agriculture sector is a major source of income and incorporates a large section of the population into the labor force of the valley remains badly affected. Due to continuous wars, the land remained uncultivated; there is no access to markets, there is a shortage of agricultural inputs, and a shortage of labor due to displacement and Afghan migration. As a consequence, agricultural production has depleted, leaving many people without work. Similarly, foreign remittances from Gulf countries is also a major source of income for most families of the valley. During the war, malicious propaganda videos were circulated widely not just in Pakistan but also in Gulf countries, where many Turis, who work there, were removed from their jobs and sent back to Kurram.

Furthermore, schools remained closed or were destroyed during fighting and many school going children fought against the Taliban instead. Most students couldn’t make it to university. They either enrolled in diploma courses or remained in their villages. Future prospects for young men from Kurram are bleak as many are turned away by countries in the Gulf and they have also abandoned agriculture.  To add insult to injury, they also belong to region where state has absolved itself of providing basic facilities to its wards.

Turis started migrating and individuals of a lower middle class background people came to Islamabad and Pindi as a first step. Two types of migration started: (i) those who could not arrange money (middle class or lower middle class) went to seek asylum in Australia. Most of this group comprised of students, who were either unemployed or who couldn’t complete their education due to the continuous conflict in Kurram. (ii) While those who couldn’t arrange 14 to 15K and are from low income families and illiterate, left for Iran. Historically, people from Kurram that belong to low income families and are illiterate, often leave for Iran to look for employment opportunities. However, after a decade of war this phenomenon has increased due to no opportunity to go elsewhere. The desperation of their situation is further compounded after being shunned from Gulf countries and because they are trying to escape conflict. They get a visa for a month or two and provide cheap labor to factories in Iran. Because their visas are only for a few months, when their visa expires they hide and work in factories but get very little pay. After US sanctions were imposed on Iran, many Turis from low income backgrounds started migrating to Iraq, where they not only they get good salaries but also have better job conditions compared to Iran. Most of the time people get visas after carrying a letter from influential molvis.

People from lower strata have already been radicalized by the state’s war and because they have no income are recruited and sent to Syria.

State sponsored/imposed war in the Kurram has militarized people and their source of income has been destroyed. By framing the war in Kurram as a sectarian war, religious forces link the war in Kurram with Syria.  When IS attacks holy shrines in Syria, religious forces recruit already radicalized people to fight in Syria.

This sectarianism feeds the state narrative and those forces that are recruiting people for Syrian war. Instead of taking action against those forces, the state is silent and allows them to send Shia recruits to Syria in retrospect state can send proxies through kurram shia regions and held them accountable if they raise voice against Taliban movement into Afganistan.

Fata is directly under military control for last decade, more than 100,000 force are deployed there and built check posts almost everywhere in major towns. So, it is their failure or incompetency that they are unable to secure its citizen but in contrast they blame masses for terrorism.

[kaliwal]

Murray Bookchin, “The Bernie Sanders Paradox: When Socialism Grows Old” (1986)

The posters that appeared all over Burlington — Vermont’s largest city (pop: 37,000) in the winter of 1980-81 were arresting and provocative. They showed an old map of the city with a label slapped across it that read: “For Sale.” A bold slogan across the top, in turn, proclaimed that “Burlington Is Not for Sale,” and smiling amiably in the right-hand corner was the youngish, fairly well-known face of Bernard Sanders, sans tie, open-collared, almost endearingly shy and unpretentious. The onlooker was enjoined to rescue Burlington by voting for “Bernie” Sanders for mayor. Sanders, the long-time gubernatorial candidate of Vermont’s maverick Liberty Union, was now challenging “Gordie” Paquette, an inert Democratic fixture in City Hall, who had successfully fended off equally inert Republican opponents for nearly a decade. That Sanders won this election on March 3, 1981, by only ten votes is now a Vermont legend that has percolated throughout the country over the past five years. What gives Sanders almost legendary qualities as a mayor and politician is that he proclaims himself to be a socialist — to many admiring acolytes, a Marxist — who is now in the midpoint of a third term after rolling up huge margins in two previous elections. From a ten-vote lead to some fifty-two percent of the electorate, Sanders has ballooned out of Burlington in a flurry of civic tournaments that variously cast him as a working-class hero or a demonic “Bolshevik.” His victories now make the New York Times and his trips outside of Burlington take him to places as far as Managua, where he has visited with Daniel Ortega, and to Monthly Review fundraising banquets, where he rubs shoulders with New York’s radical elite. Sanders has even been invited to the Socialist Scholar’s Conference, an offer he wisely declined. Neither scholarship nor theory is a Sanders forte. If socialist he be, he is of the “bread-and-butter” kind whose preference for “realism” over ideals has earned him notoriety even within his closest co-workers in City Hall.

The criss-crossing lines that deface almost every serious attempt to draw an intelligible sketch of the Sanders administration and its meaning for radicals result from a deep-seated paradox in “bread-and-butter” socialism itself. It trivializes this larger issue to deal with Sanders merely as a personality or to evaluate his achievements in the stark terms of lavish praise or damning blame. A sophomoric tribute to Sanders’ doings in the Monthly Review of a year ago was as maladroit as the thundering letters of denunciation that appear in the Burlington Free Press. Sanders fits neither the heaven-sent roles he is given in radical monthlies nor the demonic ones he acquires in conservative letters to moderate dailies. To dwell heavily on his well-known paranoia and suspicious reclusiveness beclouds the more important fact that he is a centralist, who is more committed to accumulating power in the mayor’s office than giving it to the people. To spoof him for his unadorned speech and macho manner is to ignore the fact that his notions of a “class analysis” are narrowly productivist and would embarrass a Lenin, not to mention a Marx. To mock his stolid behavior and the surprising conventionality of his values is to conceal his commitment to thirties’ belief in technological progress, businesslike efficiency, and a naive adherence to the benefits of “growth.” The logic of all these ideas is that democratic practice is seen as secondary to a full belly, the earthy proletariat tends to be eulogized over the “effete” intellectuals, and environmental, feminist, and communitarian issues are regarded as “petit-bourgeois” frivolities by comparison with the material needs of “working people.” Whether the two sides of this “balance sheet” need be placed at odds with each other is a problem that neither Sanders nor many radicals of his kind have fully resolved. The tragedy is that Sanders did not live out his life between 1870 and 1940, and the paradox that faces him is: why does a constellation of ideas that seemed so rebellious fifty years ago appear to be so conservative today? This, let me note, is not only Sanders’ problem. It is one that confronts a very sizable part of the left today.  Sanders is by no means the sole focus of this paradox. The fact is that Sanders’ problems, personal as they seem, really reflect problems that exist in Burlington itself. Contrary to the notion that Vermont is what America used to be, the state — and particularly, Burlington — is more like what America is becoming than what America was. The major corporations in the city and its environs are IBM and GE — and the GE plant in Burlington makes the only Gatling gun in the United States, a horrendous fact that should by all rights trouble any socialist mayor. The Old North End, Sanders’ sans-culottes wards (Numbers Two and Three), consists in large part of home-bred Vermonters who work in service, repair, and maintenance jobs when they have jobs at all. The remaining four wards are filled with newcomers to the city and with elderly people who have the luck to own their homes. Basically middle-class in work and values, the form a pepper mix of old Vermonters and “new professionals,” a term that embraces anyone from insurance brokers, real-estate operators, and retailers to doctors, lawyers, and professors. Hippies still mingle freely with Yuppies; indeed, in egalitarian Vermont, there is a reasonable degree of intercourse between the wealthy, the well-to-do, and the poor. What is most important: Burlington is a town in frenzied transition. A sleepy little place some fifteen years ago with bacon-and-egg diners, hardware stores, clothing emporiums, and even a gun shop in the center of town, it is becoming a beehive of activity. Electronics in all its forms is moving into Vermont together with boutiques, inns, hotels, office buildings, educational institutions — and in Burlington, particularly, a thriving academic establishment that draws thousands of students and their parents into its commercial fold.

The problems of “modernization” that confront the town produce very mixed reactions — not only in its inhabitants but in Sanders. A large number of people feel plundered, including some of the plunderers, if you are to believe them. Burlington is living evidence that myth can be real, even more real than reality itself. Accordingly, myth holds that Burlington is small, homey, caring, crime-free, independent, mutualistic, liberal, and innocently American in its belief that everything good can happen if one so wills it to be. This glowing American optimism, in my view one of our national assets, often lives in doleful contradiction with the fact that if everything good can happen, everything bad does happen — including union-busting, growing contrasts between rich and poor, housing shortages, rising rents, gentrification, pollution, parking problems, traffic congestion, increasing crime, anomie, and growth, more growth, and still more growth — upward, inward, and outward. The tension between myth and reality is as strong as between one set of realities and another. Burlingtonians generally do not like what is happening, although there are far too many of them who are making the most of it. Even the alleged “benefits” of growth and modernization are riddled by their own internal contradictions. If there are more jobs and little unemployment, there is lower pay and rising living costs. If there are more tourists and a very amiable citizenry to receive them, there is less spread of income across social lines and more robberies. If there is more construction and less labor shortages, there are fewer homes and more newcomers. Office-building and gentrification go hand in hand with fewer small businesses and far too many people who need inexpensive shelter. Very crucial to all of this is the conflict of values and cultures that “modernization” produces. Basically, Burlingtonians want to keep their city intimate, caring, and liberal. They like to believe that they are living an older way of life with modern conveniences and in accord with fiercely independent values that are rooted in a colorful past. It is this underlying independence of Vermonters generally, including newcomers who are absorbed into Burlington, that makes the clash between a lingering libertarian Yankee tradition and a corrosive, authoritarian corporate reality so inherently explosive. Ironically, Bernard Sanders owes his present political career to the irascible public behavior this libertarian tradition produces, yet he understands that behavior very little. To Sanders, Burlington is basically Detroit as it was two generations ago and the fact that the town was “not for sale” in 1981 carried mixed messages to him and his electorate. To the electorate, the slogan meant that the city and its values were priceless and hence were to be guarded and preserved as much as possible. To Sanders, all rhetoric aside, it meant that the city, although not on an auction block, had a genuinely high price tag.

Whether the electorate who voted for him was less “realistic” than Sanders is not relevant: the fact is that both saw the “sale” of the city from different, if not radically opposing, perspectives. Both, in fact, were guided by varying “reality principles.” The electorate wanted a greater say in the city’s future; Sanders wanted to bring more efficiency to its disposition. The electorate wanted to preserve the city’s human scale and quality of life; Sanders wanted it to grow according to a well-designed plan and with due regard for cost-effectiveness. The electorate, in effect, saw Burlington as a home and wanted to keep its emphasis on old-style values alive; Sanders, together with many of his opponents, saw it as a business and wanted its “growth” to be beneficial, presumably to “working people.” 

This is not to deny that Burlington has its fair share of economic predators and political operators or that property taxes are very important and material problems ranging from shelter to the cost of food are very real. But this town also has a deep sense of municipal pride and its highly independent, even idiosyncratic, population exudes a form of local patriotism that fades as one approaches larger, less historically conscious, and less environmentally oriented communities. Sanders would never admit that for Burlingtonians, the electorate’s independence has begun to clash with his fading regard for democratic practice; that technological “progress” and structural “growth” can arouse more suspicion than enthusiasm; that the quality of life runs neck and neck as an issue with material benefits. Indeed, for Sanders and his administration (the two are not necessarily identical), thirties socialism is notable for the fact that it rescues the marketplace from “anarchy,” not that it necessarily challenges the market system as such and its impact on the city. In Sanders’ version of socialism, there is a sharp “business” orientation toward Burlington as a well-managed corporate enterprise.

Herein lies the greatest irony of all: all rhetoric aside, Bernard Sanders’ version of socialism is proving to be a subtle instrument for rationalizing the marketplace — not for controlling it, much less threatening it. His thirties-type radicalism, like Frankenstein’s “monster,” is rising up to challenge its own creator. In this respect, Sanders does not make history; more often than not, he is one of its victims. Hence to understand the direction he is following and the problems it raises for radicals generally, it is important to focus not on his rhetoric, which makes his administration so alluring to socialists inside and outside of Vermont, but to take a hard look at the realities of his practice.

Sanders’ Record 

SANDERS’ CLAIM that he has created “open government” in Burlington is premised on a very elastic assumption of what one means by the word “open.“ That Sanders prides himself on being "responsive” to underprivileged people in Burlington who are faced with evictions, lack of heat, wretched housing conditions, and the ills of poverty is not evidence of “openness” — that is, if we assume the term means greater municipal democracy and public participation. What often passes for “open government” in the Sanders cosmos is the mayor’s willingness to hear the complaints and distress signals of his clients and courtiers, not a responsibility to give them any appreciable share in the city’s government. What Sanders dispenses under the name of “open government” is personal paternalism rather than democracy. After six years of Sanders’ paternalism, there is nothing that resembles Berkeley’s elaborate network of grassroots organizations and councils that feed into City Hall. 

When it comes to municipal democracy, Sanders is surprisingly tight-fisted and plays his cards very close to his chest. Queried shortly after his 1981 election on a local talk-show, You Can Quote Me, Sanders was pointedly asked if he favored town-meeting government, a very traditional form of citizen assemblies that has deep-seated roots in Vermont townships. Sanders’ response was as pointed as the question. It was an emphatic “No.” After expressing his proclivity for the present aldermanic system, the mayor was to enter into a chronic battle with the “Republicrat” board of aldermen over appointments and requests that were to be stubbornly rejected by the very system of government that had his early sanction. 

Sanders’ quarrels with the board of aldermen did not significantly alter his identification of “open government” with personal paternalism. As an accepted fixture in Burlington’s civic politics, he now runs the city with cool self-assurance, surrounded by a small group of a half-dozen or so aides who formulate his best ideas and occasionally receive his most strident verbal abuse. The Mayor’s Council on the Arts is a hand-picked affair, whether by the mayor directly or by completely dedicated devotees; similarly, the Mayor’s Youth Office. It is difficult to tell when Sanders will create another “council” — or, more appropriately, an “office” — except to note that there are peace, environmental, and gay communities, not to speak of unemployed, elderly, welfare, and many similar constituents who have no “Mayor’s” councils in City Hall. Nor is it clear to what extent any of the existing councils authentically represent local organizations and/or tendencies that exist in the subcultures and deprived communities in Burlington. 

Sanders is a centralist and his administration, despite its democratic proclivities, tends to look more like a civic oligarchy than a municipal democracy. The Neighborhood Planning Assemblies (NPAs) which were introduced in Burlington’s six wards in the autumn of 1982 and have been widely touted as evidence of “grassroots democracy” were not institutions that originated in Sanders’ head. Their origin is fairly complex and stems from a welter of notions that were floating around Burlington in neighborhood organizations that gathered shortly after Sanders’ 1981 election to develop ideas for wider citizen participation in the city and its affairs. That people in the administration played a role in forming assemblies is indisputably true, but so too did others who have since come to oppose Sanders for positions that have compromised his pledges to the electorate. 

Bernard Sanders’ view of government appears in its most sharply etched form in an interview the mayor gave to a fairly sympathetic reporter on the Burlington Free Press in June, 1984. Headlined “Sanders Works to Expand Mayor’s Role,” the story carried a portrait of the mayor in one of his more pensive moods with the quote: “We are absolutely rewriting the role of what city government is supposed to be doing in the state of Vermont.’ The article leaped immediately into the whole thrust of Sanders’ version of city government: "to expand and strengthen the role of the [mayor’s] office in city government:” This process has been marked by an "expanding City Hall staff,” an increased “role in the selection of a new fire chief,” “a similar role in the Police Department,” and "in development issues, such as the proposed downtown hotel.” In response to criticism that Sanders has been “centraliz-ing” power and reducing the checks and balances in city government, his supporters “stress that citizen input, through both the Neighborhood Planning Assemblies and expanded voter output, has been greatly increased.” That the Neighborhood Planning Assemblies have essentially been permitted to languish in an atmosphere of benign neglect and that voter participation in elections hardly equatable to direct participation by the citizenry has left the mayor thoroughly unruffled. 

A FAIR CONSIDERATION of the results produced by Sanders’ increased role in city affairs provides a good test of a political strategy that threatens to create institutional forms for a Burlington version of New York’s Mayor Koch. The best case for the mayor appears in the Monthly Review of May, 1984, where a Pollyanna article written by Beth Bates, “a writer and farmer,” celebrates the virtues of Sanders’ efforts as “Socialism on the Local Level” — followed, I might add, by a prudent question mark. Like Sanders’ own claims, the main thrust of the article is that the “socialist” administration is “efficient.” Sanders has shown that "radicals, too, can be fiscal conservatives, even while they are concerned that government does the little things that make life more comfortable” like street repair, volunteer aid to dig paths for the elderly after snowstorms, and save money. The administration brings greater revenues into the city’s coffers by modernizing the budgetary process, principally by investing its money in high-return institutions, opening city contracts to competitive bidding, centralizing purchasing, and slapping fees on a wide range of items like building permits, utility excavations, private fire and police alarms, and the like. 

That Sanders has out-Republicaned the Republicans should not be taken lightly. Viewed in terms of its overall economic policies, the Sanders administration bears certain fascinating similarities to the Reagan administration. What Sanders has adopted with a vengeance is “trickle-down” economics — the philosophy that “growth” for profit has a spillover effect in creating jobs and improving the public welfare. Not surprisingly, the City’s 1984 “Annual Report” of the Community and Economic Development Office (a Sanders creation) really begins with a chunky section on “UDAG Spur Development.” UDAGs are Urban Development Action Grants that are meant to “leverage” commitments to growth by the “private sector.” The Office celebrates the fact that these grant requests to Washington will yield $25 million from “the private sector” and “create an estimated 556 new full-time, permanent jobs, and generate an additional $332,638 per year in property taxes.” Among its many achievements, the grant will help the owners of the Radisson Hotel in Burlington (an eyesore that is blocking out part of Burlington’s magnificent lake view, and a corporate playground if there ever was one) expand their property by “57 guest rooms and an additional 10,000 square feet of meeting and banquet space. A new 505 space parking garage with covered access to the hotel will be constructed. The Radisson Hotel will now be able to accommodate regional and association conventions. The project also includes expansion of retail space (32,500 square feet) within the Burlington Square Mall. Construction has begun, and the project is scheduled for completion in late 1985.” The other grants are less lascivious but they invariably deal with projects to either construct or rehabilitate office, commercial, industrial, and department-store construction — aside from the noxious Sanders waterfront scheme, of which more shortly. 

One seriously wonders who this kind of descriptive material is meant to satisfy. Potential employees who commonly sell their labor power for minimum wage-rates in a city that is notoriously closed to unionization? The Old North Enders who are the recipients of scanty rehabilitation funds and a land-trust program for the purchase of houses, an innovative idea that is still to fully prove itself out? A few small businessmen who have received loans to develop their enterprises or others who have had their façades improved in what Sanders celebrates as an attempt to “revitalize” the Old North End, an area that is still one of the most depressing and depressed in Vermont? The ill-housed and elderly for whom the office-building spree makes the limited amount of low-income housing construction seem like a mockery of their needs? Apart from the condos and so-called “moderate-income” houses that have surfaced in part of the city, housing for the underprivileged is not a recurring theme in Sanders’ speeches except when the mayor is on an electoral warpath. After a tentative stab at some kind of “rent control” which was defeated at the polls on the heels of a huge propaganda blitz by well-to-do property owners, the administration has been reticent about raising rent-control issues generally, let alone making a concerted effort at educating the public about them. Burlington, in effect, is witnessing what one journalistic wag has appropriately called “gentrification with a human face.” Indeed, such crucial issues as housing for the poor and elderly, unionization of the grossly underpaid, environmental deterioration, and the rapid attrition of old, socially useful, small concerns that can no longer afford the soaring downtown rentals — all have taken second place during the past year to big structural schemes like a waterfront plan. More so than any other Sanders proposal, this plan has opened a long overdue schism between the mayor and his popular supporters in the Old North End, the most radical constituency in Burlington.

SANDERS’ WATERFRONT PLAN is burdened by a highly convoluted a history that would take an article in itself to unravel. The 24.5-acre property, owned partly by the Vermont Central Railroad, the Alden Corporation (a consortium of wealthy locals), and the city itself, faces one of the most scenic lake and mountain areas in the northeast. Paquette, Sanders’ predecessor, planned to "develop” this spectacular site with highrise condos. Sanders has made the demand for a “waterfront for the people” a cardinal issue in all his campaigns. Civic democracy was ostensibly served when an open meeting was organized by the administration in February, 1983, to formulate priorities which the public felt should be reflected in any design. Broken down by wards in NPA fashion, the meeting’s priorities centered around walkways, open space, public access, restaurants and shops, even a museum and wildlife sanctuary — and, in addition to similar public amenities, mixed housing. Whether these priorities could have been met without a UDAG is highly problematical. What is fascinating about Sanders’ response, even before the UDAG was refused, was the clutter of structures that grossly compromised the whole thrust of the public’s priorities: a second version of a Radisson-type hotel, a retail pavilion that spanned half the length of the city’s pedestrian mall, a 1200-car parking garage, an office building, a narrow public walkway along the lakeside — and an ambiguous promise to provide three hundred mixed housing units, presumably “available for low and moderate income and/or handicapped people:” Even so, this housing proposal was hedged by such caveats as "to the extent feasible” and the need to acquire “below-market financing” and rent-level “subsidies.” 

Following the refusal of the UDAG, the plan resurfaced again from City Hall with two notable alterations. Mixed housing disappeared completely even as a promise — to be replaced by 150 to 300 condos priced at $175-300,000 each (a typical Burlington houses sells for $70-80,000) and public space, meager to begin with, was further attenuated. From a residential viewpoint, the “waterfront for the people” had become precisely an “enclave for the rich,” one of the verbal thunderbolts Sanders had directed at the Paquette proposal.

The privileges accorded by the waterfront plan to moneyed people are a reminder that only token aid has been provided to the poor. The methods employed by Sanders to engineer public consent for the plan have been especially offensive: the blitz of ads favoring the mayor’s and Alden Corporation’s version of the scheme, in which Sanderistas found their names listed with those of the most notorious union-busters in the state, stands in sharp contrast with the relatively weak campaigns launched by City Hall on behalf of rent control and improved housing. 

Public reaction came to a head when the electorate, summoned to vote on a bond issue to cover the city’s contribution to the plan, produced startling results. Despite the sheer frenzy that marked the mayor’s campaign for a "yes” vote, the ward-by-ward returns revealed a remarkable shift in social attitudes toward Sanders. Although a two-thirds majority is needed to carry a bond issue in Burlington, Wards 2 and 3 of the Old North End voted down the bond issue flatly. So much for the reaction of Sanders’ “working-class” base which had given the mayor his largest pluralities in the past. Ward 4, a conventional middle-class district, regaled the mayor with barely a simple majority of five votes, and Ward 5, the most sympathetic of his middle-class constituencies, a flat fifteen-vote rejection. Sanders’ highest returns came from Ward 6 — “The Hill,” as it has been called — which contains the highest concentration of wealth in the city and its most spacious and expensive mansions. 

For the first time, a Sanders proposal that patently placed the mayor’s public credibility on the line had been soundly trounced — not by the wealthiest ward in Burlington which alone supported the bond issue by a two-thirds vote, but. by the Old North End, which flatly rejected his proposal. A class issue had emerged which now seems to have reflected a disgust with a rhetoric that yields little visible results. 

THE ULTIMATE EFFECT Of Sanders’ aging form of “socialism” is to facilitate the ease with which business interests can profit from the city. Beyond the dangers of an increasingly centralized civic machinery, one that must eventually be inherited by a “Republicrat” administration, are the extraordinary privileges Sanders hasprovided to the most predatory enterprises in Burlington — privileges that have been justified by a “socialism” that is committed to “growth,” "planning,” “order,” and a blue-collar “radicalism” that actually yields low-paying jobs and non-union establishments without any regard to the quality of life and environmental well-being of the community at large.

Bernard Sanders could have established an example of a radical municipalism, one rooted in Vermont’s localist tradition of direct democracy, that might have served as a living educational arena for developing an active citizenry and a popular political culture. Whether it was because of a shallow productivist notion of "socialism” oriented around “growth” and “efficiency” or simply personal careerism, the Burlington mayor has been guided by a strategy that sacrifices education to mobilization and democratic principles to pragmatic results. This “managerial radicalism” with its technocratic bias and its corporate concern for expansion is bourgeois to the core — and even brings the authenticity of traditional “socialist” canons into grave question. A recent Burlington Free Press headline which declared: “Sanders Unites with Business on Waterfront” could be taken as a verdict by the local business establishment as a whole that it is not they who have been joining Sanders but Sanders who has joined them. When productivist forms of “socialism” begin to resemble corporate forms of capitalism, it may be well to ask how these inversions occur and whether they are accidental at all. This question is not only one that must concern Sanders and his supporters; it is a matter of grim concern for the American radical community as a whole.  Source: Socialist Review 90 (November-December 1986), pp. 51-62

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Old Pindi. Photo taken from Sujhan Singh Haveli. More photos to come. #PhotoWalk #TPStamron @thephotosociety

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Dummies.

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Dummies placed in water pond to fool ducks to sit in the pond. First dummies were made of cow shit later packing material was used now cold drinks empty bottles are used as dummies. #Fata #Kurram #Ducks #hunting

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Sujhan SIngh Haveli visit

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Moharam Diary

Moharam has started and just like any other religious event a big debate is going among Shia comrades and Sunni comrades on facebook. Sunni comrades are of the view that moharam procession creates hurdles for people, roads are closed for days, and mobile signals are restrained. On other hand, Shia comrades’ main argument moves around the revolutionary message of Karbala and cultural aspect of moharam and hold the state responsible for irregularities.

Here I am writing about, how moharam was commemorated in our village, irrespective of the any of the above arguments. It’s been almost more than a decade since I have not spent moharam in my village. But I remember how desperately we would wait for moharm although the religious observation of it is synonymous with mourning but we found it much more exciting than any other religious festivals like Eid.

The first thing we would do is to  stop watching tv (except few popular dramas) and our old stereo would awake from its slumber  and our aunt would take out the old leather bag full of old nohas cassettes. Nohas used to echo day and night in our house.

Normally, matam (mourning )  starts on a third of moharam in our village imambargah. Our village imambargah which also happen to be our school so two rooms of our school were used as a place for the congregation. We would get those days off   because our school chairs, tables, and blackboards have to be removed to make space for people to sit for matam. (Mourning)

As moharam would approach, the shopkeeper of only one shop in our village would bring new commodities to sell in moharam. We would get a new torch and bundles of candles, which we would carry along with ourselves to imambargah. We would lit candles on the walls of imambargah. We had another important thing to take with ourselves,”salad”! Yes, salad.  Since Niaz (free food) was served in imambargah from third to 10th moharam night, and normally the whole village ate at imambargah.

In those days moharam would come in summers so the village was self-sufficient with vegetables, most of the people would bring the salad with themselves. If somehow, one forgets to bring the salad, he would pluck tomatoes and onions from nearby vegetable fields. It was not a good idea to grow vegetable field near imambargah because at the end of moharam there would not remain a single onion in the fields. Further, the remaining pulao ( rice)  would never  go wasted,  since women used  to bring polythene bags and would take the  remaing pulao  for their ducks, so even our ducks would get more than  productive  and give more eggs than normal days.

Reaching to imambargah the first thing we did was to run into small shop inside imambargah, which was run by an old lady in her room. She had managed to fix a small loudspeaker inside her shop through which she used to listen to matam. It was not an easy job to make our way into the shop as one have to cross cow fastened in front of the shop. But somehow we would manage to enter the shop.

As in villages, meals are first served for men, we kids, would get our meal then and later on serve to women. We would play in imambargah ground, making noise, so much that it would be unbearable for the elders.  The volunteer would constantly stand outside rooms so that kids don’t leave the room. It was hard to sit, as it was too hot, then the rest of the day we would spend swimming in village stream at night. What can one expect, normally doors of villages get close after Maghreb but in moharam you can play with kids of not just one village but few villages and beyond the permissible times

The most awaited night was 7th of moharam, when all the families of relatives from other villages would come for moharam to our village and stay in our houses. Which was only possible in either weddings or moharam.  The time to meet all the cousins make better cricket teams and friends for swimming in large groups and intrude into village fruit orchids. Volunteers in imambargahs had trouble in controlling so many kids.

The second reason to be so excited about 7th moharam was that from 7th seenazani (chestbeating )  starts,  We as kids -would remember nohays like nursery rhymes and sing them all throughout the month of moharam and safar. My one cousin had a notebook of Pashtu marsiye, we would sing them at home. I was his sidekick. He had a small tape recorder in which we would listen to the nohas, but later on   he suggested why not record covers of Urdu nohays. He would first   write nohay, then we would record nohay on that tape recorder. But the issue was of recreating the sound of seenazani ( chest beating rhythm ) After trying different things, I told him I would create that sound with my mouth. I thought it would be an easy thing to do, but once we started recording, I realized that it not only tiring but soon you will get a headache. During recording, I would gesture him to stop, catch my breath and then again start recording. We used to do it very secretly, we would sit on the bank of river kurram so that no one can see us. Once we had recorded few nohays then we would play it for other cousins. I stopped, but he continued and he released an album of Pashtu nohay this moharam.

In moharam, women can get out of their homes at night. The elder one leave for imambargah in the noon while other leave for imambargah when they are done with their house chores. They usually go in groups. Previously they would carry kerosene lanterns now they have torches. Women would whitewash and clean imamargah before the start of moharam.  The young girls would rush to wash all the dishes as sawab and manat after everyone had eaten.

Men always complain that women make too much noise at imambargah, and they come to imambargah to have a gossip with other women. Women tell them that women make noise because they have to do babysitting of kids. Take kids away from us, we would sit silently the way you people sit. Then again, unlike men, women don’t travel, it is the only moharam when they could sit with women from different villages at the same time.

But there is a fact, most stories are leaked in moharam. You get news of strange things happening in different villages. Which are enough to be discussed for coming few months.

The young boys, who come to imambargah armed, they serve food for men then they disappear from imambargah under the pretext of security, which is a bit of an excuse since they sit around imambargah in groups and have fun with friends, smoke, which they can’t do inside imambargah. But as soon as seenazani starts they come back to imambargah. In our imambargah, people from different families and villages sit at different places, when seenazani starts they make circles. So, now it becomes almost like a completion that which village boys doing better seenazani. The competition gets intense, no one gives up at last an old man recite salawat and act as an empire to stop seenazani. Every group wants that their opposition surrenders at last old man recite salwat and give angry looks to azadars after that boys stop seenazani. Next morning boys discuss which group won.

10th moharam used to be a hectic day, as moharam processions used to come to our village ground. Our village would get crowded with security forces, para-medics and Sunnis from surrounding villages would stand over some distance. Kids’ dasta would be at the front of jalos followed by men dastas. Little girls would serve squash to azadars. After jalos we would rush to river Kurram for swimming, then all the relatives would set for their houses and our village would get empty.

It’s been more than a decade that I have not spent moharam at my village, but many things have changed. Too many people have migrated to other countries, few villages which used to come to our village have been destroyed by Taliban, now they have shifted to Parachinar, so the population has depleted. Our old imambargah has been renovated. Now only kids sit in front of molvi to recite loud salawt so that molvi doesn’t feel alone.

Moharam has more cultural than religious feel to it, and people are emotionally attached to it. It is not just banning of procession but banning of the whole lifestyle which people adopt during moharam.

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Are All Poor Terrorist ?

After getting released from jail, I went straight into Sabzi Mandi thana to get my phone and Cnic back, Sabzi Mandi thana is just across road to Katchiabadi. I couldn’t believe my eyes, whole Katchiabadi was converted into heap of debris, and soon I started to find the places where we used to sit with abadi people, our party offices in the abadi and narrow streets once we travelled during door to door campaign. Ruins of I-11 katchiabadi reminded me of my village in Kurram, Fata. When Taliban torched our tribe villages few years ago, when Taliban forcefully evicted people from their villages, killing women and children. CDA did exactly the same in katchiabadi, what Taliban did to people of Fata. The “war” which devastated whole region made millions of people/ Pashtuns to leave their homes was part of our military establishment policies, here in Katchiabadi state machinery came together to evict residents of Katchiabadi and once again Pashtuns. People of Fata were made homeless due to our state sponsored wars, most of them turned to Islamabad or other major cities but they were not welcomed anywhere. They were barred from entering Sindh, in Punjab they daily have to deal with police harassment because of their address on their cnic, they made homes in katchiabadi, even they were not welcome, their homes were ruthlessly demolished, and their women were dragged on ground and they were charged with ATA!! They didn’t need any new argument; Pashtun is terrorist wherever he lives whether it is Fata, Afghanistan or in a Katchiabadi. So, once they are terrorist, then we have scores of laws and courts in Pakistan to deal with terrorists. Anyone could be a terrorist, a stone throwing kid in Katchiabadi or anyone killed during military operation in Fata. I regularly used to visit I-11 abadi but after announcement of local body elections, I daily used to visit abadi along with comrades, I used to cover most of party events, so every day there used to a corner meeting happening somewhere in abadi, I used to take pictures of candidates and their supporters for banners and posters, because of this I got acquainted to know scores of people from Katachiabdi, then second for being Pashtun, they were more friendly toward me. During election campaign many new young boys joined Awami workers party, we regularly used to arrange meetings with them in abadi and would also do door to door campaign. In ramazan we used to organize iftar parties at our party offices in abadi , abadi was covered red flags, kids used to chant AWP slogans while playing the streets, even they used to sing jago jago, international , whole abadi were desperately waiting for election but when local body election got postpone, I left for my village for eid. After getting news of operation in I-11 Katchiabdi on 27 July, I came back to Islamabad on 26 July. I came directly from Pirwadai to katchiabdi, we made teams to mobilize people for operation. People were very hopeful, Alamgir resident of abadi told me that “this is first time that no one has left abadi and no one has packed anything, people are united this, CDA can’t do anything to abadi.” On 27th morning we went early in the morning to the abadi, people of abadi were already mobilized, they didn’t leave for work, so when CDA crew arrived, we made announcements from masjids. Hundreds of people approached the targeted abadi. Kids set on roof tops, men and women made lines in front of abadi. People of abadi were very happy and became more confident that CDA can’t demolish abadi. On 29 CDA crew came back to abadi, this time from their number it was imminent that today they are not interested in operation but people gathered in huge numbers and protested against eviction, CDA’s crew left in the noon. In the evening News started announcing news of huge operation to be launched in I-11 0n 30th. We went early in the morning into the abadi, we had a breakfast at party office then we went into targeted abadi, but there were no sign of CDA. I was taking pictures and making videos. Police and CDA crew accompanied by Rangers started to arrive at metero ground near 10 am. People of the abadi once again started organizing at abadi, CDA invited Mufti and an elder called Sartor for talks and they strongly disagreed to make AWP party in the talks. Mufti and Sartor agreed that people of abadi would themselves will demolish their homes, they told all the crowed to leave. People started demolishing their homes; the crowed left the place and assembled in nearby ground. As the process was too slow then a bulldozer came and demolished few houses walls, when another bulldozer came to demolish more houses, people of the abadi started resistance by sitting on the roofs, that’s here people started shouting and throwing stones toward police and CDA crew. I was making videos and taking pictures of boy who got injured and a woman brought him outside his house and she was crying and shouting for help, I put water on his head then I started making videos of woman on the roof holding Quran and a her little kid in her hand, another elder woman was holding Quran, asking for mercy, policemen were exchanging harsh words with her. I was caught at this point when someone among police said that check this guy’s media card, he seems to be from abadi, as I didn’t had card, I told them im freelancer but they didn’t agree with me so, I was arrested by police. We were taken to I-9/2 CIA thana, there I came to know that most of arrested were not from the abadi and not even Pashtun but still a police officer said to all of us that “ 70 pashtunona ka dimagh mil kar aik Punjabi ka dimagh banta hai.” Nine of us were put in small barrack where we could hardly breathe and stretch our legs. This tiny barrack had toilet inside with hardly two feet wall, and we used to drink water from toilet tape, after hour water would get finished, prisoners from different barracks would start shouting for water. Next day we were taken to ATC, where were sent on demand for four days remand, then we were shifted to secretariat thana. The jail here was respectively in good condition, here most of my mates were from mandi and they were all no- Pashtuns except Habib ur Rehman who is sand and crush supplier. On the third day police investigated me, where I debated with investigation officer, his argument was that abadi people had occupied other people land which was allotted to them by CDA, I told them that it was allotted in 1992, and people of abadi are living there since 1985 as they still have 1985 election voter lists. Then they said that in 2005 whole abadi was demolished, they came back, I said if state is unable to devise policy to provide houses to people which is their legal right, so people will build these Katchiabadis, then I inquired them that why you only demolish Katchiabadis, why there is no operation on lands occupied by elites, he replied that we carried operation in Banigala, and when I said your few policemen were also killed, they stopped. I said most of the people living in the abadis are from tribal area, where their houses have been destroyed by ongoing military operation, so now you have have destroyed their homes here too. He had nothing to say but replied why Fata people dnt pay tax? I asked him why Pakistan is still governing Fata through century old colonial law, remove this law, we will give any tax you pay in Pakistan. He had nothing say except, he said even Pakistan is being governed through Pakistan Penal code, which is also colonial law, then they put me back into thana. Throughout all four days in jail everyone each one of them was happy that finally I-11 Katchiabdai has been demolished. As most of katchiabadi people used to work at the mandi, so they were in competition with them, Arshad who belongs to Khanewal told me that “we work 500 ruppees these Pashtuns works 200 hundred per day, pashtun always fights with other people in mandi. Even that Pashtun guy was more enthusiastic about demolition as supplier of sand and crush; he said his business will grow with demolition of abadi. It is clear non-pashtun people from sabzi mandi were against katchiabadi dwellers as they were their competitors but the argument they have is not their own. They are simply parroting arguments which are arguments of anti-poor elite, which is being disseminated through media and normally expressed among middle class and elite circles. Everyone is concerned with rule of law, the argument of illegality katchiabadi dwellersbut they didn’t even think a bit what brought them here to be illegally living in katchiabadi? Your state sponsored illegal wars in Fata? Will anyone raise argument legality and illegality? No one question rule of law, when state fails to provide houses to its masses. People in cities cheer and protest to launch operations in Fata, but they forget about thousands of people made homless, they are given new name “IDPs” then everyone hear nothing about them. Unless there are clear policies regarding assimilating war affected people and there is end war in Fata, people from those regions will descend upon cities and build new katchiabadis.

Published in Tanqeed magazine.

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A BLEEDING PARACHINAR – DIARY OF A KURRAMWALI

Published in Ibtidah magzine.

26 August 2013

By Sibt e Hassan

Parachinar, a small city on the Pak-Afghan border, is once again in the news as two suicide bombers exploded themselves on July 26, killing above 60 and injuring hundreds. This has been a fourth such blast after handing over Parachinar’s security to the Pak-Army.

Each route that enters the Parachinar city has an Army check post. The Security forces have  failed to provide security to citizens of Parachinar and the people are blaming the the Army for this.  Just a day after the blast, the people of Parachinar had a sit-in protest in  front of Political Agent house and demanded the Security  be transferred to the Turi Wing of FC (Frontier Constabulary). While the political administration apparently pacified and agreed to their demand, so far we have seen no such developments.

For those readers who don’t know about Parachinar, I will discuss a brief history of it. Parachinar is the capital of Kurram Agency, which borders with three different Afghan provinces, namely Ningrahar to its north, Paktia to its west and Khost to southwest. It is the nearest city of Pakistan to Kabul. It also borders with North Waziristan, Orakzai Agency and Khyber Agency. It comprises of the Turi, Bangash, Mangal, Muqbal, Parachamkani, Alisherzai, Masuzai and Zeimusht tribes. Turis and half of the Bangash tribe are Shia, while the rest tribes follow the Sunni sect.   Shias were in majority in Kurram but they were deliberately made a minority after ceding Frontier Kurram with Kurram Agency and named it Central Kurram.

Administratively, the Kurram Agency is divided into three  units: Upper Kurram, Central Kurram and Lower Kurram.  Parachinar is Located in Upper Kurram. Most of the Turi and  Bangash tribes live in Upper Kurram, while Lower Kurram has a small presence of the Turi tribes.

The Kurram Agency has been in news for decades for  conflicts, right from 1961 up till now. Being a Kurrmiwal (citizen of Kurram), I do not see it as a sectarian war. For years the deep state has used the difference of faith for its strategic depth reason due to the important geopolitical location of the Kurram Agency. Disputes over water, forests and land exist between Turi, Shia Bangash tribes and other Sunni tribes of Kurram. For example, Turi and  Bangash of Pewar and Shaozan have dispute with Mangal tribe over water and forest, Turi of Malikhel has dispute with the Bangash tribes over water, Turi in Lower Kurram has disputes with the Sunni Bangash and Zaimusht tribes over land. There were many wars over these disputes which had not been not escalated into sectarian war yet.

But after Pakistan’s involvement in Afghan Jihad, FATA was used as a launching pad for the Afghan jihad. Thousands of fighters with ultra-conservative Wahabi ideology were brought to FATA and with the widespread of Wahabi and Salafi ideology all over the world and after Iranian revolution, deep schism formed between the two sects of Islam.

Even today, Kurrmiwal think that it is sectarian conflict but every single time the deep state had used sectarian war for its own benefit.  In the 1987 sectarian war, Zia wanted to suppress the Shias of Pakistan after the Iranian revolution. In 1996 when sectarian war started in Parachinar, the differences had grown so much that a school boy wrote anti-Shia slurs on blackboard. A huge number of Pak-Army had come to Kurram to stop this war but disappeared, only later did we came to know that our Army had been called to  occupy Kabul instead.

After 9/11, this area once again gained prominence, with the bombing of the famous Tora Bora caves of White Mountain (Koh sufaid), and the crossing of many Al-Qaeda fighters into Kurram which were arrested by local tribesmen, including Sunnis came into governance.

Unlike other Agencies Kurram remained peaceful.  This is what our Government and Deep State didn’t want. When the new wave of Talibanization started all over FATA, there were no Taliban in Kurram. But in late 2005 and 2006, Taliban of other areas, especially Waziristan, were brought by our agencies to intrude into Afghanistan. After watching Taliban resistance in Waziristan and spread of its movement from FATA to Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, people of Kurram were very skeptical of the Taliban intrusion into Afghanistan. Taliban used to attack Afghan and American forces from Shahidano Dand in Lower Kurram to Teri Mangal in upper Kurram. Taliban would openly move along with their weapons and they would freely move over FC check posts. This phenomenon was disturbing to the people to Kurram, and they protested to the local government to stop this from happening.

Taliban’s first attack on the Turis was in the February of 2007, when Taliban killed two Turi tribesmen in the Shabak forest area. Shabak is a thorny jungle and the check post was to look after the forest.  This place is used as hideout by Taliban and from this place they used to attack the Afghan check post called Babrak Thana.

On 6, April, 2007 armed conflict in Kurram started when some state proxies of Sipah-e Sahaba chanted anti-Shia slogans on 12 Rabiulawal, which were recorded on video camera. Soon war engulfed the whole of Kurram. Taliban in lower Kurram torched two villages, namely Jalamai and Chardiwal. This was first Taliban involvement in that region. After this war, the Taliban movement in Kurram Agency stopped.  After an unending series of war started, there would be peace for a month or two and then again war would start.

The Taliban further strengthened its position in Lower Kurram by establishing camp in Shasho village and occupying Got hospital.  The first TTP commander of Lower Kurram was an Afghan, Fazal Shah Mulah, who died while fighting with the Turis. Then a new commander Fazal Saeed Haqqani was selected by TTP.  Taliban movement into Afghanistan stopped for months, as Turis were fighting against Taliban and were not allowing them to cross the border. According to Imran Khan the “peaceful Taliban commander,” Wali uRehman from Waziristan closed the only road which joins Parachinar with rest of Pakistan with the Turis. He told them that he will not open the road unless they allow Taliban to cross into Afghanistan.  Irony is that, no one objected to his statement by his supporters at large.

There are three main religious circles in Upper Kurram, and all of these represent the Shia community. They are:

1. Anjuman-e-Hussainia Parachinar

2. Tehreeh-e- Hussaini Parachinar

3. Majlis-e- Ulamai Ahlaibait Parachinar

Meanwhile, Sunnis have their own circle like Anjuman-e-Farooqia along with networks of Sipah e Sahaba. TTP from neighboring Orakzai and North Waziristan used to send thousands of Taliban fighters to fight with the Turis.

Role of our Government:

Our local administration and Pak-Army have been silent spectators. Rehman Malik has even falsely said on TV that Turis are assisted by the Afghan Army against Taliban. They were not able to open the road and instead they were using the closer road to earn money. The Army used to arrange convoys for Turis and they took Rs. 20,000 from each truck that was carrying food to Parachinar. They used to sell foods at low prices that were not available due to the road closure. The only excuse they had was that “to secure Kurram they had to secure Orakzai Agency first.”  Kurram was like a heaven for Taliban – when Army would start an operation in any of the neighboring Agencies, Taliban would escape to Kurram, where the Army and Taliban would be in peace and Taliban fought with Turis.  For the record, Parachinar is the only place in the lawless tribal area where the army never came under attack. When the people of Kurram would demand for military operation in lower Kurram to open the road, the military would start operation in central Kurram. Even the convoys carrying Turis would come under attack near FC check posts.

Now, when the roads are secure and the security of Parachinar is with the army following the Murree Agreement, 2008, so far four blasts have still taken place, which makes role of the army very skeptical in the eyes of the local tribesmen.

Impact on Health Sector:

As roads leading to Parachinar were closed, there was shortage of medicines and many women died while giving birth. As there was continuous fighting, many injured would die as well because they had no access to Peshawar for medical help. People used to bring medicines through Afghanistan, which means you had to buy medication at triple of its price.  Few times, the convoys carrying food and medicines were looted by Taliban and once they attacked an ambulance in which they also killed a nurse and cadet college student.

Impact on Education Sector:

War had a drastic effect on the education sector. Schools remained closed as Taliban used to fire missiles into Parachinar in Upper Kurram. Because of continued ferocious fight in Lower Kurram, many schools were destroyed and students were unable to attend schools and colleges. Many students had to leave their schools and colleges.  Other students joined their elders in fighting against Taliban. As the road leading to Parachinar was closed, the army used to arrange helicopter flights for students but this facility was reserved only for those who have connections with the powerful army and politicians. Therefore, students used to travel through Afghanistan to reach their school, colleges and universities. I myself have travelled through Afghanistan three times. I spent my whole semester in a village, trapped  there due to fights in 2008 and managed to reach Peshawar  just few days before exams. Students of Parachinar were unable to visit homes on vacation and they would stay for years in hostels. Even in Peshawar, the Turis were not spared. Many Turi tribesmen were either killed or  abducted by the Taliban, which also included students. Conditions like these dissuaded  many students  take admission in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa schools, colleges and universities.

Taliban’s Involvement in the Kurram Agency War:

Various factions of Taliban took part in the Kurram fighting, like when after refusing to allow Taliban to cross the border, Baith ullah Mehsud sent Taliban lashkar to fight with Turis under the leadership of Qari Hussain. Then Hakeem ullah Mehsud (commander of TTP – Kurram and Orakzai chapter) sent more fighters to fight Turis, then Hakeemullah made Faqir Alam TTP commander of TTP Kurram chapter. He is said be one of the most ferocious leaders – he himself has decapitated several Turi tribesmen who were caught while escorting in a convoy near Sada. Having lost his mental health, once again Hakeem ullah took charge of TTP Kurram. Besides that Fazal Saeed Haqani was TTP commander of Lower Kurram and was involved in many attacks on convoys, who later split with Taliban and made his own TTP Islami.  Mullah Noor Jamal, also known as “Mullah Toofan,” head of TTP Orakzai, sent thousands of fighters to fight with Turis. He was involved in the March 2011 attack on a convoy near Bagan, Lower Kurram, and in the killing and abducting of Turis. Mangal Bagh and Mullah Mehboob, who are rivals in Khyber Agency sent their fighters to fight with the Turi tribesmen. Haqqani faction has a huge presence in Lower Kurram, from where they attack Afghan check posts. They also assist TTP but they reject any involvement in fighting with the Turis.

Migration:

When Taliban first came to Kurram they recruited local people, as in those days the Taliban movement was spreading in the whole of Pakistan. This radical ideology also gained popularity among Sunnis, who were already radicalized due to the sectarian difference with their rival Turis. Some of the Sunnis recruited themselves into Taliban to gain leverage over the Turis with whom they have land, forest and water disputes. When the war started in Kurram, Taliban was operating from Sunni’s villages and when Taliban were defeated, many Sunnis left their villages and took refuge in Peshawar. Similarly, few Turi villages were also torched by Taliban, like Jalamai, Chardiwal, Arawali Sydano Kale and Khiwas. The residents of these villages took refuge in Parachinar.

The Question of Drone and Military Operation in Kurram Agency:

Drone is an issue raised widely around the globe and especially in Pakistan, being victim of drone attacks. In Pakistan there is a huge resentment against America’s war in Afghanistan, Iraq and its biased role on the Palestine-Israel issue. This resentment is used by politicians like Imran khan and other religious scholars to gain support of the masses.  Yes, we don’t  we don’t support any killings in the name of collateral damage. As our minds are still colonized, this anti-drone activism in western countries is used by our corporate media and religious scholars to overshadow big issues, like the atrocities committed by our Army and their proxies “Taliban.”  Drone is not the only issue of FATA. There is state sponsored terrorism, which forces local tribesmen to take a side due which many have lost their lives on both sides.

Taliban forcefully recruit tribesmen in their ranks. They abduct and take huge ransoms from them, they use the tribesmen as a human shield against drones and army, they destroy schools, ban polio vaccinations, and apply atrocities towards women. Thousands of tribesmen are forced to leave their homes and forced to stay in IDP’s camps.

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We need your help to recover Jalil and Akmal – by Hassan Turi

Published in Pakblogzine.

This child has been missing for almost one year.

He was abducted by the Taliban from river Kurram on 5 March 2011.

His name is Jalil Hussain.

He was abducted along with his friend Akmal Hussain.

Ironically, both of them were abducted after a peace accord between Sunni and Shia tribes in January 2011. Their families were contacted by someone from Afghanistan that their sons are in Afghanistan, they travelled twice to that country but could not find any clue about the whereabouts of their sons.

I visited their village and took information about their families.

Jalil’s father died recently of cardiac arrest. They are very poor, his mother’s mental condition is not good.

Mashooq Ali, father of Akmal Hussain, too is in an ongoing state of shock.

We request Pakistan’s army chief General Kayani and President Zardari to instruct Pakistan’s security agencies to do the needful to free these children from the captivity of the Taliban.

We

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Kidnapped and forgotten sons of Parachinar – by Sibth-ul-Hassan Turi

Published in 2012 in Pakblogizine.

Last month, the fake story of Shams Ul Anwer went viral on social media and caught the attention of well known human right activists and media spoke people. Once again Pakistanis united in supporting the victim before realizing it was all concocted drama. Rather than being totally disappointed, it gave me slight hope that, perhaps, despite that the story was fake, it did capture the collective imagination, and there are hundreds of similar stories in reality. For the last four five years, the people of FATA and Kurram Agency, in particular, have been worse victims of such kidnappings and killings. Unfortunately, the real stories are not so quickly seized by activists and journalists and taken up as a cause but perhaps, it seems there may be a way to get through the conspiracy of silence and media blockade concerning the real stories.

Before the War on Terror, Kurram Agency was one of the peaceful areas of FATA, taking pride in having the highest literacy level among all Agencies. Although there were cases of sectarian conflicts that broke out every ten years or so, these would not last for more than a week and these would soon be resolved by Jirgas. After the War on Terror began, however, these sectarian conflicts now extended to four years, killing thousands of people, destroying communities, closing down and blocking the roads, ultimately affecting every socioeconomic and cultural aspect of life.

We were left with nothing but a state of emergency. Perviz Musharaf quotes in his book that, “If he had not allowed America to attack Afghanistan, Pakistan would be sent to Stone Age.” But, we were, in fact, sent to the Stone Age. The only road leading to Parachinar was closed by Taliban, convoys escorting to Parachinar were ambushed and killed, kidnappings of Turi people became commonplace occurrences. Most of of those kidnapped would either be killed or released by paying huge ransoms. After these huge losses, the Turi people started to travel through an alternative route through Afghanistan, but this route also was not safe as it passed right through the stronghold of Taliban. Here, too, Turis were attacked and killed, the most recent case took place during Ramadan, killing five men along with a woman. After traveling through Afghanistan, through Khyber Agency, Turis were kidnapped and killed by Ansar Ul Islam and other terrorist groups.

Most students and professionals from Parachinar reside in Peshawar to study and here too, they were not exempted from attack. Professionals like Dr. Mumtaz was kidnapped from his clinic, held captive for six months. Recently, Dr. Syed Jamal, a cardiologist was kidnapped from his house and killed after two months in captivity. His body was thrown somewhere in Jamrod, in Khyber Agency. I have been told scores of stories like these, there is hardly a village in Kurram Agency or a neighbor or a family whose loved one has not been kidnapped.

I would like to share two more cases, unreported, here: On the 3 March, 2011 two teen boys named Ajmal Hussain, son of Wazir Ali and Akmal Hussain, son of Mashook Ali, were grazing cows on the river side in Lower Kurram Agency when they were kidnapped by unknown persons and are still missing until now. The fathers of both teens traveled twice to Khost, Afghanistan following any leads on their missing sons. Alas, the information regarding Khost was incorrect. It’s been almost a year and the kidnappers have not demanded a ransom, they fathers are very poor and in deep pain. They say whenever any event or celebration comes; it reminds remind them of their son. If they are not alive, at least they should show them their graves, so that they no more wait for them.

Another story is about Qaiser Hussain who completed a Masters in Physics from Peshawar University, who was abducted on 25 March along with thirty two other Turi tribesmen, When Taliban attacked a convoy near Bagan Lower Kurram Agency, killing five and kidnapping thirty three, these 33 tribesmen were abducted by different factions of Taliban. Twenty two of them were with Mullah Tofan who is TTP chief commander of Orakzai Agency and were released by him two months later after the paying of huge ransoms. The other group of ten tribesmen was with local commander Noor, who killed them and buried them somewhere near Pak-Afghan border. Their coffins were sent two months later to Parachinar, with the names of the dead written on their coffins. Qaiser Hussain’s name and coffin was not included. The Taliban contacted Qaiser Hussain’s family, stating that Qaiser was alive and demanded 13 lacs rupees for his release. When the money was arranged and delivered, Qaiser was not released. Qaiser should be released as 3crore in ransom has been paid to the Taliban. He was not released in October 2011, when Grand Jirga was arranged to rehabilitate IDPS. Qaiser’s father wrote an appeal to all the political representatives and other Jirga members asking them not to sign any agreement until Qaiser was released. This request was not upheld and accepted by the Jirga members, instead, they went ahead and signed agreements. Qaiser’s family is still waiting for their son. The now request and appeal that every responsible Pakistani with a conscience, to stand up and help and support them for the release and safe return of their son.

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Myth of Military Operation

One year has passed since Pakistan Army took control of Parachinar . Question arises, was Pak Army able to bring peace into kurram Agency : The answer is NO. Kurram Agency which was under siege for four years. Taliban and other extremist organizations from all over the country were fighting against Turi tribesmen.  Army was silent spectator. ISPR (Inter Services Public Relation) and Azad Media were referring to this war as sectarian war.When Army was busy in military operation in Waziristan and Orakzai  thousands of Taliban would pour into neighboring Kurram to get hold of strategically important kurram. Taliban would travel by road from Waziristan to Kurram even most Taliban intruded from nearby Khost province through shahidano dand area.Army and FC were not bothered by Taliban lashkars, they were not stopped or attacked by Army and FC. For reference you can check new American foundation report on FATA.When war ended roads leading to Parachinar were still closed, Army used to arrange convoys for turis. These convoys were not arranged on humanitarian basis but they would charge Rs 500 fair from each traveler and they would charge Rs 2000 from each vehicle carrying food stuff to Kurram. Many times convoys were attacked by Talibans, where only Turi tribesmen were targeted, Army and FC were left unharmed.   There is footage  in which convoy is attacked, looted  in sadda lower Kurram agency under jurisdiction of FC, vehicle's drivers which belong to turi tribe are offloaded and killed and FC personel  are going by side doing nothing. Similarly a convoy of 22 trucks were looted and then and trucks were burnt to ashes on 4 January near Arawali FC port Lower Kurram. Then a mini bus was attacked on 13 march 2011 near Mamo Khwara District Hangu killing thirteen, and the  major accident when convoy was attacked near Bagan lower Kurram on 23 march 2011, 45 were made hostages and out of 45, 12 were killed. 33 were made hostages for three months. They were released when students of Parachinar protested for 110 days in front of Islamabad press club. They were released after paying 30 million rupees, which were taken from Kurram development fund. (That’s how our Army funds terrorist organizations). Hostages were released on 21 June 2011, and pressure was built on got to carry army operation in Kurram Agency, especially in Lower Kurram. Army operation was started but in central Kurram, where they have to deal with Taliban which are hostile toward them. Lower kurram where most convoys came under attack is home to Fazal Saeed Haqani, for which he take responsibility. No stern action has been taken against him. He was TTP kurram chapter leader, later split with TTP and made TTP islami. He is cousin the cousion of Lower kurram MNA Munir Orakzai, according to him in recent interveiw with VOA radio deewa, Fazal Saeed is pro- government  and has never attacked army. This could be the reason that’s why army is not taking action against him. Once his petrol pump station was destroyed but was again compensated by got and his men were also released .  Fazal Saeed  village (Uchat) lower kurram is near Pak-Afghan border, where his men force is used to attack on nearby Afghan checkpost (Babrak Thana). So no operation is expected from army.Security of Parachinar was transferred to Pak-Army by Turi volunteers in summer 2011. Army immediately started building check posts on all main roads going to Parachinar city, just in 6 months span of time after security of Parachinar was transferred to army two bombs blasted in Parachinar city. First bomb blasted on 17 February 2012, more then 50 were killed and above 80 were injured.When angry Turi tribesmen started protest against security agencies, FC and Army opened fire on protestors and tanks were brought on streets. 11 were killed 35 were injured when FC opened fire on them and one was crushed by tank.Video of protest was leaked, army arrested protestors most of them were teenagers, and they were tortured and were detained for months, and were released after paying huge fines.       The second bomb blasted on 10 September 2012, in which more then 20 were killed and above 80 were injured. Instead of feeling safe, people are worried about security in Parachinar and our vans are still attacked in lower Kurram. Even now they throw acid at our female students. Till now not stern action has been taken against Fazal Saeed Haqani who is believed that he resides in Burju village and he frequently visits Peshawar. Attacks on Parachinar bound buses are regular, recent attack was remote control attack on bus near Sadda, and one was killed. Local political administration is doing what it is good at “sowing seeds of hatred among different tribes”. So that to keep alive their created sectarianism doctrine. As FATA is governed under FCR a colonial law which was made to control tribesmen still carries similar techniques of colonial country.Last month leader of Anjuman Faroqia Bakht Jamal was attacked, he got injured. Political administration took stern action arrested 158 tribesmen from different villages of Kurram agency with out any formal  charges against them.When sit-in was staged in solidarity with Quetta sit-in, turis also demanded release of 158 detainees. The sit-in continued for 2 more days after Quetta sit-in . At last political administration agreed to release those who are not involved in assassination attempt on Bakht jamal.So Army operations are not solution to the problem, Army itself is the part of the problem, tribesmen are killed by both of them and drones, army operations kills poor tribesmen by shelling on their homes or accusing them Taliban, capturing their schools, Taliban kill them for not assisting them and destroy their schools, drones kill them, while  referring to them as signature strikes.Tribesmen want peace, education, abolition of colonial laws, so no further war should be waged on the name of them.

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REJOINDER TO MR INAMULLAH KHATTAK FOR BLAMING TURIS

On 16 November, Mr Inamullah Khattak wrote an article in dawn on Rawalpindi tragedy. The title of which was ‘’Outsiders involved in clashes” in that article Mr Khattak put  the entire blame of Rawalpindi Sectarian violence  on Turi’s tribe  of Kurram Agency. In the article he termed the entire Turi tribe as “Hardliners” and relied on a report prepared and propagated by our intelligence agencies. He laments on  how all these savage Pashtun tribesmen from the FATA are responsible for this tragedy. His whole article revolves around how Turis came to Islamabad and Pindi, and how their influx is the sole reason behind this tragedy. He terms Turi’s as hardliners and desperately trying to humanize the terrorist outfit of " Ahle sunat ul Jumat". On that unfortunate day of the Jaloss which   comprised of Punjabis, Gilgit Shia too but he excludes Punjabis and other ethnicities from it and put the entire blame on Pashtun Shias of Kurram Agency.  Kurram Agency has been continuously used by establishment for decades but Turi’s have fought their survival. Turi’s are paying a price of being Shia living in the wrong place. Every conflict in the kurram region has been termed a sectarian conflict. So even this time it was not hard for Mr Inamullah khattak to make Turis as scapegoat. He is appealing and justifying to the general public that Pashtun Shia is the main reason behind this tragedy and not the terrorist outfits who holds this country a hostage. But unfortunately it  is their war which is reflecting in Pindi. He forgets conveniently that all these terrorists and religious organization were created in Punjab (not in kurram Agency) like SSP came into existence in 1985 in response to Tehreek-i-Nifaz-i-Sharia. Punjab has spread this fire under military establishment and now the flames are all over Pakistan. Now when the menace has reached Punjab they are blaming others for their own created mess .The 10,000 migrating Turis which are now settled in Twin cities left their homes because of these flames ignited by Punjab and establishment in their home town . The wars are coloured by our establishment as sectarian wars to achieve its wider interests in the country. The class war which started in southern Punjab between Shia landlords and Sunni lower class, the Iranian revolution and influx of Wahhabi ideology in Zia era gave birth to these monsters and since then it has been used by our establishment to achieve its wider nefarious objectives in the region. The 10,000 Turis mostly comprises of students and families who had their businesses in Peshawar were forced to migrate to Pindi and Islamabad because they were targeted by Taliban     But what can one expect living in a country where terrorists are termed as ‘’Shaheed’’ and those who fought against them are called Hardliner. If fighting against Taliban makes one hardliner, then yes, Turis are HARDLINERS. WE FOUGHT AGAINST TALIBAN AND WE SUFFERED too. I guess its Best times for   our establishment to settle their scores with Turi’s and they won’t waste any single moment to equate Turis to Taliban. While writing this I am receiving news that hundreds of Kurrmiwal Turis are being arrested in Pindi. For the last few years thousands of Shias are being killed in all over three provinces, including Gilgit-Baltistan, however no one was arrested.  This time it will be different because Shias have retaliated, that too in Punjab and now will pay the price for it. Punjab is sending message to other provinces that it will not tolerate any retaliation against their state proxies that too from other ethnicities and in their province.Posted by Spinghar at 11:01

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Kherlachi Post. Last week when i took my friend to Durandline, Paktia-Parachinar. Soon, my mind travelled 7 years back, when used to wait here to rent taxis to Kabul and Jalalabad. Kurram Agency shares border with three Afghan provinces, namely Khost, Paktia and Nangrahar.

My first visit through this road was on of my life wonderful experience.It was July 2008, when i arrived at my village through military helicopter (That is another fascinating story, how i along with my cousins used to visit Peshawar airport and wait for chopper). The day i arrived at my village i was welcomed to my village by our village party, who were running toward our car; we stopped for a while and asked them that what happened, a boy said that we heard an AK-47 burst.

I was visiting my village after one and half year, though Peshawar is just four hours drive. The only road leading to Kurram was closed by Taliban, so people used to be travel through Afghanistan or miltary helicopters or Fokker planes.

For military helicopters you have to have someone in military or in political administration, while Fokker planes fairs were very high for lower class, stranded by war and economical embargo people. the fair would get double or triple once there would be attack on Turi convoys travelling under FC security inside Pakistan or in Afghanistan.

So, anyhow i got trapped in war,which started from our village in August and ended in October but still roads were closed and i was tired of 8:00 pm to 6:00 am duty at river bank trench. It was my 3rd semester at university and i almost spent my fall semester in village. our exam was scheduled in late November, so i have to leave for Peshawar as soon as possible.  

I went to Parachinar and spend almost on week but i was unable to get a ticket. i used to visit these guys who were in charge of these Fokker airplanes. i came back to my village, which is 65 KM distance from Parachinar in Lower Kurram. disappointed, and feeling hate for these upper and middle class Kurrmiwals, who came directly to airport and get ticket, while ordinary people like myself have to wait for months.

I left for Parachinar once again after spending a month in village with my family. This time i was not alone, my other university friends were also in Parachinar. i was already disgruntled with biased attitude of airplane agents. My friends were planning to visit through Afghanistan.

Travelling through Afghanistan was also very risky, recently few Turi bound cars were attacked and kidnapped in Paktia province. i didn’t tell my mom and left for Afghanistan along with my friends.

We left for Borki check post early in the morning, there we hired a taxi and left for Gardiz. Road was under construction and we came across many Ford Suvs and US humvees on the way. Afghan driver was telling us that when these folks are travelling then it becomes dangerous as Taliban plant ieds on road side for them.

It was very unusual experience, like i have only seen white men on Tv screen and that too Army men. it was like i am some Hollywood movie.. The road move in between narrow mountains, surrounded by scenic villages up in the high mountains. but we used feel insecure when driver would tell us that we know passing through Mangal tribe village, which is our rival tribe and also have huge presence in Paktia province.

we reached Gardiz, paktia capital after 7 hour drive. The road was still under construction. Few guards used to stand to protect workers. The road moves through narrow valley and ascends into capital Gardiz which is on very high altitude and is mostly barren. It was too cold in october and strong wind was blowing. Architecture of houses is different. They live in huge (Fort) like houses. We stayed there for a while and left for Kabul. It was one of the best road journey i ever had.

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Alizai High school ground. I didnt study in this school but this ground is Lord cricket ground for lower ground for cricket lovers. This is the ground where players show their talents and soon become famous in Kurram. Since, my childhood i had a dream,to play on this ground. Though i used to open for my village team and also played in school but i was not allowed to play. Each year a grand tournament would be organised, teams from Chappari to Sadda would participate in this tournament. I regularly play for our village team last few years and won several tournaments. Recently this ground was also used by FDMA for registration of Waziristan Idps coming through Khost. Last week two suicidebombers targeted this ground but didnt make inside ground. Last monday saw blood stained walls and barbed wires. Political Agent is active now, his role has been reduced to a councillor while FC and Army are administerating matters. Still Taliban travels through Lower Kurram and our Paramilitary forces are firing artillery toward durand.

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The story starts with opening of English Language center called “Oriental english language center” by Khostwal refugee Toor Gul. Who learned english at refugee camp and my father helped him in getting admission at local govt school. He used to teach english at different villages in Lower Kurram after some time he moved to Parachinar where alongwith my few cousin started oriental language center. Some of the students who successfully completed course went to Australia. But at that time there was peace so Kurram Agency mobility was only limited to peshawar nationally and to Gulf internationally. With start of war after war on terror flames engulfed Kurram, the war was globally portrayed as sectarian war and also after Arab uprising many shias from Kurram with Ali, Hussain and Hassan names were extradited from UAE. So, in the meanwhile Australia started to reject student visas. The war in Kurram and four year seige economically ruined Kurram. Agriculture and remittances from Gulf are major sources of income. Agriculture was badly effected as the only road which joins Parchinar with Peshawar was closed by Taliban, so farmers had no access to markets. Thats when exodus to Australia started. Now there would be hardly a family who has a boy or half family in Australia.

The main traffickers were Hazars and Punjabis but their sub contractors in Islamabad and Pindi were from Kurram. Migrants would sign a paper and they were issued Malaysian visa, from Malaysia they would sent migrants in boats or by plane to Indonesia. At indonesia they would to wait for their turn. Mostly they have to stay for month due bad weather or no money to take a ride to christmas island. Two boats capsized in Indonesian waters in which more than 80 kurrmiwal died. In which personally i knew few, who used to play cricket with us in college. In 2013 anti immigrant prim minister Tony Abbot won election on anti immigrant sentiments. After tony was sworn, people of pakistan were warned in pashto, urdu and dari tv and newspaper ads that "No more boats in Australian waters." This didnt demoralised our kurrmiwals, hundreds of boys from our village left for Australia but this time they were sent to Papua New Gunea. I still have a cousin overthere.

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My Dilapidated village #FATA