great rage and great fear in swat-villagers recount taliban abuse

[ajpirzada]

You are right; the masses do not have the thinking power to decide what is right and what is wrong; therefore the concept of Khilafa or Imamate.

I'm not against implementation of the sharia; any muslim in his right mind will not oppose sharia. It has even been unanimously agreed by all the ulema of all the sects in pakistan that the sharia should be implemented in accordance with the constitution of 73.

The problem is that although the ulemas agree to implement it; problems exist in lower levels of implementation; will the barelvis agree to be governed by deobandis or the opposite? Or will shias accept to be governed by the sunnis or vice versa? I know the argument will be that majority rules. Will that satisfy the minorities that they will not be undermined in the system? Lots of questions still remain to be answered; and how will you gauge the sincerity of the technocrats and the intellectuals?

thats not an issue. under shariah decision is given accordin to the believes of each sect.
however there are many other problem

 

[Bill Longley]

I'm not against implementation of the sharia; any muslim in his right mind will not oppose sharia. It has even been unanimously agreed by all the ulema of all the sects in pakistan that the sharia should be implemented in accordance with the constitution of 73.

The problem is that although the ulemas agree to implement it; problems exist in lower levels of implementation; will the barelvis agree to be governed by deobandis or the opposite? Or will shias accept to be governed by the sunnis or vice versa? I know the argument will be that majority rules. Will that satisfy the minorities that they will not be undermined in the system? Lots of questions still remain to be answered.

i agree but i belive that chooseing ruler of islamic state is an IJMAA
with difference in this IJMAA importance goes to openion of technocrates and intellectuals and ulema

About sharia, do you know according to Hadiths Imam Mahdi's jehad will be against Muslims , Jesus will come to kill DAJJAL
it means even comming Imam will have difficulty to unite muslims so he have to do jehad against them

no takeing this in mind I say
پھر ہماری اوقات کیا ہے

 

[Enigma SIG]

i agree but i belive that chooseing ruler of islamic state is an IJMAA
with difference in this IJMAA importance goes to openion of technocrates and intellectuals and ulema

About sharia, do you know according to Hadiths Imam Mahdi's jehad will be against Muslims , Jesus will come to kill DAJJAL
it means even comming Imam will have difficulty to unite muslims so he have to do jehad against them

no takeing this in mind I say
پھر ہماری اوقات کیا ہے

Point taken about Ijmaa; but as I said; how will the majority ensure that the minorities are not mistreated (keeping in mind all the sectarian violence that has killed many on either side)?

Yes I have heard of the hadith; it will be because the muslims will be fighting each other; cutting each other throats; just as its happening now; sad indeed...

auqat to sir jee hamari rait k zarre ke barabar bi nahi hai; kuch log apne ap ko khuda samajh bethe hain...

 

[Bill Longley]

Point taken about Ijmaa; but as I said; how will the majority ensure that the minorities are not mistreated (keeping in mind all the sectarian violence that has killed many on either side)?

Yes I have heard of the hadith; it will be because the muslims will be fighting each other; cutting each other throats; just as its happening now; sad indeed...

auqat to sir jee hamari rait k zarre ke barabar bi nahi hai; kuch log apne ap ko khuda samajh bethe hain...

agreed brother

what i say is implement shariah if public demand but with consensus amoungst muslims. but use the method of ijma for selection of leadership, both in case of sharii or based on westren laws

 

[khanz]

She is absolutely right it's good to see people waking up to these idiots and supporting the country.All they did was ban music and gave absolutely no development at all not a single positive thing they did .I wish these bloody taliban sympathizing religious parties should all be kicked out.These mullahs that force religion down peoples throats are the biggest hypocrites of all.

 

[Enigma SIG]

Its up to the religious parties to bring about consensus amongst us; the government also should take a step back; although I am not against clearing out of pro-talibani MNA's and MPA's from our system; stern action should be made against them. What has happened has happened; lets look forward towards a better Pakistan...

 

[Patriot]

Its up to the religious parties to bring about consensus amongst us; the government also should take a step back; although I am not against clearing out of pro-talibani MNA's and MPA's from our system; stern action should be made against them. What has happened has happened; lets look forward towards a better Pakistan...

What has religious partie done anything for Pakistan ever except creating more problems, secterian violence etc...?

 

[Enigma SIG]

What has religious partie done anything for Pakistan ever except creating more problems, secterian violence etc...?

True; but most people do follow the religious parties in one way or the other (i dont). You have to convince a lot of people not to follow them

 

[Patriot]

Yes, i agree that Islam is a bonding factor between Pakistanis but it can also be used for positive role.Such as using Islam as our goal to become the most modern Islamic Country with huge technological industrial base but for that we need moderate mullahs!

 

[Enigma SIG]

We aint got no moderate mullah's man; we gotta import some

On a lighter note though; we should really decide who our real enemy is; and stop this hate towards each other; then only can the country progress...

 

[AgNoStiC MuSliM]

Taliban rob a child of his will to play​

By Fawad Ali Shah

KARACHI: Mudassir Khan, aged nine, is playing with his cousins on a street in Sultanabad. Though his cousins seem to be enjoying each and every moment of the game, Mudassir’s face paints a different picture.

His movements lack the freedom visible in the other children. When asked why he is not enjoying the game, he murmurs, “I don’t want to play games.” Khan is one of the thousands of children forced to migrate to Karachi after the military operation was initiated in the area.

His father, Muzammal Khan, steps in to better explain Mudassir’s lack of interest in games. Taking the boy aside, he asks Mudassir to narrate his experiences of the Taliban but the child remains silent. “Once he was playing gulli danda, which was his favorite game, when a Talib slapped him and his friends,” reveals Muzzamil Khan, who used to run a medical store in Mingora.

“My son was not like this at all but the tormenting experiences of the past few months have scarred him deeply,” he adds, still trying to coerce the little boy to share his experiences. Mudassir’s eyes start to well up but casting an annoying look at his father, he manages to murmur, “He was very bad, very bad.”

“I was playing gulli danda when a man with a Kalashnikov and a stick in his hand came up to us. He slapped us because we were playing games of infidels,” he narrates, “The Talib said that infidels have created these games in order to deviate the attention of Muslim children and youth from jihad.” He adds that then the Talib forcefully took him to the mosque and since that day, he has never dared to play a game again.

However, the hatred for the Taliban that Mudassir now harbours was not always present. “They would teach me about religion and prayed five times a day,” he says. However, all that changed when the Taliban started beating up people.

He stated that his madrassah teacher once took his 13-year old schoolmate for jihad training. “Maulana sahib would give sermons on jihad, focusing on stories of the glorious past. That friend of mine wanted to be Muhammad Bin Qasim,” says the green-eyed Mudassir.

It may be noted here that after establishing themselves in the area, the Taliban are forcefully sending children to religious seminaries and mosques. Moreover, though the Taliban are against the modern education system and have destroyed many schools in the area, the son of Taliban spokesperson, Muslim Khan, is enrolled in the pharmacy department of the University of Peshawar, which is a co-education university. More interesting was the reply of Muslim Khan when this was pointed out, as he stated that “the study of medicine is allowed in Islam.”

“He is always nervous and jittery all the time,” Waqma, 28, Mudassir’s burqa-clad mother said, adding that the Mudassir’s face was red for quite some time after that slap.

When contacted for an expert’s opinion over the child’s ordeal, Psychologist Haleem Shah said that the child would not be able to recover any time soon. “If the situation is as the parents describe, it will take months for him to recover and possibly play again,” reckoned Shah.

As the children once again run towards the ground, Mudassir remains with his parents, softly whispering, “I don’t want to play.”

Daily Times - Leading News Resource of Pakistan

 

[TalibanSwatter]

We write here some of the stories the women of Swat told us. They come from Kabbal, Mingawera (Mingora), Qambar, Kanju and other parts of Swat. Some are from Buner and Maidan in Lower Dir. Their lives were affected in many more ways than the lives of their men.

When we entered the large tent a few women looked up and smiled. Some got up and put out their hands to greet us. They seemed surprised that we could converse in the same language. "Sit down. We can't even offer you tea" said one laughing, "look at us and what we have been reduced to." Their children were lying on the floor, red because of the heat, tired and listless in the hot air of the fans. The women had been sitting in silence before we went in. We could hear no noise from the tent which was full of about forty women and children. What could they share with each other? Each story was the same as the other. It was a pall of misery and silences that hung over their heads. These women were lucky; they had a common place to come to, out of their tents. In most camps, the women sit in the heat of the tents, not being allowed to go out. They wait for their men to come before they can use the toilets. Their children defecate outside the tents as they cannot take them to the toilets. In some schools, they feed their children first and, at times, do not eat.

One by one they spoke their ordeal, their flight from the bombing, the endless days of walking with children and the elderly and the dead they had left behind. Soon each one wanted to tell her story. They sat closer and closer to us, listening to the others and telling us about themselves. Most of them had fled from Mingawera and other places in Swat--walking for days, avoiding the curfew by moving off the roads and taking to the mountains to walk, walking day and night; hiding their sons in trucks for fear that the Talibs would take them away to fight. One woman had walked for nine days with three children under ten. We cannot recall the number of women who told us about how their homes were shelled and how they had buried their dead without bathing them, in hurriedly dug graves. One had lost her baby on the way down, had dug a ditch beside the road, torn off part of her chadar, wrapped her child in it and buried her in the ditch. She walked on, to save what was left, her own life. Another spoke of how in the madness of the bombing, she had asked her husband to pick up her baby from the bed. When they were out of the village, the husband realized he had picked up the pillow and left the six month old child behind. They still kept walking.

Another woman spoke of how they were eating peacefully when a mortar had hit her house. The word 'mortar' was a regular part of their conversation. 'Matr' and 'karpee' which we finally realised was 'curfew.' Another told us how her neighbours' home was shelled. Four men had died on the spot. People had run helter-skelter. The helicopter passed and the men ran and started digging graves to bury the dead before fleeing the village. They told the women to collect what they could and the women started to round up their children. As the men dug, the helicopter returned to shell. The men left the bodies and ran for cover. The helicopter fired again and flew past. The men returned and dug what they could and dumped the bodies into the graves.

Another woman in a school camp spoke of how her family had left food in their plates and hot tea in their cups when the shelling began. She was brave and then her brown eyes filled with tears and she said 'my young son, he was in class ten, was hit on the back of his head and he died. I lost my young son' and then her tears flowed. The others sat looking at her, thinking of their own miseries. We sat in silence, nobody consoling, and nobody talking. 'At least they should have told us, why did they not tell us they were going to bomb?' She wiped her eyes hurriedly and continued to talk. 'They are beasts these Taliban. They are not human. May God finish them all like they have finished us.' We were surprised, surprised that her anger turned to the Taliban when her son was killed by military shelling. She was a strong woman and continued to talk with a vengeance. 'May God punish these animals for what they have done to us. I hope the army finishes every last one of them.'

From one place to another, from one tent and school to another, we heard them tell us how they were unable to leave their homes for fear of being beaten or killed or flogged, how their men had been dragged out of their homes and slaughtered. One of the men said he lived on the chowk where the Taliban slaughtered people. He told us how they walked into homes and led out their victims in silence. He told us of the sounds he heard when these men were slaughtered, like cattle, on the chowk.

Each woman talked of the slaughter of men, whether they had been through it or whether they had heard it – it had terrorised them into silence and acquiescence. They also spoke of how 'disgraced' they felt as they fled with only a dupatta on. One of them laughed and said: "Burqa, burqa, which is all we heard in Swat but when we ran we were hardly covered [with burqas] and the whole world was looking at us." The men did not think this was funny. The humiliation they felt at this had outraged them – the humiliation at their women being in these camps, being seen by other men, the humiliation of standing in line for food. Perhaps that is why there were so many children standing in line for food at the camps.

In one of the schools, a group of women led us to meet their friend. She could not speak because she could not stop crying. They kept saying 'Show them; show them what they did to you.' She was a widow and the Taliban had taken her 12 year old son away to join them. The women said that they used to come to all their homes and ask for their sons. They were too scared to resist. Some boys were taken by force, others went themselves, and others simply disappeared from madressahs. The widow had gone and taken her son back from the madressah. They had come into her house, taken all her jewellry and cut of all her hair. She cried for her own humiliation and did not speak a word. Women from Buner spoke of how the Taliban had no respect for the Pakhtun way of life, for Islam or for women. How they would enter any house they wanted, whether to take away their sons or to take refuge. They spoke of incidents of the younger women being raped, after which their breasts were cut off. They told us how their men were beheaded and hung from electricity poles with their chopped off heads placed between their legs. They would leave notes on these bodies for no one to touch.

So why did they let this happen? Why could they not get together to stop it? We repeatedly asked them this. Who ARE these people? This is when the admittance came. They were honest, honest about the power of Mullah Radio and his constituency of women listeners. "There was peace in Swat. Shut in their homes many women listened to 'Raidu Mullah.' He addressed them directly. "He used to talk about Islam, about praying five times a day, about going to the madressah and learning the Quran. We all thought he was a good man." As his popularity grew, women would line up outside his madrassah and donate. They donated whatever little jewelry they had. Even the poorest women would donate her nose-pins.

This captive, gullible audience, shut in their homes became the main source of Mullah Radio's power and support. They encouraged their sons to join his madrassah. They provided the Taliban with a ready following. They provided them their sons which they soon realised were fodder, fodder for suicide bombings and 'jihad.' It was only when they realised and resisted this that the Taliban turned on their own people. "They would knock at our doors, and would say, 'give us your sons in the name of Islam'. Those who resisted were slaughtered."

Many said their families approached the army and the government for help. But nobody listened. A few said that anyone who informed the army did not live long. They kept quiet. Even today parts of their areas where the Taliban have fled to are not known to the army. They will not speak. Suddenly in a fit of rage one of them started shouting: "Where were this army and this government when our people have been relating these incidents to them for almost two years?" This is only a question to be answered by those responsible for what is happening to our people today.

"We have been fooled. We have been fooled by the Taliban, the Army and the government. We knew two years ago that this was not Islam but nobody would help us. Why did the army not do something two years when the Taliban were fewer in number and that when they could be controlled? When they knew exactly where they were. What is the reason for their friendship with these animals? Where were this army and this government when we were screaming for help and going to them?"

What answer can one give to these poor, helpless women? Who is going to be held accountable for the violence they have suffered. Their questions can only be answered by those who know what they have done. And if they do not answer them in this world, they will for sure answer them in the next.

This is an abridged version of a recent report by AIRRA (Aryana Institute for Regional Research and Advocacy) based in Peshawar, whose members travelled to the IDP camps for these interviews.