RoadRunner401
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Parachinar, in Pakistan's tribal north west, remains under siege. The only road connecting this district bordering Afghanistan to the rest of Pakistan has been blocked by Taliban fighters since 2007.
The blockade was briefly lifted in March, or so the Pakistani government proudly announced. The road was open again and travellers would be protected, they said. Owais, a 25-year-old recent graduate of engineering, was one of the few who took the risk and decided to visit his family.
On March 25, his Toyota HiAce and two other vans were stopped on the Thal-Parachinar road by Taliban fighters. Owais and 44 others were kidnapped.
"The whole Kurram region has turned into a detention centre for the people," says local journalist Zulfiqar Ali,
A local human rights activist
referring to the tribal agency of which Parachinar is the administrative capital. Pakistan's tribal areas are divided into seven agencies, with Kurram bordering Afghanistan's Khost province.
On the road to Parachinar, passenger vehicles are frequently attacked and food convoys are torched. Since 2007, hundreds of people have been killed in Kurram due to the violence, while the United Nations says at least 30,000 families have been forced to abandon their homes and move to camps for Internally Displaced People.
But escaping the region has become a difficult task. For residents to make it to Peshawar, the nearest Pakistani city, they have to first go into Afghanistan. That route has often been closed due to military operations by the Pakistani army. And even if they make it through, they face tremendous risks in Afghanistan - because the same fighters are active across the border.
"People cannot even travel there to bury their dead," a local human rights activist told Al Jazeera in condition of anonymity, due to the risks involved in discussing the matter.
The recent troubles in Kurram began as sectarian violence but analysts and local sources say the situation was hijacked by Taliban fighters who use the tribal areas to launch attacks against NATO in Afghanistan.
"Local sectarian groups do not have enough resources to block the road," says Ali. "It is purely a militant issue now."
The Shia are a slight majority in Kurram Agency, an area of about 500,000 residents. During the Afghan Jihad, when the tribal regions were used by the CIA as the training grounds for anti-Soviet fighters, the region saw an insurgence of Sunni hardliners.
"There have been sectarian tensions between Sunni and Shia in Kurram for decades," says Reza Jan, Pakistan Team Lead at the American Enterprise Institute. "But in the past, Sunni-Shia clashes were usually minor. Clashes, when they did occur, were resolved fairly quickly by local leaders and authorities."
After the fall of the Taliban government in Kabul, and Pakistan's crackdown on radical elements in Punjab, the tribal areas became the hub of both Pakistani and Afghan insurgents. But many among the armed groups consider Kurram's Shia tribes - who refused to shelter fighters - as apostates. And Kurram's Shia paid a heavy price as a result.
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2011/06/2011622182410260797.html
This isn't new and security agencies failure to protect these people, in the past isn't exactly a big secret. Every Citizen of the state has the right to ask for security not just the VIP and rest have to fend for themselves
