Unsung heroes of Swat

In other valleys, other stories

SYED IRFAN ASHRAF

It was November 2007. Sitting cross-legged in a dingy room adjacent to Fazlullah’s Imam Dheri seminary, Sirajuddin had his lap full of rank insignias and nameplates, which they had stripped off the soldiers’ uniform. The former spokesman of the Swat Taliban was browsing through a green pocket diary recovered from one of the soldiers who had fallen while fighting the insurgency in the difficult terrains of Shangla. Then he called the soldier’s father from his cell phone and told him to collect his body. Sirajuddin did not stop there. “Parents should not send their sons to fight the Taliban,” he told the aggrieved father without remorse, “or they will meet the same fate as yours.”

The response from the other side surprised him. “I want my three younger sons to embrace martyrdom like their elder brother.” The militant commander was speechless. He switched off his cell phone, seeming apologetic. “How ignorant are these people,” he said. “They fight against the Taliban and believe their dead are martyrs.” Deep down, he was shaken. Throughout his interview with the writer about the aggression of Swat Taliban in the adjacent Shangla district, the Taliban spokesman was visibly disoriented.

This is one of the many cases in which soldiers, policemen, locals and their families showed an unflinching commitment to fight a war that sealed the fate of the valley about four years ago. More than 200 soldiers and about 12,000 civilians died in the insurgency that began in October 2007. Initially, the militants targeted the police as part of a strategy to bring down the local administration. Policemen were decapitated and their heads were paraded in the streets.

Irshad Khan was among the first few of those policemen. He was publicly beheaded in Matta Square by his own cousin and dreaded Taliban commander Khan Khitab. His head was paraded in the streets of Koza Bandai. In line with the Pashtun tradition, his father Khurshid Khan must have thought of revenge. But just before the February 2009 peace accord, he said, “I will forgive my son’s blood if it can help bring peace to Swat.”

In 2008, when death and destruction ruled the troubled valley, a number of policemen refused to serve. Some even published their resignations in local newspapers only to curry favor with the Taliban. Check posts and police stations in the outskirts of Mingora had been blown up and militants continued their witch-hunt of the left over servicemen.

To dampen the police morale further, they planned to bomb Swat Police Lines. A teenaged suicide bomber managed to enter the establishment one evening when scores of policemen had gathered for routine counting. But the brave Sub-Inspector Tor Gul got hold of him. “Don’t come near me,” he shouted to his colleagues. “He is a suicide bomber.” The attacker blew himself up before other policemen could fire at him. Tor Gul died, but he managed to save the lives of his colleagues.

The Taliban did not spare a single trick from their terror manual to subdue the Swati people, but the people were undeterred. Residents of Koz Shawer, 10 kilometers West of Matta, would long remember a father, a son and a grandmother who fought the Taliban to the last drop of their blood. Over 300 armed militants had laid siege to the house of Abdul Kabir Khan after he and his son Ali Khan killed a militant who had attacked them on their way home. For 24 long hours, they fought a pitched battle, killing many of the attacking Taliban. Ali Khan’s wife loaded magazines in their guns the whole night, while also making calls to police stations, the army media cell in Mingora, and family and friends in Swat and abroad. By late afternoon the next day, they had run out of ammunition. The wounds on her fingers may have healed, but she will nurse the pain of losing her husband, mother and father in law as long as she lives. Many in Swat still feel guilty for not being able to respond to her SOS calls. A few months later, when she was brought to a hospital in Peshawar, local journalists including this scribe rushed to the ward to interview her, but she had left.

In another tragic incident in Swat, notorious Taliban commander Ibni Amin killed his cousins Behramand Khan and Ayub Khan and other notables of Gulerai village 15 kilometers north of Matta, after a report in a local newspaper. A young religious leader Pir Samiullah had mobilized his followers against the Taliban. The report in the Swat-based Urdu daily said the people of Gulerai had joined hands with Pir Samiullah’s anti-Taliban militia. Ibni Amin sent a Jirga to a mosque in Gulerai where the villagers had gathered unarmed as a goodwill gesture. A second party of Taliban, led by Ibni Amin himself, barged into the mosque and killed more than 20 villagers, dragging them out in pairs. It is said that men were asked to join the Taliban at gunpoint, but they all preferred to die. Not one of them sought mercy from the Taliban.

Years later, the people of Swat are celebrating their freedom with festivals and funfairs. While some of them have won international acclaim for their unflinching commitment to peace, we must not forget that there are many other unsung heroes who also deserve to be remembered. They showed unmatched bravery to help liberate the valley from the dark forces that wanted to impose militant tribalism on the seven million people of Malakand Agency. Many of these unsung heroes are not alive to see their efforts bearing fruit, but we can make them part of the celebrations by remembering them in our prayers.