Peshawar on front line of country’s war against terrorism

Source: Daily times

daily times

* 221 killed, 500 injured in blasts in one month
* Hospitals overwhelmed with wounded from explosions
* School principal says guards asked ‘not to trust anyone’

PESHAWAR: The provincial capital is on the front line of the country’s war against terrorism.

In October, the Pakistan Army launched its most concentrated offensive yet in South Waziristan against the tribal strongholds of some of the country’s most ruthless terrorists.

The government said on Saturday the offensive was winding down, although operations in the area were continuing.

The terrorists, in turn, are fighting back with a vicious bombing campaign. They are striking with frightening regularity anywhere and everywhere in the city.

That leaves the people of Peshawar caught in between, afraid, fed up and mistrustful of all sides, the terrorists, the army and the US, which is seen as supporting the push against militants.

Overwhelmed: The city’s hospitals are overwhelmed with wounded from explosions that take place nearly every day. Dozens of police barricades, meant to catch suicide bombers, slow the chaotic traffic on bigger roads to a crawl. Schools are also shut periodically because of security fears.

Ten-year-old Kainat calls her hometown scary and telephones her friends all the time now.

“I am just worried about everyone,” she said. “I talk to them all the time, and I ask, ‘how is your mother and your father and is everyone safe?’ I just want to know that everyone is all right,” she added.

The school where Kainat goes is hidden behind a 10-foot-high metal gate with two guards watching it. One guard checks the small backpacks of the children every morning with a metal detector. The Taliban have routinely attacked schools, particularly ones attended by girls.

The school principal and owner, Sultan Hussain, said he had trained his guards to trust no one. “I have told them, don’t believe anyone, doubt everyone, search everyone,” he said.

The strict security measures are a stark change from just a few months ago, when people were rarely stopped from entering the school compound.

“We even discourage parents from coming to the school,” Hussain said, adding, “The fewer adults seeking access the better. The situation here is very bad.”

Peshawar has always been on the front lines because of its location, sprawled out at the foot of the Khyber Pass next to Afghanistan. It has been raided by the likes of Genghis Khan, Tamerlain and Alexander the Great, and writer Rudyard Kipling once described it as a place of tribesmen, smugglers and horsemen.

The Pakistan Army launched its offensive in South Waziristan on October 17. Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan leader Hakeemullah Mehsud vowed to exact his revenge with suicide attacks.

In one month in Peshawar, 221 people have been killed and nearly 500 wounded in bombings. A single truck bomb in a market that sells mostly women’s clothes and children’s toys killed more than 100. The latest attack was on Monday when a bomb went off outside the courthouse in Peshawar, killing 10 people.

Yet in the marketplaces, people wonder at who is behind the bombing campaign. More often than not, their answer is not the terrorists. Most often it is a “foreign hand”, which usually refers to the US.

At the entrance to Peshawar’s Saddar Street, a congested shopping area where most government and army buildings are located, steel yellow striped barricades force vehicles to stop. Cyclists are patted down, and four policemen are armed with AK-47 assault rifles.

They have no dogs trained to sniff out explosives, and the authorities have run out of bullet-proof vests.

“But we are not afraid,” said the head constable, Sifatullah Khan. “We are Pukhtuns. We are standing here without anything showing the terrorists that we are not afraid of them. And if a suicide bomber explodes himself here, then a bullet-proof vest won’t save you,” he added.

Sifatullah said the suicide bombers were becoming more sophisticated, hiding their explosives in the door panels of their vehicles.

“Of course we are worried about the situation here. But if I could save the whole of Saddar from a suicide bomber, then it is a sacrifice I would make,” he said.

In the Lady Reading Hospital, Peshawar’s oldest and largest hospital, the war is ever-present. In the ward reserved for blast victims, there is a consensus among the wounded that the army should stop its assault on the terrorists to bring peace to their city.

Dr Muslim Khan, the deputy head of the emergency department, said the relentless attacks and steady stream of wounded and dead were taking a psychological toll on his doctors. ap