The News, Mushtaq Yusufzai, Monday, May 11, 2009
Eleven-year-old Shaista from Mingora town in Swat valley tells a heartrending tale of the catastrophe that struck her house on a fateful Thursday night when she lost her mother, sisters and a brother.
Lying on a bed in an ill-equipped health centre in Mardan, Shaista told your correspondent on Saturday that she was lucky to have survived after a mortar shell, reportedly fired by the security forces, exploded in the courtyard of her small house. She sustained severe injuries to her legs.
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Her father is perhaps still unaware of the doom that fell upon his family as Shaista is still looked after by the people she never met before.The traumatised Shaista said the mortar shell struck a room she was asleep in. Short of breath, Shaista said her mother, two sisters and a brother were killed in the incident - plunging her into a lifelong trauma.
According to her doctor, Shaista seems to lose her memory occasionally and she sometimes starts crying, apparently because of the shock she has suffered.Children seem to be the worst sufferers among the estimated one million people displaced by the ongoing fighting between the armed forces and Taliban militants in the northern districts of Buner and Swat.
Shaista said her father was worried about her family’s safety when the military launched its operation against the Swat Taliban. The ill-fated family was to leave their home as Shaista’s father had gone to Dargai town to find a house before leaving Mingora.
“My father went to Dargai on Thursday and said he would shift us to a safer place on Friday,” she added, but the tragedy struck the family. She said her neighbours recovered the bodies of her mother, sisters and brother from the rubble and then took her to the hospital in the morning.
Ahmad Yar, a Daggar villager, taking care of his critically injured mother in the same ward of the hospital, said he had decided to take Shaista to his home once she was discharged. He said the neighbours, who had taken her to the hospital, had left so that they could shift their own families to safer areas.
In the same hospital, more than a dozen people had been admitted from Buner district with multiple injuries that they had suffered in artillery shelling by the security forces.
“We don’t know what’s our crime that prompted our own armed forces to target us. On the one hand, the government is asking us to vacate our houses, while on the other they imposed curfew and blocked all roads in Buner,” complained Sher Badshah from Suwarai village. He said thousands of people were still trapped in Buner and could not come out due to curfew and blockade of roads.
Badshah complained that he was taking his family to Mardan when an artillery shell hit one of the trucks, killing five members of his family and injuring three others, including his aged father. “Now, tell me what crime did we commit?” his son questioned.
He alleged the troops had been targeting innocent people fleeing to safer places, instead of eliminating the militants.He claimed that several people travelling to safer places via mountainous routes had been killed by indiscriminate shelling and their bodies were still lying there.
Shams-ul-Qamar narrated his own tale of woe. He said he lost his eldest son in the crossfire between Taliban and security forces.“Qamar had just passed his matriculation examination and was seeking admission in a college,” he said.
But his family’s tragedy started months ago - when Pakistani troops set up a security post close to his house.
“Being Pakhtuns, it’s our tradition to serve guests with whatever is available at home,” Qamar said, referring to a tribal group in Pakistan’s North-West Frontier Province. “We were poor people but tried to serve the guest soldiers sometime with milk, tea and drinking water.”
However, when the troops vacated their roadside post under a peace deal that was struck between the government and Taliban in February, the militants decided to “settle a score” with Qamar and his family.
“They entered our home and opened fire, killing my sister Zar Bibi, my niece Farzana, my
50-year-old sister-in-law Zareena, and kidnapping my nephew for helping the army troops. The Taliban also took (my nephew’s) 88 model Toyota car. They later released him on pay-
ment of Rs100,000,” Qamar sobbed.
He said the government had done nothing for him since he lost four of his family members for supporting the troops.“I don’t know what kind of people these Taliban are - Pakhtuns never target women and children,” he said.
A noted psychiatrist, Prof Dr Syed Mohammad Sultan, said majority of the children from the militancy-plagued zone were suffering from severe psychological disorders like acute trauma reaction (ATR) and post-traumatic stress and disorder (PTSD). He said the violence badly affected children and developed in them serious pathological grief and acute phobic anxiety, and might cause them behavioural problems in future.
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