Stop poking nose..???

Province sans frontiers

By Murtaza Razvi

A WEEK before the election, a studied calm hung in the cold air of Peshawar. Banners and buntings of the Awami National Party and the People’s Party adorned the roads, with little on-the-ground activity in terms of corner meetings or enthusiastic youngsters rallying out. The absence of security personnel in public places meant that all was perhaps well in the Frontier capital, if not in areas close by.

Much has changed yet again in this ancient city over the last few years. A majority of Afghan refugees have repatriated to their country along with their obvious signs and symbols — public transport vehicles and the sprawling refugee camp site along University Road being the most conspicuous. A signboard posted every few hundred yards warns encroachers that the land vacated is the army’s property and trespassers will be prosecuted. The warning is well heeded except by stray animals and the odd scavenger going though heaps of garbage that is dumped between the road and the ghost town and ruins of the mud-lined refugee camp.

Those selling coffins, for some odd reason, seem to be doing brisk business. You see clusters of coffins standing along the roadside with their manufacturer’s contact numbers pasted on them. They go for upwards of Rs2,000 a piece and look quite uncanny, if not altogether outlandish. Traditional body-carrying charpoys too are a common sight as they share the space with the coffins. The death rate must have gone up, somehow. You wonder.

The Afghan border is now more porous than ever before in recent years. People tell you that since the return home of the refugees, it’s nearly a free, unobstructed ride across Torkham.

“We speak the same language; have relatives on both sides so we come and go,” explains a teenager selling the coffins.

Many like to bury their dead in Afghanistan, in their ancestral graveyards there. This winter has been a particularly harsh one, full of frostbites. The Khyber Pass is snowbound. Beyond Torkham, the cold gets ever so much more biting. That perhaps explains the sudden appearance of the coffins. Even the dead need some comfort on their way to eternal rest. Clearly, the stately ritual is not for ordinary mortals who live on less than Rs2,000 as their monthly kitchen expenses.

In the Karkhana Bazaar along the road to the border, surplus Afghan transit-trade merchandise of all categories, including the contraband, competes with goods brought over for sale from beyond Afghanistan. The prices are ridiculously affordable. Bulk buyers from Punjab enjoying a good rapport with the customs staff at the Attock bridge continue to make hay. Those taking the marvellous new motorway snaking its way through the Swabi meadow plains along the Kabul River are even luckier. The toll tax paid to drive into Punjab is the only levy they have to contend with.

Back in Peshawar, the cab is stopped near the Governor House. A missing security zone sticker is required to be posted on the windscreen to navigate through this stretch of the road. The driver, however, has his way with the levy guard, and he’s let through “this once”, he says, “because we speak the same language”. The phrase is repeated. On interpretation you know that it’s the word of honour given by a Pathan to another that is respected. There is no suspicion of a breach here; no rude awakenings, or the practice would have been long abandoned. The pristine purity of the word is preserved; the sanctity holds.

“Come to Kabul with me. I go all the time with friends. No passport, no papers required,” a university professor from Khyber Agency makes the generous offer, repeating the same-language adage. “You must come psyched up for it next time around. I’ll take you there myself,” he insists.

Only a couple of days later the Pakistani ambassador to Kabul goes missing while climbing up the snow-covered Khyber Pass on his way back to Kabul.

“We go to the Taliban and ask them what we can do for them for keeping the peace, and they always oblige. That’s because we speak to them, not at them. When it comes to bullets, that’s tricky business, all right. Why go there if you can achieve the results you want without losing lives?” asks a serving officer. “All they (higher-ups) want is a report of ‘all correct’, so why should I risk my life?”

“And for what?” asks a retired officer.

“When guns, the free rein of power over certain areas and a bit of respect are all they demand for keeping the peace, why quarrel?” he argues.

“And those more or less are our orders,” confirms the serving fellow.

Then what’s the whole hullabaloo about, you wonder.

“We told you what we’re privy to. High officials may know the bigger picture, if there is one, which I doubt,” comes the straightforward answer.

Regular drills, like daily physical training and inspection trips to schools, et al, are not the virtual norm anymore though on paper these activities do take place. Even periodic medical check-ups have a high proxy attendance rate, as long as your commanding officer acquiesces, they say.

“Flattery is the general rule to follow, which I do quite well, I assure you,” confides another officer, who refuses to talk about politics. “There’s not much here. In Balochistan, I could get you picked up just by saying that your last name was Marri or Bugti, and you’d be gone for at least six months. None of this in the Frontier. At least not to my knowledge,” he vows.

Back in the city, the two hot favourites are the ANP and the PPP-Bhutto as opposed to the Sherpao faction, you’re told. Mr Asfandyar Wali, Mr Afrasaib Khattak, Mr Sherpao, the Arbabs, the Bilours and anyone worth the name are confined to the safe environs of their homes, with target killings of even second/third tier leaders in recent weeks. A pall of gloom hangs over the election campaigns.

Even then, the APDM’s election boycott call does not find much resonance. The seemingly religious-minded say they would vote. For whom? Many have yet to decide.What’s refreshing is that there are no conspiracy theories doing the rounds, which is not the case elsewhere in the country. Many in the Frontier believe that elections may be rigged.

To what extent, they do not speculate, while few say that with the JI out of the fray, they do not expect rigging. Swat, the troubled tribal areas and the terrorists’ backlash remain a worry. Overall, that the Frontier is returning to being an ANP-PPP battleground, with the JUI holding firm in the southern parts of the province and the PML-N showing influence in the Hazara belt, seems to be the consensus.

The diminishing trend since the 1980s of looking westward to Afghanistan seems to be returning, not least because they speak the same language, though Pashtun nationalism is making a steady comeback. The emerging economic pull for those qualified in their fields and not having the opportunity of gainful employment in Pakistan is the real reason.

Unemployment and huge pockets of utter poverty amidst the new motorway and affluent Hyatabads in the making, and not the lack of religious fervour, are what bother the Frontier — much like the rest of the country.

daily dawn feb 16, 2008