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Displaced persons have put the Pakistani President in a dock. General Pervez Musharraf’s recent statement was that “there is freedom struggle and not terrorism” but facts point to something else.
Take the instance of Nazir Begum’s response to a question from this paper. Begum (70), of Rajouri and now in a migrant camp in Belicharana, whose son Rashid was also killed by the militants said, “Militants didn’t just kill my son, but also snatched our lone bread-winner. If they (militants) are true jehadis, they should have thought of these toddlers,” she said, pointing towards her grandchildren.
The harsh realities of what is called as “fight for freedom struggle” by Musharraf can be realised while going through the daily death count. During the past 12 years of militancy, 12500 civilians have fallen victims to militants bullets or improvised explosive device (IED) blasts. Which include 600 women and 110 children, below the age of 10 years.
More than 1,000 people including women were abducted and were brutally tortured before killing them by hacking them to death or beheading them. The militants have also committed 60 massacres. Not to talk of the minority community, the trigger-happy militants have not even spared their Muslim brethren, for whose cause their mentors across the border project them to be fighting for.
A resident of Kot Dharra, Rajouri Nazir Begum is a victim of ongoing violence in the state. Begum leaves her dhok (temporary shelter) early morning, treks more than three km to reach the houses where she works as a maid-servant. Back home are her paralysed husband, Hakim Din, ailing daughter-in-law and two children.
From her meagre income, Begum can barely manage a meal once a day for them. “At times, I am unable to earn anything. Those are the days when I hide my face from my grandsons. They expect me to turn up with eatables. On days when I get nothing, they drink water and fall asleep,” says Begum. Begum’s son Mohammad Rashid was gunned down by the militants. Ras-hid’s fault: he was spotted talking to security forte personnel who had visited the work-shop where Rashid worked. Many like Begum, who had to face the wrath of militants in all these turbulent years, took Musharraf’s recent statement with a pinch of salt. The question that is haunting everybody is whose jehad are the militants fighting?
There is hardly any family in Belicharana’s
makeshift camp here, who have not lost their loved ones to militants bullets.
The commonality in all these, killings was that each target of theirs was
branded as mukhbir (informers).
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