Afghan widows and orphans in Pakistan have few livelihood options, but a women’s charity is teaching them basic embroidery and sewing to help them start home-based businesses. Credit: Najibullah Musafer/Killid

By Ashfaq Yusufzai
PESHAWAR, Pakistan, Jan 12 2015 (IPS)

At 46, Naseema Nashad is starting her life over, not out of choice but out of necessity. The Afghan woman was just 25 years old when Taliban militants stormed Kabul and her family was forced to flee to neighbouring Pakistan to escape what they knew would be a brutal regime.

“My father stayed back to run his small business there and he would send us money on a monthly basis,” she told IPS. “We used it to feed our seven-member family, and pay rent on our house in Peshawar [capital of Pakistan’s northern Khyber Pakhtunkwa province].”

“The worst victims of the three-decade-long conflict are women, who have lost their fathers, husbands and male family members [and] are finding it hard to earn a living." -- Ahmed Rasool, professor of international relations at Kabul University
But in 1999, “for no reason” she says, the Taliban killed Nashad’s father. Since then, it has been a daily struggle for the family to survive. Aged 12, 14 and 15, her three brothers quickly found work in local hotels, though they were paid paltry salaries for their labour.

Nashad, on the other hand, could never land anything but odd jobs, which barely gave her enough to survive. What she needed was something fulltime, ideally work she could do from home, that would bring her a regular income.

It was a pipe dream at first, but thanks to the efforts of a vocational centre established by the Afghan Women Organisation, an NGO based in this border city, she is close to making it a reality.

“Now, I have learnt stitching and embroidery and will open a home-based shop very soon. Some of the women who have previously been trained at the centre are helping me,” she added.

She is one of thousands of women, all from war-affected families, who have acquired embroidery and sewing skills over the past five years.

Each woman has her own unique story. Fourteen-year-old Gul Pari, for instance, migrated to Peshawar from Afghanistan seven years ago. As a daily wage-labourer, her father could scarcely make ends meet. There was little choice but for his young daughters to go out in search of work.

Today, Gul and her younger sister Jamila are the owners of a small home-based business, where they take on clients who need garments stitched or altered. They still in a simple mud hut, but at least they now make enough money to comfortably feed the entire family.

Safoora Stanikzai, who heads the Afghan Women Organisation, says she has imparted skills to about 4,000 women since establishing the centre in 2010.

“A majority of the trained women were either widows or orphaned children who had lost their male family members in Afghanistan and were facing severe economic problems here,” Stanikzai tells IPS.

The organisation lacks space and sufficient resources but soldiers on with the little it has. After the women complete their training, they even receive a sewing machine from the centre to facilitate home-based enterprises.

Stanikzai also recruits women found begging on the streets and in marketplaces, and offers them the chance to start their lives afresh – a rare opportunity in this war-torn region, where civilians are often caught between militants and the military, and a massive number of internally displaced persons (IDPs) jostle for space with a resident population already battling a scarcity of homes, jobs and food.

Female Afghan refugees face double-dependency

According to the U.N. Refugee Agency, Pakistan is home to 1.6 million ‘legal’ Afghan residents, while an estimated two to three million undocumented refugees are also believed to have crossed the 2,700-km-long border since the 1979 Soviet invasion.

Passing easily through various unguarded or unchecked entry points in the mountains that form a rocky border between the two nations, Afghans fleeing the war were once welcomed by their brethren in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) and what was formerly known as the North-West Frontier Province, now called KP.

But when the U.S.-invasion of Afghanistan pushed former Taliban militants into the mountains, leading to a rise in armed groups operating with impunity in the tribal belt, the hand of friendship was snatched away and many Afghans now live on the margins, blamed for the rise in militancy and soaring crime in Pakistan’s northern regions.

According to Ahmed Rasool, a professor of international relations at Kabul University, poverty-stricken Afghan refugees have no choice but to remain in Pakistan since they have little to no economic opportunity back home.

“The worst victims of the three-decade-long conflict are women, who have lost their fathers, husbands and male family members [and] are finding it hard to earn a living,” he told IPS.

Some of these widows and orphans are new arrivals, joining the wave that fled Afghanistan in 2001. Others have lived here much longer, and consider Pakistan their home.

But aid that was once was abundant has dwindled. International NGOs and aid agencies followed closely on the heels of departing foreign troops, leaving Afghan refugees in the lurch.

Barely able to meet the needs of its own impoverished population in the north, the Pakistan government has offered little assistance to visitors who are now being told they have outstayed their welcome.

So initiatives like Stanikzai’s vocational centre represent a welcome oasis in an increasingly hostile desert.

Some Afghan women earn as much as 150 dollars per month by altering or stitching women’s garments. Credit: Ashfaq Yusufzai/IPS

Women like 49-year-old Shamin Ara, who received training at the centre five years ago, is just one of the organisation’s many success stories.

She arrived in Pakistan in 1992, and lost her father to tuberculosis six years ago. His death left the family no choice but to seek alms from their rich relatives, she tells IPS.

Now she earns about 150 dollars a month by practicing the skills she learned at the centre. It is a decent wage in a country where the average annual income is 1,250 dollars.

She says she has not yet been able to find a husband, since she still lives in abject poverty. But at least now she can feed her four siblings, and harbours dreams of expanding her business further.

Already she has helped five other Afghan women set up their own shops, and hopes to do more for those like herself, who just need a helping hand.

Edited by Kanya D’Almeida

Afghan refugees in Pakistan number some three million. Most crossed the border in 1979 during the Soviet invasion and have lived in Pakistan for generations. Credit: Ashfaq Yusufzai/IPS

By Ashfaq Yusufzai
PESHAWAR, Pakistan, Jan 1 2015 (IPS)

They number between two and three million; some have lived in makeshift shelters for just a few months, while others have roots that stretch much further back into history. Most fled to escape war, others simply ran away from joblessness.

Whatever their reasons for being here, Afghan refugees in Pakistan all now face a similar plight: of being caught up in the dragnet that is sweeping through the country with the stated goal of removing ‘illegal’ residents from this South Asian nation of 180 million people.

According to the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR), some 1.6 million Afghans are legally residing in Pakistan, having been granted proof of registration (PoR) by the U.N. body. Twice that number is believed to be unlawfully dwelling here, primarily in the northern, tribal belt that borders Afghanistan.

“Forced repatriation will expose us to many problems." -- Gul Jamal, an elderly Afghan refugee in Peshawar, Pakistan
Most arrived during the Soviet invasion of 1979, the chaos of war squeezing millions of Afghans out of their embattled nation and over the mountainous border that stretches for some 2,700 km along rocky terrain.

The Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) and what was then known as the North-West Frontier Province, now called Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP), offered an easy point of assimilation, the shared language of Pashto bridging the divide between ethnic Pashtun Afghans and the majority Punjabi population.

But what began as a warm welcome has turned progressively sour over the decades, as Afghans are increasingly blamed for rising crime, unemployment and persistent militancy in the region.

The Dec. 16 terrorist attack on a school in the KP’s capital Peshawar – which killed 132 children – has only added fuel to a fiery debate on the status of Afghan refugees, who are accused of swelling the ranks of the Pakistani Taliban and affiliated militant groups operating with impunity in the tribal areas.

Three days after the massacre, on Dec. 19, KP Chief Minister Pervez Khattak convened an emergency cabinet meeting to demand the immediate removal of all Afghan refugees, claiming that the grisly attack on the Army Public School was planned in Afghanistan.

His call for repatriation joined a chorus that has been growing steadily louder in northern Pakistan as the average citizen struggles to come to terms with an era of terrorism that has resulted in over 50,000 deaths since 2001, when the U.S. occupation of Afghanistan prompted a second wave of immigration into Pakistan.

A heated national debate eventually resulted in a decision to allow lawful Afghan residents to remain in the country until the end of 2015, at which point plans would be made for their safe return.

A previous plan, which followed on the heels of a Peshawar High Court order to repatriate Afghan refugees by the end of 2013, did not see the light of day, largely as it would have entailed over a billion dollars in international assistance.

Afghans own 10,000 of the 20,000 shops in Peshawar, capital of Pakistan’s northern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, and also run a range of informal businesses, such as street stalls where they hawk goods. Credit: Ashfaq Yusufzai/IPS

Tired of waiting for government action, however, local authorities have taken the law into their own hands by embarking on a major crackdown on Afghan refugees.

“About 80 percent of crimes in KP are committed by Afghans,” alleged KP Information Minister Mushtaq Ghani.

“They are involved in murders and kidnapping for ransom, but they disappear after committing these crimes and we cannot trace them,” he told IPS.

“Therefore we demand that those having PoR be restricted to camps, and those without [their papers] sent home,” added the official, whose province is home to an estimated one million Afghans.

Police Officer Khalid Khan says his force is arresting roughly 100 people each day. “Every house is searched,” he told IPS, adding that even those who live in “posh localities” are being investigated as possible unlawful residents.

Terror and crime are not the only problems for which Afghans are being blamed. Trade and industry experts here claim that illegal ventures established by refugee communities have destroyed local businesses.

According to Ghulam Nabi, vice president of the KP Chamber of Commerce and Industries, Afghans run 10,000 of the estimated 20,000 shops in Peshawar; but since they are not registered residents, they are not subject to the same taxes as Pakistani shop-owners.

He told IPS his department has been “urging” the federal government to repatriate Afghans so locals can continue to do their trade. He also alleged that refugees’ demand for housing has pushed rents to unaffordable prices.

Besides hosting hundreds of thousands of Afghan refugees, the KP is also saddled with scores of displaced Pakistanis, the most recent influx arriving in the midst of a government military campaign in North Waziristan Agency aimed at rooting out insurgents from their stronghold.

Abdullah Khan, a professor at the University of Peshawar, told IPS that two million displaced Pakistanis from adjacent provinces are now residing in KP, many of them in makeshift ‘tent cities’ erected in the Bannu district.

According to Khan, Afghanistan’s gradual return to democracy has paved the way for safe return for refugees. He, along with other experts and officials, see no further reason for Pakistan to continue to host such a massive international population within its borders – especially with so many domestic issues clamouring to be dealt with.

Former cricket legend Imran Khan, whose Pakistan Tehreek-e Insaf (Pakistan Movement for Justice) party rules the KP province, has also echoed the demand.

“The government issues 500 Pakistani visas to Afghans at the Torkham border [a major crossing point connecting Afghanistan’s Nangarhar province with FATA] everyday but an estimated 15,000 to 20,000 people cross the border daily,” he said on Dec. 18.

“The illegal movement takes place because we don’t have a system to track these people and their activities here,” he added.

In a bid to rectify gaps in the system, police in KP are now blocking cell phones belonging to Afghans and taking steps to regulate the movements of refugees who may be in violation of their visa status.

But many Afghan residents claim the allegations are unfounded, while those who have lived here for generations consider Pakistan their home. Others are simply afraid of what will be waiting for them if they do go back.

Gul Jamal, an Afghan elder, told IPS that while his family was eager to return, the situation back home was “extremely precarious”.

“There are no education or health facilities, and no electricity,” he claimed, adding that job opportunities too are few and far between in Afghanistan.

He hopes the Pakistan government will “take pity” on his people. “Forced repatriation will expose us to many problems,” he explained.

In an interview with IPS on Dec. 22, Federal Minister for States and Frontier Regions Abdul Qadir Baloch categorically stated that legal refugees would stay on until the end of 2015 as per the government’s agreement with UNHCR.

“The registered Afghan refugees have never been found to be involved in terrorism-related incidents in the country and they won’t be sent back against their will,” Baloch stressed.

“The government will protect legal Afghan [immigrants] against forced repatriation,” he asserted.

Edited by Kanya D’Almeida

A doctor examines a woman in an IDP camp in Bannu, a city in Pakistan’s northern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) province, where over 40,000 pregnant women are at risk due to a lack of maternal health services. Credit: Ashfaq Yusufzai/IPS

By Ashfaq Yusufzai
PESHAWAR, Pakistan, Oct 8 2014 (IPS)

Imagine traveling for almost an entire day in the blistering sun, carrying all your possessions with you. Imagine fleeing in the middle of the night as airstrikes reduce your village to rubble. Imagine arriving in a makeshift refugee camp where there is no running water, no bathrooms and hardly any food. Now imagine making that journey as a pregnant woman.

In northern Pakistan, a military campaign aimed at ridding the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) of Taliban militants has led to a humanitarian crisis for hundreds of thousands of civilians.

When the army began conducting air raids on the 11,585-square-km North Waziristan Agency on Jun. 15, residents were forced to flee – most of them on foot – to the neighbouring Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) province, where they have now taken refuge in sprawling IDP camps.

“In Pakistan, 350 women die per 100,000 live births from pregnancy-related complications. In FATA, the situation is extremely bad, with 500 women dying for every 100,000 live births. The situation warrants urgent attention.” -- Fayyaz Ali, a public health expert in Pakistan's Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province
Officials estimate the number of displaced at just over 580,000, of which half are women.

In the ancient city of Bannu, which now houses the largest number of refugees, some 40,000 pregnant women are facing up to their ultimate fear: a lack of hospitals, doctors and basic medical supplies.

For 30-year-old Tajdara Bibi, a mother of three, these fears became a reality in June, when she had to flee her home in North Waziristan and trudge the 55 km to KP along with her fellow villagers.

The journey wore her down, and by the time she was admitted to the maternity hospital in Bannu, the doctors were too late: she delivered a stillborn baby a few hours later.

Muhammad Sarwar, who attended to Bibi, told IPS that an extreme shortage of female doctors has put pregnant women on a knife’s edge.

“At least four women died of pregnancy-related complications on the way to Bannu, while 20 others had miscarriages at the hospital,” he said.

“We have only four female doctors in the whole district, who are required to provide treatment to all the women,” he added.

With thousands of women now clamouring for care, the province’s limited healthcare services are falling short, sometimes with disastrous consequences.

Gul Rehman, a 44-year-old shopkeeper, is still reeling from a recent tragedy. He told IPS his wife went into labour prematurely during the arduous journey to Bannu.

“We could not find transport so we had to walk. When we finally reached the hospital, we were kept waiting… there were no doctors readily available.

“After 10 hours, they finally operated on my wife – but the baby was already dead,” he explained. Aside from the trauma of losing their child, the couple is also struggling to cope with the wife’s health condition, which has deteriorated rapidly after the stillbirth.

According to Fawad Khan, Health Cluster and Emergency Coordinator for the World Health Organisation (WHO) in Pakistan, existing health facilities are not equipped to deal with the wave of arrivals from North Waziristan.

The WHO is currently assisting the KP health department to “prevent unnecessary deaths”, the official told IPS, adding that 73 percent of displaced women and children in Bannu are in “desperate need of care.”

Some 30 percent of pregnant women among IDPs are at risk of delivery-related complications, a situation that could easily be addressed by upgrading existing facilities. There is also an urgent need for gynaecologists to provide antenatal and postnatal care, he stated.

Twelve health centres have already been established to tackle malnutrition among women and children in the camps. Without proper nourishment, officials fear pregnant women will face additional complications during birth, and low birth-weight among newborns could create additional challenges for health workers.

“Four percent of the total displaced women are pregnant and need immediate attention,” Abdul Waheed, KP’s director-general of health, told IPS, adding that some 20 basic health units have already been strengthened to take on those most in need.

Still, the crisis has reached proportions that even seasoned officials are scarcely able to comprehend. Waheed explained that Bannu has never before had to host such a large population of homeless people, and is struggling to cope.

Prior to the recent wave of refugees from North Waziristan, the KP province had already welcomed over 1.5 million people from FATA. This latest influx brings the number of displaced since 2001 to over 2.5 million.

“We are sending doctors from teaching hospitals in Peshawar [capital of KP] on a rotational basis to meet the situation,” he asserted.

The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and the U.N. Population Fund (UNFPA) have joined the WHO in supporting the Pakistan government’s push for improved health services. Some 65 doctors from the Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences (PIMS) in Islamabad have joined NGO workers in Bannu to provide urgent care.

Part of the problem, according to Ali Ahmed, KP’s focal person for IDPs, is that few medical professionals are keen to take up posts in the militancy-infested region. For years the Taliban have operated with impunity in these federal areas, hiding out along the mountainous border with Afghanistan that stretches for some 2,400 km.

The military’s counter-insurgency programme was launched in a bid to finally wipe out extremist elements that fled Afghanistan during the U.S. invasion in 2001 and took root along the porous border.

But until the region regains a sense of normalcy, it will be hard to lure professionals here, officials say. Despite being offered lucrative packages, doctors have refused to take up posts, even temporarily, in Bannu.

The government is looking to fill this gap by appointing 10 doctors, including five female doctors, to the newly renovated Women and Children Hospital, which remains understaffed and ill equipped.

The city’s other two category ‘B’ hospitals, the Khalifa Gul Nawaz Teaching Hospital (KGTH) and the District Headquarters Teaching Hospital, suffer similar setbacks, while the arrival of the IDPs has more than tripled the number of patients demanding services, Ahmed said.

Three rural health centres in close proximity to the refugee camps, as well as 34 basic health units, have received an injection of funds and resources, and 20 assistant nutritional officers have been deployed to cater to the needs of 41 percent of affected children, he told IPS.

But far greater efforts will be needed to tackle the crisis, which is compounding an already bleak picture of maternal health in Pakistan.

Fayyaz Ali, a public health expert here in KP, told IPS, “In Pakistan, 350 women die per 100,000 live births from pregnancy-related complications. In FATA, the situation is extremely bad, with 500 dying for every 100,000 live births. The situation warrants urgent attention.”

Edited by Kanya D’Almeida

Employment opportunities for women in Pakistan’s northern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province are limited, due to a prevailing cultural attitude of male dominance. Credit: Ashfaq Yusufzai/IPS

By Ashfaq Yusufzai
PESHAWAR, Pakistan, Sep 25 2014 (IPS)

Saleema Bibi graduated from medical school 15 years ago – but to this day, the 40-year-old resident of Peshawar, capital of Pakistan’s northern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) province, has never been able to practice as a professional.

“I wanted to get a government job, but my family wanted me to get married instead,” Bibi tells IPS. Now she is a housewife, with “strict in-laws” who are opposed to the idea of women working.

“I know the province is short of female doctors,” she adds. “And the salaries and other benefits for people in the medical profession are lucrative, but social taboos have hampered women’s desire to find jobs.”

"Social taboos have hampered women’s desire to find jobs.” -- Saleema Bibi, a medical school graduate.
According to the International Labour Organisation (ILO), gender disparities in labour force participation rates are severe in Pakistan, with male employment approaching 80 percent compared to a female employment rate of less than 20 percent between 2009 and 2012.

In the country’s northern, tribal belt, the situation is even worse, with religious mores keeping women confined to the home, and unable to stray beyond the traditional roles of wife, mother, and housekeeper.

What Saleema Bibi discovered in her late-20s was something most women who dream of a career will eventually encounter: endless hurdles to equal participation in the economy.

For instance, the health sector in KP, which has a population of 22 million people, employs just 40,000 women, while maintaining a male labour force of some 700,000, according to Abdul Basit, a public health specialist based in Peshawar.

He says the “shortage of women employees in the health sector is [detrimental] to the female population” and is the “result of male dominance and an environment shaped by the belief that women should stay at home instead of venturing out in public.”

Even though one-fifth of the country’s doctors are female, few of them are engaged in paid work. Hundreds of female students are enrolled in the public sector’s medical colleges, but KP only has 600 female doctors, compared to 6,000 male doctors, Noorul Iman, a professor of medicine at the Khyber Medical College in Peshawar, tells IPS.

Experts also say the proportion of women workers occupying white-collar jobs is very limited, since even educated women are discouraged from entering the public service.

According to the Pakistan Economic Survey for 2012-2013, women have traditionally populated the informal sector, taking up jobs as domestic workers and other low-paid, daily-wage professions as cooks or cleaners, where affluent families typically pay them paltry sums of money.

In contrast, their share of professional clerical and administrative posts has been less than two percent.

Research indicates that only 19 percent of working women had jobs in the government sector, while the economic survey reports that some 200,000 women in KP were actively seeking jobs in the 2010-2011 period.

The most popular jobs were found to be in medicine, banking, law, engineering and especially education.

“Because women can work in all-girls’ schools, without interacting with male students or colleagues, their families allow them to take up these posts,” Pervez Khan, KP’s deputy director of education, tells IPS, adding that the female-only environment provided by gender-segregated schools explains why women are attracted to the profession of teaching.

The provision of three months’ paid leave, as well as 40 days of maternity leave is yet another incentive to enter the education sector, he states.

Still, the disparity between men and women is high. Although KP has a total of 119,274 teachers, only 41,102 are female.

The manufacturing sector does not fair any better. Muhammad Mushtaq, a leading industrialist in the province, says only three percent of the workforce in 200 industrial units around KP is comprised of women.

“Many people do not want women to mix with men in offices, and prefer for them to stay away from public places,” he tells IPS. This is a particularly disheartening reality in light of the fact that the number of girls in Pakistani universities, including in the northern regions, is almost equal to that of boys; despite their competitive qualifications, however, women are marginalised.

Mushtaq also believes that sexual harassment of women in their workplaces conspires with other forces to keep women from the payroll. About 11 percent of working women reported incidents of sexual harassment in the workplace, according to a 2006 study by the Peshawar-based Women’s Development Organisation.

“The research, conducted on women working in multinational companies, banks, government-owned departments, schools and private agencies, found a prevailing sense of insecurity,” says Shakira Ali, a social worker with the organisation.

Faced with mounting poverty in a country where 55 percent of the population of about 182 million earn below two dollars a day, while a full 43 percent earn between two and six dollars daily, many women are growing desperate for work, taking up positions in garment and food processing units, or entering the manufacturing sector where their embroidery skills are in high demand.

But this too, experts say, is predominantly temporary, contractual employment.

There is a kind of vicious cycle in which a lack of experience results in inadequate skills, which in turn fuels unemployment among women.

The situation is made worse by a nationwide female literacy rate of just 33 percent. While the female primary school enrollment rate is 70 percent, that number falls to just 33 percent for secondary-level education.

Muhammad Darwaish at the KP Employment Exchange Department says that only those women who head their households – either due to the death or debilitation of their husbands – are free to actively seek employment.

They too, however, fall victim to low wages and informal working conditions.

KP Information Minister Shah Farman tells IPS the government is committed to creating a safe working environment for women, which is free of harassment, abuse and intimidation with a view toward fulfillment of their right to work with dignity.

“We are bringing in a law on the principles of equal opportunity for men and women and their right to earn a livelihood without fear of discrimination,” he asserts.

Farman claims the KP government has launched a 10-million-dollar interest-free microcredit programme for women to enable them to start their own businesses.

“The programme, started in December 2013, seeks to reduce poverty through creation of self-employment and job opportunities for women,” he says.

Under the scheme, small loans worth anywhere from 1,000 to 2,000 dollars are being given to women who want to start embroidery, sewing and other home-based businesses.

It will continue for the next five years to bring women into the economic mainstream.

Pakistan is also bound to work towards gender equality by the targets set out in the internationally agreed-upon Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), which are due to expire next year.

The government has taken steps towards the goal of empowering women through a series of national-level initiatives including the establishment of crisis centres for women, the National Plan of Action, gender reform programmes and the Benazir Income Support Programme (BISP).

Still, women on average continue to earn less than men, while women only hold 60 seats compared to 241 seats occupied by men in the National Assembly.

Until women are allowed to fully contribute to the national economy, experts fear that Pakistan will not reach the goal of achieving gender equality.

Edited by Kanya D’Almeida

About 518,000 primary school students have sat idle over the last decade as a result of the Taliban's campaign against secular education. Credit: Ashfaq Yusufzai/IPS

By Ashfaq Yusufzai
PESHAWAR, Pakistan , Aug 26 2014 (IPS)

Between government efforts to wipe out insurgents from Pakistan’s northern, mountainous regions, and the Taliban’s own campaign to exercise power over the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), the real victims of this conflict are often invisible.

Walking among the rubble of their old homes, or sitting outside makeshift shelters in refugee camps, thousands of children here are growing up without an education, as schools are either bombed by militants or turned into temporary housing for the displaced.

Schools have been under attack since 2001, when members of the Taliban fleeing the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan took refuge across the border in neighbouring Pakistan and began to impose their own law over the residents of these northern regions, including issuing a ban on secular schooling on the grounds that it was “un-Islamic”.

“We don’t want to see these children without an education. They have suffered a great deal at the hands of the Taliban and cannot afford to remain [out of] school any longer." -- Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Information Minister Mushtaq Ghani
To make matters worse, a military offensive against the Taliban launched on Jun. 18 has forced close to a million civilians to flee their homes in North Waziristan Agency, one of seven districts that comprise FATA, thus disrupting the schooling of thousands of students.

Officials here say the situation is very grave, and must be urgently addressed by the proper authorities.

Over the last decade, the Taliban have damaged some 750 schools in FATA, 422 of them dedicated exclusively to girls, depriving about 50 percent of children in the region of an education, says Ishtiaqullah Khan, deputy director of the FATA directorate for education.

“We will rebuild them once the military action is complete and the Taliban are defeated,” the official tells IPS, though when this will happen remains an unanswered question.

Even prior to the latest wave of displacement, FATA recorded one of the lowest primary school enrolment rates in the country, with just 33 percent of school-aged children in classrooms.

Girls on the whole fared worse than their male counterparts, with a female enrollment rate of just 25 percent, compared to 42 percent for boys.

The period 2007-2013 saw a wave of dropouts, touching 73 percent in 2013, as the Taliban stepped up its activities in the region and families fled in terror to safer areas.

All told, some 518,000 primary school students have sat idle over the last decade, Khan said, citing government records.

In the Bannu district of the neighbouring Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) province, where most of the displaced from North Waziristan have taken refuge in sprawling IDP camps, the situation is no better.

While the local government struggles to provide basics like food, medicine and shelter, education has fallen on the backburner, and scores of children are losing hope of ever going back to school.

Ahmed Ali, a 49-year-old IDP, had hoped that his daughters, aged five, six and seven years, would be enrolled in temporary schools in the camp in Bannu, but was shattered when he discovered that this was not to be.

“I have no way of ensuring their education,” he lamented to IPS.

A rapid assessment report by the United Nations says that 98.7 percent of displaced girls and 97.9 percent of the boys are not receiving any kind of education in the camps.

This is not only exacerbating the woes of the refugees – who are also suffering from a lack of food, dehydration in 42-degree-Celsius heat, diseases caused by inadequate sanitation, and trauma – but it also threatens to upset the school system for locals in the Bannu district, officials say.

An existing primary school enrollment rate of just 37 percent (31 percent for girls and 43 percent for boys) is likely to worsen, since 80 percent of some 520,000 IDPs are occupying school buildings.

Though schools are currently closed for the summer holiday, the new term is set to begin on Sep. 1. But 45-year-old Hamidullah Wazir, a father of three whose entire family is being housed in a classroom, says few displaced are ready to vacate the premises because they have “no alternatives”.

He recognises that their refusal to leave could adversely affect education for local boys and girls in Bannu, but “until the government provides us proper shelter, we cannot move out of here,” he tells IPS.

Statistics from the department of education indicate there are 1,430 schools in Bannu, of which 48 percent are girls’ schools and 1,159 are primary schools.

Over 80 percent of these institutions are currently occupied by displaced people, of which some 22,178 (43 percent of occupants) are children.

In addition to the IDPs who have flocked here since mid-June, KP is also home to 2.1 million refugees who fled in fear of the Taliban over the last decade.

These families, too, have been struggling for years to educate their children.

“One whole generation has [missed out] on an education due to the Taliban,” Osama Ghazi, a father of four, tells IPS. A shopkeeper by trade, he says that wealthier families moved to KP years ago in search of better opportunities for their families, but not everyone found them.

“We have been asking the government to make arrangements for the education of our children but the request is yet to fell on receptive ears,” Malik Amanullah Khan, a representative of the displaced people, tells IPS.

Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Information Minister Mushtaq Ghani says the government is in the process of finding alternatives for displaced children.

“We don’t want to see these children without an education. They have suffered a great deal at the hands of the Taliban and cannot afford to remain [out of] school any longer,” he told IPS, adding that the government, in collaboration with U.N. agencies, aims to provide educational facilities in Bannu free of cost.

Edited by Kanya D’Almeida

Doctors examine internally displaced children from North Waziristan Agency at a free medical clinic in Bannu, a district of Pakistan’s northern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. Credit: Ashfaq Yusufzai/IPS

By Ashfaq Yusufzai
PESHAWAR, Pakistan, Jul 21 2014 (IPS)

Some fled on foot, others boarded trucks along with luggage, rations and cattle. Many were separated from families, or collapsed from exhaustion along the way. They don’t know where their next meal will come from, or how they will provide for their children.

In the vast refugee camps of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) province, civilians who fled the Pakistan Army’s military offensive against the Taliban in the country’s northern Waziristan Agency now walk around in a state of delirious confusion.

Medical officials here say that almost all the 870,000 internally displaced people in KP are deeply traumatised by over a decade of war in the northern provinces, where they were caught in the crossfire between government forces and militants who crossed the border from Afghanistan into Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) in 2001.

“We examined about 300,000 patients at the psychiatry wards of the KP hospital in 2013; 200,000 of them belonged to FATA. This included 145,000 women and 55,000 children." -- Muhammad Wajid, a psychiatrist at the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Teaching Hospital in Peshawar
Now, as the army conducts air raids on the 11,585-square-kilometre North Waziristan Agency in a determined bid to wipe out the Taliban, war-weary civilians are once again bearing the brunt of the conflict, forced to leave their ancestral homes and seek refuge in neighbouring KP where shelter, clean water, food and medical supplies are stretched thin.

IDPs have been streaming in since the military operation began on Jun. 15, reaching close to a million by mid-July, officials here say. So far, aid has come in the form of food rations and medical supplies for the wounded, as well as those left dehydrated by the scorching 45-degree heat.

But very little is being done to address the psychological trauma that affects nearly everyone in these camps.

“The displaced population has been living in rented houses or with relatives where they lack water, sanitation and food due to which they are facing water and food-borne ailments,” Consultant Psychiatrist Dr. Mian Iftikhar Hussain tells IPS. “But the main problems are psychological disorders, which are ‘unseen’.”

Sitting in front of the Iftikhar Psychiatric Hospital in Peshawar, capital of KP and 250 miles from the largest refugee camp in Bannu, 50-year-old Zarsheda Bibi tells IPS her entire family fled Waziristan, leaving everything behind.

Far worse than the loss of her home and possessions, she says, is the loss of her one-year-old grandson, who died on the long and arduous journey to KP.

“She doesn’t sleep properly because she dreams of her deceased grandson every night,” says Iftikhar, who is treating Bibi for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

According to Javid Khan, an official with the National Disaster Management Authority, PTSD is one of the most common ailments among the displaced.

He recounts to IPS his recent interaction with a woman in a camp in Bannu, whose husband was killed by shelling in Miramshah, the headquarters of North Waziristan.

“Now she is completely disoriented and extremely concerned about the future of her three sons and one daughter,” he says, adding that those who were uprooted are sure to develop long as well as short-term disorders as a result of prolonged stress, anxiety and fear.

Other conditions could include de-personalisation, classified by DSM-IV as a dissociative disorder in which a person experiences out-of-body feelings and severe disorientation; as well as de-realisation, an alteration in perceptions of the external world to the point that it appears unreal, or ‘dream-like’.

Experts say that people torn from their native villages, thrust into completely new surroundings and experiencing insecurity on a daily basis are highly susceptible to these types of conditions, which are associated with severe trauma.

Khan says women and children, who comprise 73 percent of IDPs according to the World Health Organisation (WHO), are likely to be disproportionately impacted by PTSD, as well as disorders related to anxiety, stress, panic and depression.

Muhammad Junaid, a psychologist working with the displaced, says that victims are also suffering from poor self-esteem, as they are forced to occupy tents and shacks, in extremely unsanitary conditions.

Mothers are particularly impacted by their inability to provide for their families, he tells IPS, adding that permanent phobias are not uncommon.

Another major concern among health officials here is how the situation will affect children, many of whom are at a very sensitive age.

“From childhood to adolescence, a child passes through dramatic phases of physical and mental development,” Junaid says. “During this transition, they gain their identity, grow physically and establish familial relationships, as well as bonds with their community and society as a whole.”

Ripped from their ancestral homes and traditional communities, he says, this process will be interrupted, resulting in long-term mental conditions unless properly addressed.

Parents are equally worried about what displacement might mean for their children’s education.

“Two of my sons are very good at their studies,” Muhammad Arif, a shopkeeper from Mirali, an administrative division in North Waziristan, confides to IPS. “They would do well in class and get good positions. Now there’s no school and I fear they will not progress with their education.”

Even if they were to return to Waziristan, he says, the future looks bleak, since the army operation has devastated homes, buildings and business establishments. Everything will have to be built back up from scratch before the people can return to a normal life, he laments.

After nearly a month in the camp, Arif’s 10-year-old son Sadiq has all but given up hope. Through tears, he tells IPS that children like him have “no sleep, no play, no education.”

“I don’t know what the future holds for us,” he says.

For long-time health experts in the region, the situation is a frightening climax of a crisis that has been building for years, ever since the army began a crackdown on insurgents in the rugged, mountainous regions of northern Pakistan nearly 12 years ago.

“Around 50 percent of the residents of FATA have suffered psychological problems due to militancy and subsequent military operations,” Muhammad Wajid, a psychiatrist at the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Teaching Hospital in Peshawar tells IPS.

“We have examined about 300,000 patients at the psychiatry wards of the KP hospital in 2013; 200,000 of them belonged to FATA. This included 145,000 women and 55,000 children,” he says.

Since 2005, nearly 2.1 million FATA residents have taken refuge in KP, according to Javid, posing a real challenge to the local government, which has struggled to balance the needs of the displaced with its own impoverished local population.

The latest wave of refugees has only added to the government’s woes, and many in the region fear the situation is on a knife’s edge, especially in the holy month of Ramadan, when there is a desperate need for proper sanitation and food to break the daily fast.

(END)

An elderly displaced man carries a sack of rations on his shoulder. The Pakistan Army has distributed 30,000 ration packs of 110 kg each. Credit: Ashfaq Yusufzai/IPS

By Ashfaq Yusufzai
PESHAWAR, Pakistan, Jul 1 2014 (IPS)

Three days ago, Rameela Bibi was the mother of a month-old baby boy. He died in her arms on Jun. 28, of a chest infection that he contracted when the family fled their home in Pakistan’s North Waziristan Agency, where a full-scale military offensive against the Taliban has forced nearly half a million people to flee.

Weeping uncontrollable, Bibi struggles to recount her story.

“My son was born on Jul. 2 in our own home,” the 39-year-old woman tells IPS. “He was healthy and beautiful. If we hadn’t been displaced, he would still be alive today.”

“My wife is expected to deliver a baby within a fortnight, But the doctors say the child will be premature due to the stressful journey we undertook to get here." -- Jalal Akbar, a former resident of the town of Mir Ali in North Waziristan Agency
But Bibi does not have the luxury of grieving long for her little boy.

Soon she will have to dry her eyes and begin the grim task of providing for herself and her two young daughters, who now comprise some of the 468,000 internally displaced people (IDPs) seeking refuge from the Pakistan army’s airstrikes on the militant-infested mountainous regions that border Afghanistan.

Launched on Jun. 15, the army’s campaign was partly motivated by terrorist attacks on the Karachi International Airport that killed 18 people in early June.

Having failed since 2005 to flush out the militants from the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), the army is now focusing all its firepower on the 11,585-square-kilometre North Waziristan Agency, where insurgent groups have enjoyed a veritable free reign since escaping the U.S. occupation of Afghanistan over a decade ago.

Some political pundits are cheering what they call the government’s “hard line” on the terrorists. But what it means for a civilian population already weary from years of war is homeless, hunger and sickness.

Most of the displaced have collapsed, fatigued from hours of travel on dirt roads in 45-degree heat, in massive camps in Bannu, an ancient city in the Khyber Pakhtunkwa (KP) province.

Already groaning under the weight of nearly a million refugees who have arrived in successive waves over the last nine years, KP is completely unprepared to deal with this latest influx of desperate families.

With tents serving as makeshift shelters, and the blistering summer heat threatening to worsen over the coming weeks, medical professionals here are warning of a full-blown health crisis, as doctors struggle to cope with a long line of patients.

Many traveled for hours on dirt roads, in 45-degree heat, to reach safe ground, with no food or water along the way. Credit: Ashfaq Yusufzai/IPS

Muslim Shah, a former resident of North Waziristan, has just arrived in Bannu after a 45-km journey on an unpaved road with his wife and children.

He is being treated at a rudimentary ‘clinic’ in the camp for severe dehydration, and recovering from a stomach flu caused by consumption of contaminated water along the way.

The frail-looking man tells IPS he is concerned for his family’s health in an unsanitary environment, gesturing to a nearby filthy canal where his children are bathing amongst a herd of buffalos.

“We have examined about 28,000 displaced people,” Dr. Sabz Ali, deputy medical superintendent at the district headquarters hospital (DHQ) of Bannu, told IPS.

About 25,000 of these, he said, are suffering from preventable diseases caused by sun exposure, lack of nutrition, and consumption of unclean water.

On Jun. 29, the government relaxed its curfew, giving families a tiny window of escape before resuming its operation Monday.

Families who left in the allotted timeframe are expected to descend on Bannu soon, prompting an urgent need for preemptive and coordinated efforts to avert an outbreak of diseases, Ali asserted.

“Given the soaring temperatures, we fear outbreaks of communicable water and vector-borne diseases, like gastroenteritis and diarrhoea, as well as vaccine-preventable childhood diseases such as polio and measles,” he said.

Seeking some relief from the 41-degree heat, displaced children in Bannu join a herd of buffalos for a bath in a filthy canal. Credit: Ashfaq Yusufzai/IPS

Ahmed Noor Mahsud (59) and his family of four epitomise the unfolding crisis.

Mahsud himself is bed-ridden as a result of a heat stroke caused by walking 40 km in sweltering heat, while his sons – aged 14, 15 and 20 – have been suffering with diarhhoea, fever and headaches since they arrived in the camp on Jun. 22.

The family has had very little access to clean water for nearly a week, which is exacerbating their illness.

According to public health specialists like Ajmal Shah, who was dispatched by the KP health department, exhaustion among IDPs has even led to some cases of cardiac arrest.

Out in the desert, families are also at risk of snake and scorpion bites, and could suffer long-term psychological stress as a result of the trauma, Shah told IPS.

About 90 percent of the displaced are extremely poor, having lived well below the poverty line for over a decade due to the eroding impacts of terrorism on the local economy. Few can afford private care and must wait patiently for thinly-spread doctors to make their rounds.

But for people like 30-year-old Jalal Akbar, a former resident of the town of Mir Ali in Waziristan, patience is almost impossible.

“My wife is expected to deliver a baby within a fortnight,” he told IPS anxiously. “But the doctors say the child will be premature due to the stressful journey we undertook to get here. She requires bed rest, but we have been unable to find a proper home.”

The exhausted man fears their eviction will deprive him of his first child.

Another major crisis looming on the horizon is a food shortage, which will only add to the woes of the displaced.

According to a Jun. 30 assessment report by United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), “The Pakistan Army has distributed 30,000 ration packs each of 110 kg. The WFP has provided food rations to over 8,000 families while a number of NGOs and charity organisations are also carrying out relief activities.”

Still, those like Ikram Mahsud, a displaced tribal elder, fear that the worst is yet to come.

“We lack good food, and the non-availability of sanitation facilities like latrines, detergent and soap [means] our people are destined to suffer in the coming days,” he told IPS, adding that requests for clean water and sanitation facilities have fallen on deaf ears.

Women and children currently comprise 74 percent of the IDPs, prompting the World Health Organisation (WHO) to point out, in a Jun. 30 report, the urgent need for “mass awareness campaigns among women to promote use of safe drinking water, hygienic food preparation and storage.

“Information regarding benefits of hand-washing before eating and preparation of food, use of impregnated bed nets to avoid mosquitoes’ bites and prevent occurrence of malaria should also be encouraged,” the agency noted.

WHO says it had sent medicines for 90,000 people to Bannu, but experts here feel this will fall short in the face of a spiraling crisis.

(END)

Industrial infrastructure in Pakistan's Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province is crumbling, as militancy drives investors and owners away. Credit: Ashfaq Yusufzai/IPS

By Ashfaq Yusufzai
PESHAWAR, Pakistan , May 15 2014 (IPS)

Already saddled with a veritable catalogue of crises, Pakistan’s largest province, the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) now finds itself on the verge of industrial collapse, as extortion and kidnappings drive away all prospects for production or employment.

Sharing a border with the country’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas, or FATA, the KP has long borne the brunt of terrorism, its mountainous terrain providing a perfect refuge for insurgent groups that residents and officials say are making life impossible for ordinary people.

According to officials from the KP Chamber of Commerce, a third of all factory owners have received threats from militants, who demand huge sums of money in exchange for the freedom to operate a business. Those who have not been bankrupted by the enormous bribes have packed up shop and migrated out of the province altogether, leaving over 100,000 people jobless.

Zahid Shinwari, president of the KP’s Chamber of Commerce and Industries, told IPS that the departure of wealthy industrialists has created “an extremely precarious” situation in the region, with a total of 2,200 industrial units closing down as a direct result of extortion by militants identifying themselves as members of the Taliban.

“People are shifting their industries and investment to safer places like Lahore, Islamabad and Faisalabad,” he said, adding that police have a hard time tracking the culprits who flee to FATA, Pakistan’s semi-autonomous tribal region in the northwest, which offers easy passage into neighbouring Afghanistan.

From Subtle to Shocking

Unable to make the many payments demanded of him, Rasool Shah, a KP resident and industrialist, closed down his marble factory in September 2013.

“We had to pay money to several groups, which was not possible for us,” he told IPS. “One group received 100,000 dollars per month while another was demanding double that amount. We were suffering severe losses.”

The same is true for most of the 300 marble-manufacturing factories in the region, the bulk of which have closed down or transferred elsewhere.

None of the districts in the province have been spared. Of the 300 industrial units in the Gadoon Amazai Industrial Estate in the Swabi District, 200 have been non-operational for the past year, according to Shah.

The climate of terror has also created a dearth of trained workers and technicians, who are finding better opportunities in places like Dubai where they can exchange their skills for large salaries.

Threats range from subtle to shocking, residents say.

Usually, the militants start out by writing letters to factory owners demanding specific sums of money. If the targets refuse, they or their family members are kidnapped and the insurgents then demand a ransom of between 100,000 and one million dollars.

Earlier this year, on Feb. 16, militants threw a hand grenade into a factory located in the Hayatabad Industrial Estate when the owner refused to pay protection money. The very next day he closed down his match factory, following in the steps of the province’s roughly 20 match-manufacturing units, all of which had utilised local raw materials, hired local labourers and brought much-needed foreign exchange into the province.

According to Shinwari’s estimates, these factories had brought in roughly 800 million dollars per year.

Muhammad Anwar, who owns a pharmaceutical-producing plant in Peshawar, says lodging police reports about the threats and kidnappings is futile.

“If we inform the police, the militants kill the person in their charge. So people prefer to settle the ransom and secure the release of their loved ones,” he told IPS.

He added that nearly half of the 100 pharmaceutical factories in the region have ceased all operations.

Textile production has also suffered. Anwar’s friend and textile factory-owner Sharif Gul was making monthly payments to numerous militant groups until he decided two years ago to shift his entire operation to Faisalabad, a major industrial metropolis in the Punjab province. Prior to the influx of militants, some 22 textiles units in KP had earned the province annual revenues of roughly 130 million dollars.

Planning for the Future

While some are lamenting the demise of the region’s industrial infrastructure, others are forging ahead with plans for the future.

Police Chief Nasir Durrani told IPS his province had plans to establish separate police stations in each of the three industrial estates to protect them from terrorists.

“We are also installing devices to trace telephone calls from militants, so we can arrest them.”

Durrani says the police have held meetings with industrialists to put security measures in place, and stem the flow of business to other provinces. “The protection of industrialists is a high priority for the government because they [contribute heavily] to the province’s income,” he added.

Another strategy on the table is to expand the police force by hiring more people and deploying them solely to industrial areas, which will simultaneously increase employment and improve security.

Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Information Minister Shah Farman told IPS the government intends to establish six more industrial zones to boost production of plastic, steel, oil, pharmaceuticals, chipboard and ghee – all of which are plentiful in the resource-rich province.

Alarmed by the wave of migration – over a million workers have left the province since 2009 – Farman also vowed to create a “congenial atmosphere for employment” by refusing to bow to the demands of terrorists.

Despite being the country’s third-largest province, KP boasts a mere seven-percent share of industrial employment. “This has to be improved,” he stressed. In comparison, provinces like Punjab have recorded 60 percent industrial employment.

(END)

Posters and billboards have been posted by Pakistan Tehreek Insaf workers on University Road in Peshawar to urge people to attend their Nov. 23 anti-drone protest. Credit: Ashfaq Yusufzai/IPS

By Ashfaq Yusufzai
PESHAWAR, Pakistan, Nov 22 2013 (IPS)

Upping the ante against U.S. drone attacks in Pakistan, celebrated cricketer-turned-political leader Imran Khan has threatened to block NATO supplies to Afghanistan through Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, where his party leads a coalition government.

“We are holding the biggest ever anti-drone protest in Peshawar, where we could decide to block NATO supplies permanently,” Khan, who leads the Pakistan Tehreek Insaf (PTI), told IPS ahead of massive protests planned by the party for Nov. 23.

“We don’t want to start a fight with the U.S. but we have every right to protest these illegal assaults which kill innocent people,” Khan said, calling the attacks a breach of international law and a violation of human rights.

His party is enraged over a U.S. drone strike at a madrassa or religious seminary that killed at least eight people in Hangu district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, in northwestern Pakistan, on Nov. 20.

The PTI leads the coalition government in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, which is one of two key routes used by NATO to move supplies in and out of neighbouring Afghanistan and is strategically important as U.S.-led forces prepare to withdraw from the war-torn country in 2014.

“More than 200,000 political activists will gather here to send a very loud and clear message,” Khan said about the Nov. 23 demonstrations. “On the same day, a similar anti-drone protest will take place in the UK.”

When the party had organised a major two-day protest on Apr. 23-24, 2010, NATO supplies were suspended.

The PTI has staunchly opposed drone strikes in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), adjacent to Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

The strikes target Al Qaeda and Taliban leaders who have taken refuge in FATA along a 2,400-km porous border with Afghanistan after being evicted from Kabul by U.S.-led forces towards the end of 2001.

FATA, which is directly ruled by the federal government, is teeming with militants, some of them with huge bounties on their heads as they are aggressively pursued by the U.S. for alleged involvement in the Sep. 11, 2001 terror attacks. Many high-profile Al Qaeda and Taliban leaders have been killed in the drone strikes.

Khan said his party wants to convey to the world that the U.S. government is killing innocent people in the garb of targeting militants.

“Even if those targeted in these strikes are supposed militants, the U.S. has no right to kill them without taking the Pakistan government into confidence,” Khan said.

Besides, while most drone attacks have taken place in FATA, the Nov. 20 strike was in the PTI’s stronghold of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

“We won’t allow drone strikes on Khyber Pakhtunkhwa soil,” Khan said.

He had earlier stated that they would stop NATO supplies even if it meant his party losing its place in the provincial government. But he later stressed that only his party workers would take part in the protest.

“The PTI government in the province will stay away from the protest because we don’t want to take any illegal steps,” Khan said.

The PTI has been accusing Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif of failing to raise the concerns of Pakistani citizens about drone strikes with President Barack Obama.

“We were the first to point out that these strikes were in total contravention of U.N. and other international law that guarantees the sovereignty of any country,” he said.

He said the U.S. had sabotaged the government’s proposed peace talks with the Tehreek Taliban Pakistan by killing its leader Hakimullah Mehsud in a Nov. 1 drone attack.

“Targeting a madrassa with missiles from a drone, killing our citizens, is a clear violation of the province’s territorial rights,” Muhammad Junaid, a PTI worker, told IPS. The shopkeeper from the militancy-hit Swabi district said drone strikes kill innocent people, including women and children, and should not be permitted by any country.

“We have the right to protest,” said Junaid. “We are ready to join Imran Khan, our leader, in stopping supplies to NATO forces in Afghanistan.”

The Jamaat Islami Party and Awami Jamhoori Ittehad, the PTI’s allies in the provincial government, are on the same page.

“Upwards of 150,000 protestors will take part in the protest against drone strikes and over the continuation of NATO supplies,” Jamaat Islami chief Syed Munnawar Hassan said.

“We can stop them [NATO supplies] permanently,” he said.

Families and health workers defy the Taliban's ban on oral polio vaccines (OPV). Credit: Ashfaq Yusufzai/IPS

By Ashfaq Yusufzai
PESHAWAR, Pakistan , Jul 11 2013 (IPS)

Four-year-old Muhammad Jihad is handicapped, and his parents know who to blame: the Taliban.

Jihad’s father, Muhammad Rishad, says the boy tested positive for polio on May 6 at the National Institute of Health in Islamabad.

The family had travelled from their home in North Waziristan, a mountainous region that comprises part of Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), to ensure their son had the best possible care, only to be told that the virus had spread too far, and little Muhammad would likely never walk again.

"The Taliban are enemies of children. They are against education and vaccination, both of which are necessary for a child’s development.” -- Noor Gul, a schoolteacher in northern Pakistan
A distraught Rishad told IPS, “The Taliban militants are responsible for my son’s (paralysis) – they placed a ban on the oral polio vaccine, so my son could never get immunised.”

Rishad is a daily wage-labourer, who had few dreams beyond securing a decent life for his only son. Now, he says, the Taliban have robbed him of his little hope for the future.

“When he grows up, my son will condemn the militants,” Rishad added, even though such thoughts bring him little solace.

Experts here say children are the future of this troubled country of 170 million, and should be protected at all costs.

Sadly, such advice has fallen on deaf ears in the militancy-ridden northern regions, where the Taliban have imposed a complete ban on all vaccines against preventable childhood diseases, including polio – sometimes referred to simply as “infantile paralysis” due to its crippling effects on a child’s nervous system – measles, diphtheria, hepatitis, meningitis, pertussis, influenza and pneumonia.

Children in all seven agencies of FATA have been the worst affected by the ban on the oral polio vaccination (OPV), which the Taliban have described as a ploy by the United States to render the Muslim population infertile. Over 160,000 children in North Waziristan and 157,000 children in South Waziristan are now at risk of contracting deadly ailments.

The Taliban have used violence and terror to implement the ban – since December 2012 at least 20 volunteer health workers and policemen have been assassinated for daring to defy the militants’ orders by participating in immunisation drives in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) and Sindh provinces.

Two years ago, polio had been wiped out in all but three countries worldwide: Afghanistan, Nigeria and Pakistan. In Pakistan, the recent recurrence of the disease marks several steps back from successful attempts at eradication: from just 28 cases in 2005, the country saw a rapid increase of up to 117 cases in 2008, and 198 cases in 2011.

Eighteen cases have already been reported in 2013, and experts fear that number could rise very quickly.

Dr. Farman Ali, based at the Agency Headquarters Hospital in the town of Miranshah in North Waziristan, told IPS “an outbreak of polio” is never far off when large numbers of children remain unimmunised while the virus is in circulation.

According to the Health Department, medical workers have recorded over 50,000 incidents of families refusing the vaccination in FATA and the KP.

“The Taliban have strictly warned us to stay away from vaccination. They have broken the iceboxes of health workers and threatened to kill them if they (continue their work),” Ali said.

Taliban Spokesman Ihsanullah Ihsan told IPS last year that his “leadership decided to ban the vaccine because it was an excuse for the U.S. to send in its spies and expose Taliban leaders to drone strikes…we will allow vaccination when the U.S. stops its drone strikes.”

But rather than the U.S. government, it is poor families who are paying the price for this ban.

Gul Daraz, a resident of North Waziristan Agency, has a three-year-old son who had already received his first dose of the OPV when the ban was announced. Because he was never allowed to complete the full course of three doses, as required by the World Health Organisation, he is now handicapped.

“Every time my wife sees our crippled son, it reduces her to tears,” Daraz, a poor shopkeeper, told IPS.

Sadly they are not alone in their plight. According to FATA Health Director Dr. Fawad Khan, “We have only been able to vaccinate 400,000 of the 900,000 target children under five years in FATA.”

He told IPS 58 cases were reported across the country last year, including 27 in KP and 20 in FATA, of which 12 of the victims had been prevented from receiving the OPV.

Zareen Taja, a housewife in FATA’s Bajaur Agency, told IPS over the phone, “My son is very beautiful, but he will not be able to walk like normal people. I have no one to blame but the Taliban.”

At this rate, she added, Pakistan will never achieve its goal of eradicating this preventable disease that has been stamped out in all but two other countries in the world.

Noor Gul, a schoolteacher in the Frontier Region Bannu, whose son is one of the two affected children in the province, labeled the Taliban “enemies of children”.

“They are against education and vaccination, both of which are necessary for a child’s development.”

An international conference of Islamic scholars held on Jun. 6 in the capital, Islamabad, condemned Taliban militants for killing Pakistani polio workers, and held them responsible for the resurgence of the disease.

Dr. Muhammad Wesam, chief scholar of Al-Azhar University in Cairo, told conference participants that the Taliban’s campaign “contravenes Islam”.

Thirty-four scholars from Pakistan, Yemen, Egypt and Saudi Arabia issued a decree saying that those impeding vaccination efforts were committing a crime, for which God would hold them accountable.

Such interventions by clerics are crucial to correcting the misconception that OPV is “anti-Islamic”. Dr. Jan Baz Afridi, head of the KP immunisation programme, told IPS his office is working with religious scholars and volunteer health workers to continue vaccination drives.

“We are under tremendous pressure to immunise all 5.2 million children in the KP in order to effectively wipe out the disease,” he added.

Victims of a May 17 explosion at a mosque in a village in Malakand district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, which killed 13 people. Credit: Ashfaq Yusufzai/IPS

By Ashfaq Yusufzai
PESHAWAR, May 27 2013 (IPS)

Peshawar is breathing a little easier. Prime minister designate Nawaz Sharif’s offer of talks with the outlawed Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) has rekindled hope for peace in this Pakistan border town.

The TTP have had a long run of terror in Pakistan’s northwestern Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) and the adjacent Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) province, of which Peshawar is the capital. And the terror had intensified in the run-up to the May 11 elections in the country, as bomb and suicide attacks left a bloody trail of political casualties in the region.

Tackling terrorism, therefore, would have been the foremost priority of any government that came to power. And when the Nawaz Sharif-led Pakistan Muslim League (PML-N) emerged the winner, the mandate before it was clear.

Sharif’s statement that “talking to Taliban was not a bad option” has sent a wave of relief among the residents of KP, and of FATA in particular, which has borne the brunt of the militancy since 2001.

Especially as the TTP has responded favourably. Its spokesman Ihsanullah Ihsan welcomed the offer and considered it a positive sign. “We are devising a strategy over the course of action to be taken in response to the peace talk offer,” he said.

Terrorism is the number one problem the new government needs to solve if it is to put Pakistan on the path to progress, PML-N activist Rehmanullah Khan told IPS. “We have lost 49,000 people, including 5,000 soldiers, to the Taliban since 2005,” he said.

Other parties too have endorsed this initiative. The Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party (PTI), under the leadership of former cricket legend Imran Khan, had, in fact, been at the forefront of a campaign to hold a dialogue with the militants.

The party will now be forming a government in coalition in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. It has appointed Pervez Khan Khattak as the chief minister.

“We are according top priority to the establishment of peace and ending terrorism,” he told IPS. Without stopping terrorism, he said, there can be no prospect of social and economic development.

“The army has been engaged in a military operation in FATA since 2005,” Khattak added. “But the outcome has been zero and the TTP is still calling the shots in the majority of the seven tribal districts under FATA.”

If you have not been able to eliminate them by force in the last eight years, he said, talks would be your best option.

Regarding Sharif’s offer of the olive branch to the Taliban, Dr Said Akram at the political science department of the University of Peshawar told IPS that the Taliban had in March this year offered to talk with the government. “But the then government (led by the Pakistan People’s Party) did not show an interest, due to which no headway was made,” he said.

At that time, the TTP had also asked Nawaz Sharif, who was then in the opposition, as well as religious leaders like Maulana Fazlur Rehman of the Jamaat Ulema-e-Islam (JUI) and Syed Munawar Hassan of the Jamaat-e-Islami, for guarantees before the dialogue.

“While in opposition, Nawaz didn’t become the guarantor, but now that he is in government and prime minister, it would be his first priority to start negotiations with the TTP,” said Akram.

Both the PML-N and PTI have also sought the help of Maulana Samiul Haq, chief of JUI’s other faction, and patron-in-chief of Pakistan’s biggest Islamic seminary, Darul Uloom Haqqania, to facilitate talks between the government and the TTP.

The influential cleric is referred to as the ‘Father of the Taliban’. “Most of the Taliban leaders are my students,” Haq told IPS. “I have been in contact with the Taliban leadership and the response has been positive.”

But he needed the full guarantee not only of the PML-N and PTI but also of Pakistan’s army chief Gen Ashfaq Pervez Kayani, he said, before launching a formal dialogue process with the TTP.

“We are sure that peace will prevail if the government, opposition, army and the Taliban display sincerity,” he said.

Muhammad Aslam Khan, a Pakistan Studies teacher at the Abdul Wali Khan University in Mardan, 50 km northeast of Peshawar, says it’s the brightest chance for the government to rein in the TTP. “The government needs to take the peace offer seriously if it wants to have peace in the future,” he said.

In fact, the people had voted for the PML-N and PTI precisely because of the failure of the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) and Awami League Party (ANP) to maintain peace, Khan added. They saw hope in the former’s slogans of peace and would be very disappointed if they too failed to contain terrorism.

However, even the ANP, which had been in power in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa for the last five years and on a collision course with the TTP, having lost 800 of its leaders and workers in sustained attacks by the group, is in favour of making peace with them. “We want peace at any cost and will support the government because people have become sick of terrorism,” ANP spokesman Zahid Khan told IPS. Peace, it would seem, finally has a chance in Pakistan.

Shaheen Begum receives skills training at the PPC paraplegic centre in Hayatabad in northern Pakistan. Credit: Ashfaq Yusufzai/IPS

By Ashfaq Yusufzai
PESHAWAR, May 13 2013 (IPS)

Gul Shada thought it was the end of the road for her when she and her husband met with a road accident last year in the Nowshera district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, one of the four provinces of Pakistan. Not only did the mishap leave Shada widowed at the relatively young age of 37, she also sustained an injury to her back that immobilised her.

It was then that she came to the country’s sole paraplegic centre (PPC) at Hayatabad, to the southwest of Peshawar, the capital of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. And it was here that she was taught that you don’t need to be on your feet to be able to stand on your own.

Along with helping her regain her physical strength, the centre also gave Shada training in sewing and embroidery. Today, she is able to earn a living of her own, enough to provide her three children with a decent education.

“I had thought I would be bedridden forever and my children would have to beg on the streets,” Shada told IPS. “But I am a shining example of how the PPC is helping its patients. I was referred for physiotherapy here after being operated on for spinal injury at the Hayatabad Medical Complex. My hopes were raised further when I was taught sewing and embroidery here and I became somewhat of an expert.”

Established by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in 1983 for those wounded in the 1979-1989 Soviet war in Afghanistan, the centre was left in the hands of the Pakistan Red Crescent (PRC) after the ICRC withdrew in 1995.

The PRC managed the centre till the reins were handed over to the current management in 2005. The provincial government of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa – which borders Afghanistan to the northwest – then made it an autonomous body governed by a board, through a 2009 Act.

The PPC, which has a staff of 110, remains the only centre of its kind in Pakistan which provides free treatment and rehabilitation to patients who have received injuries to their spine. Some 1,200 women and 800 men have benefited since 2005 under its training centre, bringing hopes to lives that have foreseen only despair.

One among them is Shaheen Begum from Khyber Agency, one of the eight tribal areas that make up the Federally Administered Tribal Areas, to the west of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. The 25-year-old fell from a wall in February last year, damaging her spine. After treatment at the local hospital, she was shifted to the PPC for physiotherapy.

“Not only did the physiotherapists give me tips on different exercises during my two-month stay here, they also helped me acquire computer skills. Now, I work as a composer from home,” Begum told IPS.

She may be confined to a wheelchair now, but that hasn’t dented Begum’s confidence.

On a follow-up visit to the PPC she told IPS that “I have only one son. I feel proud to be able to operate a computer and earn enough so that I can afford a proper education for him. Otherwise, I would have been roaming the streets of Peshawar with a begging bowl.”

She said she couldn’t thank god enough for giving her the opportunity to be able to work and earn her own living despite her misfortune.

The PPC’s chief executive officer, Syed Muhammad Ilyas, takes pride in the progress of his patients. He urges them to regain their physical strength and rather than be a burden on others, learn to help not just themselves but also their families.

“These are healthy young men and women who have become prisoners in their own bodies and have lost control over their bodily functions. One can well imagine the level of frustration and anxiety they go through,” he said.

The trap becomes worse if they are the sole breadwinners of the family, he added. This is, in fact, the case with 80 per cent of the patients who come to the PPC, while more than 90 per cent of them fall below the poverty line.

Many of the spinal cord injuries are sustained during road accidents, said Ilyas. But he added that falls from rooftops, trees or electricity poles, as well as firearm injuries, were also common. Patients at the centre are as young as 26 years old, he said, and they tend to arrive at the centre with little or no hope.

Few things are more expensive than treating and rehabilitating patients with spinal injuries. The cost of rehabilitating a patient in Europe or the United States can go up to millions of dollars. “We achieve the same with a fraction of that amount by getting patients to a stage where they can move about on a wheelchair and by imparting them different skills,” Ilyas said.

Sultana Gul, 51, says she came to the centre for physiotherapy 10 years ago, where she learned skills as a seamstress. Her house in Charsadda district now serves as a training centre for local women, helping many earn respectability and an income.

“In the past decade, I have taught these skills to at least 200 women in my neighbourhood,” Gul told IPS. “Around 10 women, who were earlier reduced to begging in the market square, are now earning their own living because we brought them here and taught them how to knit and sew. We train them for a month after which they teach the same skills to other women around them, everyone making a decent sum of money in the bargain.”

“It takes only a month to train a patient,” said Gul Pari, a trainer at Sultana Gul’s centre. They are initially hesitant to go through training, but agree once you convince them of how it can change their lives, she said. The centre trains about 80 women every year, she said, and there six trainers like her.

And that gives a whole new meaning to women’s empowerment.

ANP candidate Syed Masoom Shah on his way to the hospital after an Apr. 14 bomb attack in Charsadda, a town in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, that injured four people. Credit: Ashfaq Yusufzai/IPS

By Ashfaq Yusufzai
PESHAWAR, May 10 2013 (IPS)

If you can’t beat them, at least innovate. That seems to be the lesson that Pakistan’s Awami National Party (ANP) has drawn from its predicament.

Exhausted of being at the receiving end of an endless barrage of bomb and suicide attacks by Taliban militants, the party has turned to technology for succour.

It is using the Internet to reach out to the electorate across its various constituencies in the northern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, its main support base.

ANP leader Mian Iftikhar Hussain told IPS what a blessing it was to be able to reach the people through Skype ahead of the May 11 elections.

“Through it, we can reach the electorate without putting our lives in danger,” he said. Technology has helped them protect not just their own lives but also those of the people who come to listen to them.

Hussain, a former information minister in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, lost his only son, Mian Rashid Hussain, in a terror attack by the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) in October 2010.

The ANP, which has been in power in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, one of Pakistan’s four provinces, for the last five years (2008-2013), had earned the wrath of the outlawed TTP due to its firm stand against Islamist militancy.

It has paid a high price. Around 800 of its leaders and workers have fallen prey to attacks by the TTP in the past five years. And the violence has only worsened in the run-up to the elections.

The ANP remained its primary target, but the other liberal parties – such as the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) and the Pakistan People’s Party – have also been victims of its ire. Bombs and suicide attacks on ANP and MQM candidates and offices became the order of the day.

“It was the ANP (provincial) government which took the most successful military action against militants in the Swat district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa,” said Muhammad Jamil, who teaches Pakistan Studies at the University Public School in Peshawar. “The TTP had ruled Swat from 2007 to 2009 till it was evicted by the ANP-led government in 2010.”

Swat is also where the brave Malala Yousafzai comes from. The 14-year-old was shot in October last year by the Taliban for championing the cause of girls’ education.

The ANP, Jamil told IPS, was the only party carrying out an “open and brave campaign” against the Taliban, which made it the focus of their violent agenda.

“The TTP is afraid it could face more stern action if the ANP is voted to power again. It is therefore making every attempt to keep the party away from election and to pave the way for parties which have a soft spot for the Taliban,” he added.

It may not quite succeed, given the ANP’s ability to get around obstacles. First, its women leaders took charge where the more prominent candidates could not canvass, going from village to village soliciting women to vote for their candidates and trying to persuade men to do so as well.

Now it has included the internet in its armoury to circumvent the militants and communicate with its supporters.

And people have taken very well to seeing their leaders communicate with them on internet, said ANP leader Bushra Gohar.

“Our workers appreciate the new move because the ANP couldn’t put the lives of workers on the razor’s edge by holding public meetings. Via Skype, we are able to communicate our message to the people in an atmosphere of peace,” she told IPS.

“Many of our candidates have wanted to be present physically in public meetings but could not because of the threat from militants,” she added. “The use of internet has resolved our problem.”

Hussain turned to Skype again in Taro locality, some 15 kilometres from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa capital Peshawar, to spread his own and the party’s message.

Ali Haider, who organised the Skype address, said it was an unqualified success. “We are planning more such meetings where ANP’s leaders and candidates can address the people on Skype. These are very safe,” he said.

“Where there is a will, there is a way,” Sanaullah Khan, a Mardan-based ANP worker, told IPS. “We have been listening eagerly to the speeches being delivered by our leaders via Skype.”

Former Khyber Pakhtunkhwa chief minister and ANP leader Ameer Haider Khan Hoti is contesting the national assembly seat from his hometown. Having survived a suicide attack on Feb. 15, 2013 in Mardan, he, like the others, could not campaign in person for the elections.

People are organising Skype speeches for him as well in Mardan.

Khan said they had also been working on developing the party’s webpage and were posting regular election updates on Facebook.

“The response is unprecedented because a majority of our leaders have also opened Twitter accounts to send their message to the workers,” he said.

Muhammad Namir, a schoolteacher in Mardan, was among those who heard Hoti’s speech on the internet on May 3. The leader, Namir said, recounted the many projects his government had executed in the five years of its rule and asked the people to give their vote to the ANP’s candidates again in this election.

“Party workers say that the use of internet has saved them from attacks,” Namir told IPS. “For public meetings, you have to make arrangements. But for an internet campaign, all that is required is a laptop.”

The ANP has also been using songs to motivate the masses,” said Muhammad Shoaib, a local journalist in Swabi. ANP candidates have survived three terror bids in Swabi, the fourth most populous district in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

The party’s election songs have elevated the people’s mood. The ANP put out an album of 11 Pashto songs for the election campaign. Sung by well-known singer Gulzar Alam, the songs reinforce the themes of peace, democracy and progress – the very things the ANP is promising to the electorate.

“The songs are enticing the people because they relate to the protection of Pakhtun soil,” Shoaib said. The Pakhtun population forms a majority in the province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

In an electoral battleground bloodied by the militants, the songs seem to be more than a small comfort.

Former provincial assembly member Shagufta Malik and former national assembly member Bushra Gohar at Peshawar Press Club. Credit: Ashfaq Yusufzai/IPS

By Ashfaq Yusufzai
PESHAWAR, May 8 2013 (IPS)

“Women in Pakhtun society have traditionally helped their men in hard times,” declares former Pakistani lawmaker Shagufta Malik. They are doing so again, and how, going by their hectic campaigning activity in northern Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.

An erstwhile member of the provincial assembly, Malik is spearheading the election campaign for Awami National Party chief Asfandyar Wali Khan, who is running for a seat in the national legislature.

The ANP leader had narrowly survived a suicide attack in October 2008 in Charsadda, one of the 25 districts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and the birthplace of the party, and has since been confined to the federal capital Islamabad and restricted from visiting his constituency as often as he would have wished.

Now, as the May 11 election date looms near, the outlawed Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan has stepped up its deadly exploits against the ANP primarily, and other parties such as the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM). Accordingly, Wali Khan and other leaders have been instructed to stay away from electioneering in the province, which is adjacent to the Afghan border.

A band of women leaders from the ANP has therefore taken it upon themselves to campaign for their leaders in their absence. “The Awami National Party is not the type to be frightened by acts of terrorism,” says Malik, who hails from Nowshera district and is leading the campaign for Wali Khan in the NA-7 constituency in Charsadda. “It’s high time we supported our leaders and campaigned for them,” she adds.

Assisting Malik in her effort are other prominent ANP women leaders, among them Bushra Gohar and Jamila Gilani, both former members of the National Assembly. Carrying lanterns – the election symbol of the ANP – these feisty women are going from area to area, talking to the female population.

“We have decided to reach out to the people through our women,” says Malik.

Gohar adds: “We gather them in spacious homes in different villages and hamlets and address them.”

Currently, the National Assembly has 60 seats reserved for women and 10 for minorities; there is direct election for the remaining 272 seats. And forget contesting elections – women in some provinces cannot even cast their votes as it would amount to going against local tradition.

That situation has undergone a sea change now, says Gohar. Malik and her team are not only convincing women in the region to cast their votes in favour of ANP candidates and persuading their menfolk to do the same, but also educating them in the whole process of casting a ballot.

There are a total of 12,266,157 registered voters in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa: 5,257,624 women and 7,008,533 men. The ANP won the largest number of seats in the last general election in 2008, getting its first chief minister since 1948.

Attacks on the party, however, have made the going tough for the ANP. The 2008 attempt on Wali Khan’s life took its toll and he has had to pay the price of being away from his constituency. Incidentally, his mother, Begum Nasim Wali Khan, was the first woman to win a general seat in the National Assembly, in the 1977 elections.

The ANP, says Gilani, who is also a staunch activist with the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, has already lost some 800 leaders and workers to the Taliban and can’t afford to lose their leader. If the terrorists succeed in killing him, she says, it would be difficult for the party to stay united because he is a binding force.

The ruling party is standing steadfast in its resolve to face up to the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan. Despite the blasts and the killings, party leaders are continuing their electoral campaign and holding meetings, though perhaps with less fervour than in the last elections.

The effort is to garner sympathy among the electorate by highlighting the sacrifices of its leaders and the ANP’s bravery in not backing down despite the constant threat to lives from the militants. Impressed by their efforts, people are joining the party in droves, the leaders claim.

Senior leader Ghulam Ahmed Bilour survived a suicide attack as recently as Apr. 16. His younger brother, Bashir Ahmed Bilour, a senior minister in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, was killed Dec. 22 last year.

Regardless of this, Ghulam Ahmed Bilour is in no mood to give up and cede ground to his rivals, particularly Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) chairman Imran Khan, against whom he is running in the NA-1 constituency of Peshawar.

Barely a fortnight before the elections, he was found addressing a meeting of the elders of the Mohmand tribe. Ghulam Ahmed’s nephew – the deceased Bashir’s son – Haroon Ahmed Bilour is contesting PK-3, a constituency they have won five times in a row.

Former chief minister Ameer Haider Khan Hoti is also holding election-related meetings in Mardan, a city and district in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. He is cautious about the unsafe environment, but is managing to stay in touch with workers.

Likewise, the ANP’s general secretary Malik Ghulam, who is standing in PK-2, in Peshawar, is leaving no stone unturned to reach out to his electorate.

In a meeting at Bilal Town Grand Trunk Road on May 2, where he says many people announced their intention to join the ANP, he tore into rival Pakistan People’s Party candidate, former minister Syed Zahir Ali Shah, and presented himself as the credible alternative. He argued that his party’s track record would help them win.

At their end, Shagufta Malik and other women leaders are spreading the same message of development and the need to battle against Islamist militancy.

At a public meeting of women in Prang Mamakhel in Charsadda district on May 2, Malik said the party was confident of showing better results due to the massive development work it had undertaken during its five-year rule in the province.

“Our party executed development schemes at the cost of the lives of its workers and leaders, and won’t spare any effort to continue their struggle for the uplift of the Pakhtun population (the majority in the province),” she said.

She exhorted people to vote for ANP leader Wali Khan and other candidates, to enable the party to resume its efforts to crush militancy and establish peace.

Gilani and provincial assembly member Yasmin Pir Muhammad Khan also addressed the meeting.

Muhammad Khan emphasised yet again that the ANP was the main target of the militants and the only party taking them on. She also said the matchless sacrifices were bearing fruit: even the women are out in support of the party.