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"Caught in the Middle"
We have all heard the saying "If you are not with us, you are against us". In the game of war you are expected to take sides especially if the battlefield is in your backyard. If you dare try to defy this rule, wanting to mind your own business, one or both sides will unfairly brand you as an enemy and make your life of being caught in the middle a living hell. It has always been this way and always will. It is on one such battlefield that countless innocent Pashtuns, among them being Faisal Mahsud, have found themselves.
Faisal was born in Makeen, South Waziristan. With his green-gold eyes and shoulder length dark brown curls he was a handsome family man with an upbeat disposition who ran a small garage with his elder brother. Faisal was very proud of being a Pashtun especially one from the Maseed tribe as the Mahsuds called themselves. The Mehsuds were historically famous for their bravery, their devotion to Islam and for strictly following the Pashtun Code of Honour called Pashtunwali. Nearly 400,000 in number the Mahsud make up one of the largest tribes in the Federally Administered Tribal Area of which South Waziristan is a part.
For years in this breath-takingly beautiful mountainous land bordering Afghanistan, foreign fighters with their puritanical, oppressive form of Islam had been given shelter by a few various strong tribal leaders. Those who spoke out against this new version of Islam which was introduced and implemented by the foreigners were now threatened, beheaded or hung. Their dead and sometimes mutilated bodies would then left in some public place to serve as a warning to others. Faisal, like most, quickly learned to keep his opinion to himself. Expressing the wrong one to the wrong person meant danger not just for yourself but for your immediate family as well and Faisal being a husband and father always kept that in his mind. Life was becoming more and difficult and stressful in Waziristan in the years after 9/11 especially after America started her drone attacks against suspected Al-Qaida and taliban militants but despite this and the occasional Pakistani army ground offensive this was Faisal's home and that was enough of a reason for him to want to stay here despite the increasing danger around him.
All that changed though on June 23, 2009. In what was the deadliest strike since the drone attacks had started, 83 members of a funeral procession, only some who were actually militants, were killed in the city of Makeen. It was on that day, thinking of the safety of his wife and baby daughter, that Faisal first thought about leaving. Because of the actions and allegiances of a few members of his tribe like Baitullah Mahsud, the leader of Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan suspected in the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, being a Mahsud had unfairly became synonymous with being a Taliban militant.
Just two weeks before the air strike on Makeen, the district magistrate of South Waziristan issued an order that said: "I, the political agent/district magistrate, South Waziristan Agency in exercise of the power conferred upon me under section 21-FCR, do hereby order the seizure where they may be found of all members of Mahsud Tribe and confiscation of moveable/immovable property belonging to them in NWFP and their arrest and taking into custody any person of the tribe wherever he is found." Quite absurdly and unfairly, according to an old colonial British law adopted by Pakistan, an entire tribe could and were being held accountable for the actions of a few. Faisal and his entire family were now enemies of the state of Pakistan just for being Mahsud.
As if thing were not bad enough, the Pakistani army announced an upcoming ground offensive to try to drive the Taliban completely out of South Waziristan as they had recently done in Swat. Immediately ,weeks of heavy aerial bombardments on villages thought to be terrorist strongholds began .Civilians were told to leave. With a heavy heart, Faisal, his wife, his baby and his elder brother and his family left Makeen to find shelter. He had no idea that the worst was yet to come.
When they reached Dera Ismail Khan, a town in N.W.F.P (now renamed as Khyber-Pakhtunkwa ) they were astounded by the over 300,000 internally displaced persons (IDP's) already there. They were directed at a check-point as to where they needed to go to register.They didn't know this yet but the Pakistani army had restricted the establishment of camps for the Waziristan IDP's on the grounds that they would offer jihadi groups easy access to recruits but for members of the Mahsud tribe living in a camp was not even an option. The N.W.F.P. administrators required Mahsuds to be registered and be accommodated in private homes and the host families that took them in then had to assume legal responsibility for them. This was done so that the host family would keep a close eye on the Mahsuds and report anything suspicious to the army or police.
Reluctantly they made their way through the crowd to get to the registration center. Conditions were dirty, chaotic and miserable with children begging and women crying. Faisal wondered to himself if he had made a mistake leaving Makeen to come here. The lines to register and for food distribution were unbelievably long and from time to those in them even women, children and the elderly were being beaten by baton wielding policemen. Faisal's charming disposition quickly turned into one of rage witnessing all of this. When one of these policemen came near his wife, Faisal could not control himself. As the policeman raised his baton to strike her, Faisal grabbed it with one hand and punched the officer with the other knocking him to the ground. Before his wife even knew what was going on, a single shot rang out. Faisal immediately fell to the ground. Another innocent Pashtun was dead. One among thousands killed after finding themselves caught in the middle of someone else's war.
Before I posted this story I had a few friends on PF read it and they corrected some of my grammar mistakes
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