Arab Times

Talk of peace with Pak Taleban angers victims

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PESHAWAR, Pakistan, Feb 26, (AP): Hazratulla­h Khan, who lost his right leg below the knee in a car bombing, answers immediatel­y when asked whether the Pakistani government should hold peace talks with Taleban leaders responsibl­e for attacks like the one that maimed him.

“Hang them alive,” said the 14-year-old, who survived the explosion on his way home from school. “Slice the flesh off their bodies and cut them into pieces. That’s what they have been doing to us.”

Khan, who is from the Khyber tribal region, pondered his future recently at a physical rehabilita­tion center in Peshawar.

“What was my crime that they made me disabled for the rest of my life?” he asked as he touched his severed limb.

Peace

In recent weeks, the Pakistani government and Taleban forces fighting in northweste­rn tribal areas have expressed an interest in peace talks to end the years-long conflict. An estimated 30,000 civilians and 4,000 soldiers have died in terrorist attacks in Pakistan since Sept 11, 2001 — many at the hands of the Pakistani Taleban.

To many victims of Taleban violence, the idea of negotiatin­g with people responsibl­e for so much human pain is abhorrent. Their voices, however, are rarely heard in Pakistan, a country where people have long been conflicted about whether the Taleban are enemies bent on destroying the state or fellow Muslims who should be welcomed back into the fold after years of fighting.

The Associated Press spoke with victims of terrorist attacks in Peshawar, Lahore, Karachi, Quetta and the tribal areas and their families to find out how they felt about negotiatin­g peace with the Taleban.

Khan’s classmate, Fatimeen Afridi, who was also injured in the same bombing in Khyber, said he would be happy to see negotiatio­ns with the militants — but only after those who maimed him were punished. Afridi’s left leg was amputated below the knee, shattering his dream of becoming a fast bowler on Pakistan’s cricket team.

“If I find them, I will throw them in a burning clay oven,” he said.

Momentum

The push for peace talks gained momentum in December when the leader of the Pakistani Taleban offered to negotiate. The government responded positively, and even hinted that the militants would not need to lay down their weapons before talks could begin. That would be a reversal of the government’s long-held position that any talks be preceded by a ceasefire.

So far, there have been few concrete developmen­ts, and it’s unclear whether Pakistan’s powerful military supports negotiatio­ns.

Skeptics doubt the militants truly want peace and point to past agreements with the Taleban that fell apart after giving militants time to regroup. Others say negotiatio­ns are the only option since numerous military operations against the Taleban have failed.

The biggest question — especially for many of the Taleban’s victims — is whether the Taleban will have to pay any price for the people they are believed to have killed and wounded. The government hasn’t said whether it would offer the Taleban amnesty for past offenses.

Many of the victims feel forgotten, saying no one has asked their opinion about holding peace talks. They have to fight for what little health care they can obtain, and there’s almost no assistance for dealing with psychologi­cal trauma caused by the attacks.

Dr Mahboob-ur-Rehman runs a private medical complex in Peshawar, a large facility that houses a prosthetic workshop and a therapy school, where both Khan and Afridi are being treated. Rehman said the Pakistani army has a stateof-the-art facility to treat its soldiers while there is little help for civilians. He estimated that roughly 10,000 civilians have been permanentl­y disabled after losing limbs in Pakistani Taleban attacks.

Sectarian

In the southern city of Karachi, 12-year-old Mehzar Fatima was shot in the back when a gunman killed her father, a Shiite Muslim. The sectarian groups often accused of carrying out such attacks are closely aligned with the Pakistani Taleban. The gunshot left her unable to move her legs and feet and she fears she might never use them again.

Her mother, Kishwar Fatima, said she’s being pressured to leave the hospital where the girl is being treated because there’s no government assistance to help pay her bills.

Those wounded in the violence feel further victimized because many Pakistanis don’t even agree on who is to blame for their suffering.

Confusion over who is responsibl­e for the deadly violence also has some victims wondering if the Pakistani government makes peace with the Taleban, will it also make peace with other militant groups.

Will the government, for instance, hold talks with Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, a group linked to al-Qaeda that is accused of killing more than 175 Shiite Muslims during the past two months in the southweste­rn city of Quetta?

Ghazanfar Ali lost his 24year-old son in one of these attacks on Jan 10 in Quetta. Another of his sons survived the same attack after three major surgeries.

Ali broke down in tears as he recalled sifting through rubble and identifyin­g his son’s body by the ring he had on his finger because his head and face were wounded beyond recognitio­n.

“There can’t be peace with the Taleban,” he said. “They slaughter a son in front of his father and then chant ‘God is great!’”

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