The sounds of agony and stories of loss

“Inside a hospital ward in northwest Pakistan, I found myself surrounded by sobs and screams. One scream was so high-pitched that I didn’t think it was human. These were the sounds of agony, and they belonged to innocent civilians who were injured in the cross fire of Pakistani troops and the Taliban in the Swat Valley.

Behind each cry at this ward was a story of loss. Doctors told me no one here had lost more than Shaista, an 11-year-old girl who watched as an explosion instantly killed most of her family.

Shaista and her family were among hundreds of thousands of people who fled Pakistan’s Swat Valley on the day the Pakistani Army launched an all-out offensive against the Taliban.

She says she was walking along a road with her family when a mortar shell suddenly fell from the sky.

“We were coming,” Shaista told me, “then my mother died, my brother died, and my two sisters also died.”

Doctors said the explosion shattered Shaista’s foot. Moments later she passed out. The next time she woke up she was in the female orthopedic ward of the GHQ Hospital in Mardan.

Doctors said Shaista will recover from her shattered foot, but the trauma of losing a family will last a lifetime.

“She kept saying it all happened in front of me,” said Salma Shaheen, a nurse. “She said something fell on top of my mother and she got cut in half.”

It was clear that Shaista had won over the hearts of the doctors and nurses who said that they, in three days, had treated more than 800 civilians injured in the battle zone.

Like many hospitals in northwest Pakistan, this one was under equipped. To hold an elderly woman’s broken leg together, doctors had made a make shift traction using a brick, a plastic shopping bag and rope.

Shaista said her father is missing. Her only guardian is her uncle, Muhammad Sher, who found Shaista after searching area hospitals.

“I’m just going to tell her, ‘you’re my daughter,’” said Muhammad. “I’m going to educate her, teach her the Koran and do what I can for her.”

Sixty miles away from the hospital, the battle between Pakistani troops and the Taliban raged on. (CNN)”

Where are the real culprits? The Musharraf and his team, who converted this beautiful country into hell, are the real culprit. They should be hanged. The murderer of Shaista family is Musharraf. You beg to the rulers, for Allah sake come out US’s war on terror. When we will stop aiding the world No-1 terrorist, only then we will be able to bring our country to normalcy.

Exposed they stand

The  Frontier Post, Peshawar has exposed those who don’t get tired while claiming that they are the only voice and Champions of Pakhtoon’s rights. Pls read the editorial which is must read;

“Every feeling heart weeps for Malakand’s unfortunate displaced Pakhtuns over their distressful adversity, befallen them for no fault of their own but for Swati brigands’ thuggery. But not a tear has welled up in the eyes of the ones long styling themselves ad nauseam as the Pakhtuns’ sole voice and champions of their cause. Neither Asfandyar Wali Khan, the ANP’s head honcho, nor Mahmood Khan Achakzai, of the PkMAP fame, is even on the scene. Exposed they stand up, and discredited too. A fugitive from Frontier since times now hard to recall, Asfandyar was last heard of in Columbia, distant away overseas from colossal tragedy at home, where he can hear no painful cry of hungry babies and their thirsty mothers, wandering unattended in quest of shelter, relief and food. Dubai has been his favourite haunt, though. But he was found lately ensconced in Turkey. What would be next destination of this self-styled Pakhtuns’ leader, now given to globe-trotting as well, and all forgetful of his touted flock’s woes back home? Only he knows. Frontier, Swat or Malakand, and for that matter even Islamabad, stands chance of being gifted with the honour of hosting him only by some quirk of miracle. But where has bolted away Mahmood Achakzai, whom one sees not and hears not in these doleful days? The last he would have been to let go of such an opportunity to flaunt his “nationalist” Pakhtun love speciously, as is his wont on such occasions with the generous help of properly palmed and cultivated journalists to put in their copies how a fiery speaker is he and what a staunch crusader of Pakhtun causes he is. Is he in the country but has moved into deep recluse fastnesses of Balochistan’s wilds for meditation? Or has he too like his peer Asfandyar decamped to some Timbuktu, Canary Islands or El Dorado? His media pals may be missing him, though not the distressed Pakhtuns, now all scorn for him. On Tuesday, both the ANP and the PkMAP had their party workers out on the streets, agitating for investigation the May 12, 2007 Karachi carnage. But couldn’t they send them all as volunteers to work for Malakand’s displaced Pakhtuns’ relief? Or is it their Tuesday’s rallies made for good politics but the relief work for displaced Pakhtuns does not? Couldn’t indeed the ANP-led administration commandeer private buses and wagons for transportation of the displaced to refugee camps? Don’t they do it for transporting their rent-a-crowd to swell their rallies? If they could do it for a starkly ignoble job, why didn’t they do it for a noble humanitarian task? And why their district coordination officers cheekily pass around the word through ingratiated media people that the displaced should go to such and such camp and not to this or that camp as it is already full. Can’t they put their own officials at entry points outside cities to guide the displaced to right camps? Aren’t lots of government employees working in senior officials’ homes, doing their household chores? Couldn’t some hands be spared for this humanitarian job? But if political bosses are so trifling of a displaced people’s adversity, what good do you expect from their subordinate bureaucracy? Yet, while their own act is so filthy, both the ANP and the PkMAP people want not rupees but dollars for displaced people’s relief. Both are calling for international donors’ conference at once, as if they have spent rupee aid to the last penny and only now dollars would work. Stinking and staunching; isn’t it? Feeding avarice on other’s woes; isn’t it? But army must know by sowing dragon’s teeth willfully, first with an accord with thug Fazlullah and then with his foxy father-in-law Sufi Mohammad, the ANP has created a dire situation for it, which the army has to cope with very sensibly. It must get involved fully in relief work for the displaced, to keep them on its side for its operation’s success. Notably, self-righteousness and hypocrisy are not our own elites’ monopoly; others have these no lesser. Sooner than later, many outsiders, now backing the army’s operation, will in a show of self-righteousness start calling on it to cease fire, as are these charlatans doing now in Sri Lanka, despite having Tamil Tigers on their blacklists of terrorist organisations. It should give them, too, no chance to play this chancery on it.