Taliban's barbarism in name of Islam

What awaits Afghanistan

The August 9 issue of Time featured a cover story on the plight of women in those parts of Afghanistan where the Taliban enforce their barbaric interpretation of sharia’h. The magazine had a shocking picture on the cover: That of 18-year-old Aisha whose nose and ears were sliced off on the instructions of the local Taliban commander. Aisha was punished for running away from an abusive husband and parents-in-law.

UPDATE
The Taliban publicly flogged and then executed a pregnant Afghan widow by emptying three shots into her head for alleged adultery. Bibi Sanubar, 35, was kept in captivity for three days before she was shot dead in a public trial on Sunday by a local Taliban commander in the Qadis district of the rural western province Badghis. The Taliban accused Sanubar of having an "illicit affair" that left her pregnant.

Aisha’s story is symbolic of persecution of girls and women by the Taliban in the name of Islam. There are innumerable examples of young girls, some just past their puberty, being forced into marriage with members of the Taliban militia to serve as no more than sex slaves for the adherents of Deobandi Islam. Woe betide those girls who try to escape from their life of forced misery.

Jihad Watch provides a glimpse of what it calls “Unspeakable barbarism among the Taliban, the students of Islam.”
Time has raised a fundamental question: What happens if we leave Afghanistan?
That question has been posed from the American perspective, reflecting American concerns over US President Barack Hussein Obama’s plan to pull out troops from Afghanistan in the summer of 2011. But it’s a question that should really bother democracies across the world. The issue raised by Time has several aspects involving the liberty, rights and dignity of Afghans, especially women.

If the Taliban were to regain power in Aghanistan, as it seems likely with the US preparing to hand over control over Kabul to the Generals of Pakistan, then all those who claim to stand for freedom, liberty and dignity would stand indicted of complicity in this crime.

The years when the Taliban ruled Afghanistan will be remembered for the contempt with which Mullah Omar and his men trampled upon women’s rights. Not only were young and old women made to disappear under burqas, they were virtually banished to the darkest corners of their homes. Girls were prohibited from attending school. In the joyless world of ‘pure Islam’, along with music and art, women’s rights disappeared to as they were deemed to be ‘un-Islamic’.

That period of terror came to be symbolised by the public execution of two women in Kabul’s football stadium.

That was in the past. As for the future, a glimpse of what awaits Afghanistan has been provided by AP in this news despatch from Kabul on August 16:

Taliban stone couple for adultery in Afghanistan

By AMIR SHAH

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) -- Taliban militants stoned a young couple to death for adultery after they ran away from their families in northern Afghanistan, officials said Monday. It was the first confirmed stoning in Afghanistan since the fall of Taliban rule in the 2001 US-led invasion.

When the Islamist extremists ruled Afghanistan, women were not allowed to leave their houses without a male guardian, and public killings for violations of their harsh interpretation of the Quran were common.

This weekend's stoning appeared to arise from an affair between a married man and a single woman in Kunduz province's Dasht-e-Archi district. The woman, Sadiqa, was 20 years old and engaged to another man, said the Kunduz provincial police chief, Gen. Abdul Raza Yaqoubi. Her lover, 28-year-old Qayum, left his wife to run away with her, and the two had holed up in a friend's house five days ago, said district Government head, Mohammad Ayub Aqyar.

They were discovered by Taliban operatives on Sunday and stoned to death in front a crowd of about 150 men, Aqyar said. First the woman was brought out and stoned, then the man a half an hour later, Aqyar said. He decried the punishment, which he said was ordered by two local Taliban commanders.

The ancient practice of death by stoning has been abandoned in all but a handful of countries. It is still a legal punishment in some countries, like Iran, which justify it under Sharia’h, or Islamic law.

Last month, Iran's religious authorities called off the planned stoning of a woman convicted of cheating on her husband. Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani's sentence -- which would have been Iran's first stoning since 2008 -- was lifted following a campaign around the world.

Two witnesses to the horrific double murder in the name of Islam told the BBC that the Taliban asked the villagers to attend the stoning through an announcement on loudspeakers in the mosque. "There was a big crowd of people... We were also asked to throw stones. After a while, the Taliban left. The woman was dead but the man was still alive... Some Taliban then came and shot him three times. The Taliban warned villagers if anyone does anything un-Islamic, this will be their fate.''

Anybody for ‘good’ Taliban?

Veil of darkness

Exploits of the burqa brigade

An apocryphal story is told of how an infamous smuggler who operated from coastal Gujarat in the 1970s would ensure raids on his house by the police would not result in the seizure of ‘incriminating’ material and documents. Every time the police knocked on his door, whether at high noon or sunset, he would send word that he was praying and could they please wait till his communion with god was over? Mindful of not hurting ‘minority sentiments’, the police would cool their heels on the street or sit in their jeeps while his men swiftly strapped gold biscuits, cash and hawala documents to their muscular bodies. Next, each one of them would don a voluminous, ankle-length burqa and stand around their boss. The door of the don’s den would then be thrown open to the patiently waiting policemen who would troop in, move from room to room, look under beds, sofas and cabinets, and, after failing to lay their hands on any ‘incriminating evidence’, profusely apologise before trooping out. Some 25 years later, a senior police officer who was a frequent visitor to the don’s den courtesy the raids which never led to either arrest or prosecution told me, “It was so frustrating. We knew all about his trick but there was nothing we could do about it.”

Kalimuddin Shams, who would contest West Bengal Assembly elections as a Left Front candidate and was the acknowledged mastaan of Kolkata’s Kidderpore Docks, used the same trick on the day of polling in his constituency. There would be endless queues of burqa-clad voters who would refuse to show their face or have their finger inked as that would amount to ‘intimacy with strangers’. Each one of them would step into the polling booth, vote for Kalimuddin Shams, and join the queue again. Needless to say, Hasina Bano would get to vote more than once, as would ‘her’ friends. On counting day, Kalimuddin Shams would be declared the winner with a huge margin. It’s not surprising that the CPI(M) held him in high esteem: He had mastered the art of rigging elections without leaving any tell-tale evidence behind. “They were brazen about it. You could see their lungi sticking out from beneath the burqa, their hairy arms would be visible. While standing in the queue they would casually lift the veil on their face and smoke beedis. But there’s nothing we could do,” the Chief Election Officer of West Bengal told me after demitting office. Kalimuddin Shams, who never tired of reminding officials “I am a Muslim first and then an Indian” and had once famously declared (while serving as a Minister in the Left Front Government) that “Muslims form a separate nation in this country”, was not someone to be trifled with.


The burqa has proved to be useful to others, too. Maulana Abdul Aziz, the chief cleric of Lal Masjid in Islamabad, tried to escape the July 4, 2007 Army crackdown ordered by Gen Pervez Musharraf on his jihad nursery clad in a burqa. The Pakistani commandoes proved to be tougher than the 1970s police of Gujarat and West Bengal’s polling staff, and the maulana in drag was spotted, arrested and carted off to prison. Islamabad’s Deputy Commissioner of Police, Chaudhry Muhammad Ali, told the BBC, “The maulana came out of the mosque with a group of girls wearing a burqa and carrying a handbag. The girls protested when he was stopped. But the officers were suspicious and after a search, Maulana Abdul Aziz was identified and arrested.” According to another version of the maulana’s failed flight to freedom, put out by AFP, he was “picked out” by security officials “because of his unusual demeanour”. The agency quoted an official as saying, “The rest of the girls looked like girls, but he was taller and had a pot belly.” A third version, which was gleefully related to me by a Pakistani journalist, was far more delightful. Apparently, the maulana decided to wear women’s shoes to make his disguise as authentic as possible. After much rummaging in the dark as bullets whizzed through shattered windows and shells landed on the roof of the women’s madarsa, he found a pair of high heels, slipped them on, and tottered out with a group of women, clutching a handbag. There was a problem though. The shoes were a size too small for the him and he couldn’t quite keep his balance on the high heels. It was this comical sight that drew the attention of security officials. Gen Musharraf’s regime charged Maulana Abdul Aziz with murder, incitement and kidnapping (of Islamabad’s prostitutes). The Pakistani Supreme Court, in its wisdom, decided to let him walk free on April 16, 2009. Public memory being notoriously short, the maulana was accorded a ‘rousing reception’ when he returned to Lal Masjid.

In more recent days, one of the Taliban suicide-bombers who attacked guest houses in Kabul on February 26, killing six Indians and other foreigners, is believed to have worn a burqa to avoid detection by security guards. It was a common trick used by Palestinian terrorists when suicidebombings were a feature of daily life in Israel. Meanwhile, our Supreme Court is hearing a petition seeking exemption for burqa-clad Muslim women from getting themselves photographed while registering as voters or revealing their faces to officials at polling booths, keeping in mind their “religious sensitivities”. On March 1, Muslims ran riot in Shimoga and Hassan in Karnataka, allegedly enraged by an article published by a local daily, Kannada Prabha, penned by dissident Bangladeshi writer Taslima Nasreen, questioning the religious basis of forcing Muslim women to wear the burqa. Taslima Nasreen has since clarified that she did not send the article to Kannada Prabha for publication. It transpires that the daily took the article from her website, but these details are not germane to the organised mob fury which resulted in the death of two persons.


Since we began with an anecdote, it would be in order to end with another. The former ‘Grand Mufti of Australia’, Sheikh Taj al-din al-Hilali, wanted for inciting terrorism in the country of his origin, Egypt, is given to describing women who do not wear the burqa as “uncovered meat” and blaming them for “enticing rapists”. On one occasion, while addressing the faithful after Friday prayers at Lakemba Mosque in Sydney, Sheikh Taj al-din al-Hilali rose to the defence of a serial rapist, Bilal Skaf, asserting, “If I come across a crime of rape, kidnap and violation of honour, I would discipline the man and teach him a lesson in morals and I would order the woman to be arrested and jailed for life. Why? Because, if she hadn’t left the meat uncovered, the cat wouldn’t have snatched it... If one puts uncovered meat out on the street or the footpath or the garden or the backyard without a cover, then the cats come and eat it. Is it the fault of the cat or the uncovered meat?”

Must we let ulema who insist “women should not be seen in public as they cause social turmoil” answer that question? What do you think?

[This appeared as my Sunday column Coffee Break in The Pioneer on March 7, 2010.]

Islam's stockpile of human bombs

Zulfikar Ali Bhutto had promised his people and the Muslim ummah the ‘Islamic Bomb’. He didn’t live to see his promise fulfilled by a thieving AQ Khan. But given the reality of mutually assured destruction just in case someone is tempted to push the button, Pakistan has to perforce keep the ‘Islamic Bomb’ in safe custody, a useless totem of power. But there’s a far more easily accessible variant of the ‘Islamic Bomb’ which is used with sickening regularity by those who are thrilled at the sight of human gore and flesh, preferably that of women and children. It is called the ‘Human Bomb’.

Before Islamist suicide-bombers became dime-a-dozen, theorists would agonise over what made a man or a woman voluntarily pull the trigger of an explosives laden belt or jacket, thus blowing himself or herself up along with unsuspecting victims, for instance children in a school bus in Israel. The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam had perfected the art of using the ‘human bomb’, despatching young men and women to commit dark deeds of mass murder or targeted killings, as in the case of Rajiv Gandhi’s assassination. But the LTTE’s suicide-bombers were driven by ideology, no matter how twisted and perverse it may have been. The cadre followed the leader’s command, or were executed for defiance.

It could be argued that the Islamist ‘human bomb’ is equally driven by ideology — the ideology of hate which fuels jihad in our times. But that would be a simplistic explanation. Perhaps a more abiding reason could be found in the faith they seek to espouse through their ghastly expression of fealty to Islam. The Quran variously praises the “man who gives his life to earn the pleasure of Allah...”, men who “fight in His cause, and slay and are slain…”; it promises rewards for the martyr, “be he slain or be he victorious”. The Hadith (Bukhari) extols the virtues of the ‘martyr’: “I would love to be martyred in Al1ah’s cause and then get resurrected and then get martyred, and then get resurrected again and then get martyred and then get resurrected again and then get martyred.” That and the promised pleasures of zannat with doe-eyed virgins.

The Grand Sheikh of Al Azhar, Muhammad Sayyid Tantawy, a kindly man of wisdom with whom I had several enlightening conversations during my stay in Egypt, would often point out the fallacy of quoting scripture to justify terror, especially suicide-bombing. “Those were different times, we live in a different world. We must understand the text in its context.” Grand Sheikh Tantawy, despite heading Sunni Islam’s most famous theological centre and the world’s oldest surviving centre of learning, had nothing but contempt for those who sought martyrdom through terror. While preachers of hate like Yusuf al-Qaradawi, who runs the most popular portal on Islam, have glorified suicide-bombers and exhorted followers to tread the path of violence as it leads directly to heaven, Grand Sheikh Tantawy has unhesitatingly described them as “enemies of Islam”.

Much as we would like the voice of Grand Sheikh Tantawy to drown the murderous discourse of lesser imams and self-appointed standard-bearers of Islam, unfortunately he and his tribe are in an awful minority. What prevails over the faithful who are easily persuaded by chapter and verse is the constant chant of the virtues of ‘martyrdom’, of becoming a shahid for the cause of faith: They are brainwashed into believing that the road to heaven is made shorter for those who “slay and are slain”, who are “martyred in Allah's cause”. Many of the suicide-bombers are illiterate or semi-literate, but there are also those who have not allowed their education to come in the way of their belief. Mohammed Atta, who flew a hijacked plane into the World Trade Center, was not educated in a madarsa, nor did Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Nigerian ‘underpants bomber’ who almost brought down a trans-Atlantic flight last Christmas, suffer denial and deprivation.

Yet, there is no single pattern or explanation to what drives men and women into committing a horrific act of self-destruction aimed at killing innocent people. Reem Riyashi, a 22-year-old mother of two toddlers, blew herself up at a check-post on Israel’s border with Gaza in January, 2004. It was publicised by Hamas as the ultimate expression of loyalty to Islam and sacrifice for the ummah. In a video tape recorded hours before she became a ‘martyr’ and which was shown on a television channel controlled by Hamas, she was heard saying, “I have always wished to knock at the door of heaven carrying skulls belonging to the sons of Zion.” Later it transpired Reem Riyashi’s husband had discovered that she was having an affair with a senior Hamas office-bearer. The hapless woman was given the choice of death due to infidelity at the hands of her enraged husband or death as a ‘martyr’ by becoming a suicide-bomber. She believed the latter would fetch her redemption in the eyes of god, her family and society; her children would respect her.

How, then, would we explain why an Iraqi mother strapped her unsuspecting little child with remote-controlled explosives and blew her up as she raced to collect chocolates from an American soldier who would visit the neighbourhood every day to play with the children? Or the sheer cruelty of a Taliban commander who trains young boys and girls to become suicide-bombers? The BBC recently ran the story of a 13-year-old girl who escaped from home, terrorised by the prospect of being turned into a ‘human bomb’. She told the BBC how her brother, who is a Taliban commander, trains ‘human bombs’, among them his own sisters. Nor is it easy to explain why Humam Khalid Abu-Mulal al-Balawi, an educated Jordanian who is believed to have been on the CIA’s payroll and was given the task of tracking Ayman al-Zawahiri, apart from being trusted by the Jordanian authorities, blew himself up at Forward Operating Base Chapman in Afghanistan, killing seven CIA agents. His family had no clue about what he was planning to do; they thought he had gone abroad to study medicine.

Explanations are not easy to find for a phenomenon that defies logic. We are now told that MI5 has come across evidence to believe Muslim doctors who trained in British hospitals have returned home and joined jihadi ranks with the task of preparing ‘bosom bombers’ — women who volunteer to have explosives implanted in their breasts that cannot be detected by scanners and X-ray machines at airports. Technology and theory spun around a terrorist’s psychoprofile — there cannot be a psychoprofile to profile all terrorists — can help us only up to a point. Beyond that, it’s a grey area, a no-man’s land where logic is replaced by the illogical urge to die and destroy.

-- Kanchan Gupta.


[This appeared as my Sunday column Coffee Break in The Pioneer on 07/02/10. (C) CMYK Printech Ltd.]

America legitimising Taliban!

It matters little to the 70 countries whose representatives met in London last Thursday to discuss the modalities of striking a deal with the Taliban in Afghanistan what Afghans think of the cowardly decision. “The London conference was not about Afghanistan, but about British Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s re-election campaign,” Mr Aziz Hakimi, who heads an NGO in Kabul, has been quoted as bitterly commenting after the adoption of a $ 500 million ‘Peace and Reintegration Trust Fund’. Those who take a less than charitable view of US President Barack Hussein Obama’s much-hyped but utterly hollow AfPak policy and America’s trans-Atlantic ally’s sudden urge to end the Afghan war have promptly dubbed the ‘Peace and Reintegration Trust Fund’ as the ‘Taliban Trust Fund’.

The outrage is understandable. The absurd theory of there being a ‘good’ Taliban with whom the world can co-exist in peace and a ‘bad’ Taliban who should be shunned has finally been put to practice. Worse, the London conference has succeeded in erasing the mythical line separating the ‘good’ Taliban from the ‘bad’ Taliban. Never mind the display of faux displeasure and bogus dismay by the Americans in London; we can be sure that the decision to bribe the Taliban, ‘good’ and ‘bad’, with “jobs and homes” — euphemism for sacks of greenbacks — so that they give up their murderous ways, had the Obama Administration’s prior approval. In fact, the proposal, for all we know, may have emanated from Washington, DC. It was unveiled in London.

Mr Mark Sedwill, Nato’s newly-appointed civilian chief in Afghanistan, has been candid enough to admit that the proposed deal will involve reaching out to “some pretty unsavoury characters”. In effect, this means seeking peace with those who have sheltered Al Qaeda’s top leaders, including Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri. They will be asked to “cut ties with Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups and pursue their political goals peacefully” for a certain price to be settled in cash. The US, at least officially, was opposed to a blanket offer, insisting that it should be limited to Taliban ‘fighters’. But it does not appear to have pushed this point too far, which only suggests that the ‘Peace and Reintegration Trust Fund’ is the outcome of a pre-rehearsed, carefully scripted, exercise.

Ironically, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, which worked in tandem with the US in the early-1990s to facilitate the birth and rise to power of Mullah Omar and his evil gang that the world came to know as the Taliban, will now “play a key role in the reintegration process”. Pakistan, cock-a-hoop over the outcome of the London conference, has offered its services to train the Afghan police and security forces. We could soon see the ISI expanding its reach into, and control over, Afghanistan. In a sense, the US has conceded Pakistan’s claim over Afghanistan; Islamabad can now look forward to regaining its ‘strategic depth’ through a puppet regime in Kabul.

Afghanistan’s President Hamid Karzai is welcome to believe that he has secured his job, but so did Mohammad Najibullah suffer from delusions of invincibility till he was strung up from a lamp-post with his family jewels stuffed into his mouth. Yet, there’s little that Mr Karzai can do, apart from hope that the American and Nato troops won’t just up and leave but hang around “for at least a decade”. The contours of the ‘reintegration process’ will emerge at a peace jirga which Mr Karzai says he will convene in the coming weeks. But it’s unlikely that he is in command of the unfolding situation: It’s more than likely that Pakistan, backed by the US, will now call the shots, to begin with covertly and increasingly overtly as it gets into the act of reclaiming what it had lost in the aftermath of 9/11. Unless, of course, things go horribly wrong and the ‘Taliban Trust Fund’ turns out to be a non-starter.

For the moment, there is no reason to believe that the proposed deal with the Taliban will unravel, or be an exclusive affair restricted to the ‘good’ and not the ‘bad’ among the wretched lot. It now transpires that regional commanders of the Taliban’s infamous Quetta Shura held secret talks with the UN’s special envoy to Afghanistan, Mr Kai Eide, in Dubai on January 8. The Guardian, which broke the story, quoted officials as saying, “They (the Taliban) requested the meeting to explore avenues for talks. They want protection to come out in public.” A UN official, confirming the Dubai talks, said, “The Taliban made overtures to the Special Representative to talk about peace talks… That information was shared with the Afghan Government and the UN hopes that the Afghan Government will capitalise on this opportunity.” Capitulate, and not capitalise, would be a more appropriate word.

Having decided to sup with the devil, it makes little or no sense to set a standard for those invited to the supper. Ms Hillary Clinton, rather than take recourse to subterfuge, was being honest when, commenting on the London deal, she said, “The starting premise is you don’t make peace with your friends.” Having accepted this fact, the Obama Administration should stop pretending that it is opposed to the idea of a “future Afghan Government that includes allies of Mullah Omar”. Nor should US Special Representative Richard Holbrooke make a show of insisting that the “peace plan should focus on low-ranking Taliban fighters motivated by money, not ideology”. Mr Holbrooke is welcome to insist “That is not on the agenda here. There is nothing happening on it involving the United States” and that “the Taliban’s renunciation of Al Qaeda is a red line” for the US. Such assertions on drawing a ‘red line’ amount to what is referred to as a ‘red herring’. If Pakistan and the Taliban suffer from serious trust deficit, so does the US.

India should be worried — very, very worried — about the US-sponsored attempt to legitimise the Taliban and thereby instal Pakistan’s proxy regime in Kabul. But with a limp-wristed Government taking instructions from the US, there is little that we can do other than fret and fume. There is something extremely sinister about the orchestrated clamour in the New Delhi Establishment, of which certain sections of the media are an integral part, for the resumption of India-Pakistan talks. That the dubious initiative to revive the stalled bilateral dialogue should coincide with the London conference and the appointment of Mr Shiv Shankar Menon as National Security Adviser is not entirely surprising. India’s humiliation at Sharm el-Sheikh will now be taken to its logical conclusion by Mr Manmohan Singh, ably assisted by Mr Menon. If you have any doubts, look at the craven alacrity with which Minister for External Affairs SM Krishna has signalled that the UPA Government is willing to “do business” with a Taliban legitimised by the US.

[This appears as my Sunday column Coffee Break in The Pioneer on January 31, 2010.]

Fleeing Swatis describe horrific scenes

Tens of thousands of people are fleeing Swat Valley, escaping the horrors inflicted by the Taliban who have been enforcing 'true Islam' in areas taken over by them with the help of the gun and terror.

The joyless world, bleak and dark, created by these erstwhile students of Deobandi madarsas, is what is upheld as the cherished desire of those who believe in radical Islam's slogan, "Democracy is the problem. Islam is the solution!" Here is a report filed by AFP from Peshawar:

PESHAWAR: Shop owner Saeed Khan has already buried one child killed in fighting between the Taliban and government forces in northwest Pakistan. He cannot bear to lose another.
So the 50-year-old bundled his wife, son and daughter onto a bus in the Taliban-infested town of Mingora in the Swat valley and hurried to the city of Peshawar, hoping for a future free from further bloodshed.
‘I lost my son, who was a police officer in Swat, in a suicide attack in Mingora early this year. I buried him in front of my house,’ Khan told AFP, tears rolling down his cheeks.
‘I don’t want to dig graves for my daughter and son in Mingora. That is why I left the area... His death broke me. Tell me where should I go and from whom should I seek justice?’
Local officials say more than 40,000 men, women and children have packed up and fled Mingora since Tuesday, fearing that Pakistan’s military could unleash a fresh ground and air assault against Taliban fighters.
The bedraggled refugees, some leading goats and cattle through the streets, are seeking safety for their loved ones, as the Taliban claimed to control 90 per cent of the former ski resort and tourist getaway, once favoured by Westerners.
‘I am immediately leaving the city with my wife, mother and four kids,’ said taxi driver Ali Rehman, 46.
‘I don’t really know my destination and destiny. My family and I need protection.’
At the bus stop in Peshawar — the capital of the North West Frontier Province — exhausted and anxious people told stories of horror as they poured out of vehicles carrying old bags, blankets and bundles of clothes.
Zarina Begum, 40, pleaded for help as she staggered off a bus.
‘A mortar hit my house and as a result, I lost one of my eyes. Please take me to hospital, I want medical treatment,’ Zarina begged.
‘They (Taliban) killed my husband, they slit his throat after accusing him of spying... I escaped Swat because I don’t want my son to be killed under the same circumstances. I don’t want to receive his decapitated body.’
The government had hoped that a peace deal agree in February would placate hardliners trying to impose a repressive brand of Islam, but instead the deal appears to be in tatters.
Clashes have flared in recent days throughout Swat, where wealthy Pakistanis and foreigners used to enjoy the breathtaking mountain scenery from plush hilltop hideaways, or cruise down the ski slopes.
Now, gunfire rings out in Mingora, where armed Taliban patrol the streets.
‘I’m really scared of going to Swat. Whenever I see Taliban, they look like vampires,’ said 25-year-old shop keeper Salman Mujtaba, who lost family members in a suicide attack near Mingora.
‘I will never ever go back to Swat. It has lost its beauty.’