analysis: Kidnapping for ransom: a family’s ordeal —Farhat Taj
analysis: Kidnapping for ransom: a family’s ordeal —Farhat Taj
Courtesy to "Daily Times"
The Pakistan Army is conducting an operation in Bara, Khyber Agency.
Thousands of people of Bara have become IDPs due to the operation.
Despite the operation, the Mangal Bagh group is active and kidnapping
people for ransom as usual
Various jihadi outfits based in
FATA generate revenues through kidnapping for ransom. One of them is
Bara-based Lashkar-e-Islam led by Mangal Bagh in Khyber Agency.
Villagers in the neighbouring areas, Badaber and Behzad Khel, have made
lashkars to protect the communities from kidnapping by this group.
The
group has kidnapped many people. Some were released after their
families provided the demanded ransom. Others are not that lucky
because their families could not afford to raise the demanded amount of
money.
Qaid Hussain, a teenager from Parachinar, is believed to
have been kidnapped by the militants linked with Lashkar-e-Islam. He
was kidnapped in January 2010 from Peshawar where he was a first year
student at a local college. I had a chance to talk with his grieving
parents, Kamal Hussain and Raz Bibi. Amid tears they narrated their
ordeal.
The kidnappers demanded Rs 10 million as ransom for
release of their son. The amount is simply beyond the parents’ reach.
Kamal Hussain runs a grocery shop in Parachinar and this is his only
source of income to support his family that consists of 10 people. The
family has been requesting the kidnappers to reduce the amount.
Finally, the amount was reduced to Rs 2 million. But this amount too is
out of reach for the family. The kidnappers have refused to cut down
the amount any further.
The kidnappers have called Kamal Hussain
about 70 times since January 2010 to negotiate the price or threaten
the family. Once the caller informed that they have put new clothes on
Qaid Hussain. “I began to cry. I thought my son has been killed and the
metaphor ‘new clothes’ implied that he has been wrapped up in a kafan
(shroud),” said the father. The caller responded that he was free to
draw any conclusions from the metaphor, but he should remember that
even the boy’s dead body would not be given to the family if the ransom
had not been paid.
A few days later, another call came to inform
that his son has been kidnapped because he is a Shia. Shias are kafir
and his son will be killed. A month later, another caller threatened
that Kamal Hussain must immediately pay the ransom or they will take
the kidneys out from his son’s body and sell them. The caller informed
that they have contacts with doctors who can operate upon the boy and
also buy his kidneys for a very good price.
Many a time, the
kidnappers call to hurl abuses at Kamal Hussain and hang up the phone
without listening to him. The kidnappers say that Hussain is an
irresponsible father who cannot arrange the money to win the release of
his son. Hussain and his wife said they would already have given the
money to the kidnappers if they could have arranged for it.
Different
people in the group of kidnappers have been contacting him on the
phone. Each time the caller speaks Pashto language with Afridi or
Waziri accent. Qaid Hussain has never been allowed by the kidnappers to
talk to his family on the phone. The family has been begging for a few
words with him, but the kidnappers never heeded. They keep saying that
the boy has been kept in the mountains where there is no phone.
Kamal
Hussain informed that the police in Peshawar have been able to trace
the location of the calls. All calls have been made from Bara, Khyber
Agency, in FATA and various localities of Peshawar, like Hayatabad and
Defence Colony. The police, however, have not been able to arrest the
kidnappers even when they have been calling from within the limits of
Peshawar.
Qaid Hussain’s kidnapping has made his mother ill. She
is sick with high blood pressure and at times has headaches and fever.
She informed me that life has become hell for the whole family. Day and
night the family weeps for Qaid Hussain. No one can eat or sleep in
peace. Two of his youngest sisters, one in class two and the other in
class four in a local school, cry for their brother every single day.
The
parents request the president and prime minister of Pakistan, chief
minister, governor and police high ups of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa to help in
the release of their son from the kidnappers. The parents said they
simply do not have the means to arrange for the money the kidnappers
ask for. If they had the means, they would have straightaway handed the
ransom amount to the kidnappers. They are helpless and out of sheer
helplessness they plead with the state authorities and everyone in
Pakistan to help them win freedom for Qaid Hussain from the captivity
of the kidnappers.
The Pakistan Army is conducting an operation
in Bara, Khyber Agency. Thousands of people of Bara have become IDPs
due to the operation. Despite the operation, the Mangal Bagh group is
active and kidnapping people for ransom as usual. This brings us to the
question: who is the Pakistan Army fighting with if the Mangal Bagh
group continues to kidnap people or torture the relatives of those
already kidnapped? It is unbelievable that our strong army has not been
able to kill or capture Mangal Bagh and destroy his gang of thugs! Is
the army helpless or is the whole operation a farce?
The
perception in FATA is that the jihadi outfits are the assets of the
intelligence agencies to create chaos in the area and generate the
impression in the world that the people of FATA are savages and the
Pakistan Army is doing a great favour to the world by fighting them.
The ultimate aim is to make the Americans run away from Afghanistan
through jihadi militancy. Once the US is out, the intelligence agencies
would be in a position to impose a jihadi government on Afghanistan.
The people of FATA, like Qaid Hussain and his family, are paying the
painful price of this policy.
The writer is a research fellow
at the Centre for Interdisciplinary Gender Research, University of
Oslo, and a member of Aryana Institute for Regional Research and
Advocacy. She can be reached at bergen34@yahoo.com
In : Farhat Taj
Notes