Beards - and polio - in Taliban
country By Ashfaq Yusufzai
PESHAWAR - "Shaving beard isn't done here.
Contact only for hair cut," reads a sign pasted
outside the entrance of a barber's shop in Upper
Dir, a rugged and mountainous district in
Pakistan's North West Frontier Province (NWFP)
that borders Afghanistan.
All the barber
shops in Timergarah, the district headquarters,
and Munda have stopped providing shaving services
since leaflets advising them that it was Islamic
to grow a beard were distributed
by
an unnamed group last Tuesday.
On March 4,
there were explosions inside two saloons, a music
shop and four other shops in the adjoining Bajaur
Agency, part of the Federally Administered Tribal
Agencies along the restive Afghan border. The
Taliban have banned music in the tribal areas, and
have started fining taxi drivers found listening
to music.
According to news reports,
a video shop in front of a police station in
Bannu, the home town of NWFP Chief Minister
Akram Durrani, was attacked by armed men suspected to
be Taliban on February 27, who destroyed compact-disc players
and CDs of Urdu, English and Indian films.
The district of Tank, on the
border with South Waziristan, has slipped into the
control of the Taliban. There is a total collapse
of civil administration. Police stations remain
closed after sundown and Taliban fighters patrol
the streets and the bazaars riding on their
favorite Datsun pickups.
Most Taliban
groups and their al-Qaeda friends crossed over to
Pakistan's tribal region after US-led forces
toppled their government in Afghanistan in late
2001. Since then, thousands of people, including
Taliban fighters and locals, have died in military
attacks conducted by either the US or the Pakistan
Army.
"The spillover of militancy from
tribal areas to settled parts of the NWFP is
understandable, because the establishment is
supporting the Taliban and al-Qaeda," asserted
Peshawar-based Afrasiab Khattak, a lawyer and
human-rights activist who is an expert on
Afghanistan.
According to Khattak, missile
and air attacks by the US on alleged "terrorist"
targets inside Pakistan's tribal areas have worked
to the advantage of the Taliban, who have
increased their support base in these border
regions. There are persistent reports that
sympathetic tribesmen are providing shelter and
support to Osama bin Laden and other al-Qaeda
fugitives.
Last September,
President General Pervez Musharraf signed a
controversial peace deal with the Pakistan-based
Taliban groups, which has resulted in a new
assertiveness displayed by the Islamic radicals in
these Pashtun-dominated, semi-autonomous border
areas.
"Both the Pakistan and Afghanistan
governments are accusing one another of supporting
the Taliban and al-Qaeda, but practically both
have failed to stem the tide of militancy,"
commented Ashraf Ali, a scholar at Peshawar
University who is researching the Taliban.
Administrative control in North and
South Waziristan and Swat district has slowly
slipped into the hands of radicals. A demoralized
police force, which has been the target of
suicide attacks - most recently in January - is unable
to provide protection to businesses banned by
the Taliban. Some music-shop owners have moved to
Peshawar.
"The Taliban frequently visited
our shop and asked us to close down. One day, they
delivered an ultimatum: either you close it or we
will do it for you," said Hamza Khan, whose family
owned a chain of music shops in Tank for 20 years,
and has now relocated to Peshawar.
The
local Taliban burned TV sets even in Charsadda
district, which is adjacent to Peshawar. "The
government has lost its writ due to which the
Taliban are thriving," observed Ali, who is doing
his doctorate.
Even girls' schools in
upscale Peshawar are receiving anonymous threats
of suicide bombing. Several schools were recently
forced to close after the administration received
threatening letters. The Taliban are against
providing education for girls and letting women
work.
Last month, two
government-run girls' schools in Mardan, the second-biggest
district in NWFP, were shut down as a
precaution after warnings from Taliban groups. Another
letter warned that female students must be veiled
from head to toe or the schools would be blown up.
Religious extremists in the district of
Swat have derailed the government's anti-polio
campaign. At the forefront is a charismatic local
cleric, Maulana Fazlullah. "Anyone getting
crippled by polio or killed by an epidemic is a
martyr," he announced at a sermon during Friday
prayers.
The cleric, who likes
to ride on a horse followed by his supporters
in the bazaars, said: "Vaccination of children
against polio is a conspiracy by the US to make
the coming generation sterile."
In
February 2006, in neighboring Darra Adamkhel,
religious extremists killed a senior doctor and
health workers involved in the polio campaign.
Anti-US sentiments are growing even in
Peshawar city, rued researcher Ali. "Some barbers
are refusing to shave off beards - a sign of their
hatred for the US," he said.
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