Long arm of the outlaws

PESHAWAR/KARACHI: Failing to target the family of a lashkar chief in Peshawar, militants killed his brother in Karachi. This is the first instance of militants settling their scores across the country.

Abdul Manan, the older brother of Adezai Qaumi Lashkar chief Dilawar Khan, was gunned down by unidentified men in the limits of Boat Basin Police Station on January 24, 2009. Boat Basin police lodged an FIR on the complaint of the deceased’s son Abid Raza. However, Raza said that no one was nominated in the FIR.

Dilawar told The Express Tribune that he got a phone call from Darra Adamkhel Taliban within 15 minutes of his brother’s murder, informing him of the killing. They also threatened to bomb Manan’s funeral and his house when people came to offer condolences.

Raza added that the spokesperson of the Darra Adamkhel Taliban took responsibility for the killing.

The Adezai Qaumi Lashkar was formed at the police’s insistence to counter the Taliban in the area. According to Dilawar, his brother was the first man from Adezai village to be killed by the militants, claiming that since then at least 35 people from their village have been killed in suicide attacks and target killing incidents.

A father of six sons and two daughters, Manan, 55, was the oldest member of the family and worked at Haroon Oil Mills as field officer. He had been living in the city for 30 years.

Raza, who used to work in Karachi for the All Pakistan Oil Tankers Association (APOTA) where he represented the Adezai tribe, moved to his ancestral village following his father’s murder. The village is about 25 kilometers from Peshawar, close to the border of Darra Adamkhel.

According to Manan’s colleagues, the family did not nominate anyone in the FIR because they wanted to shift his body to his village without legal hindrances. “The police cannot arrest militants. Rather they would have harassed innocent Pukhtoons.”

“We are living here in terror,” Jamluddin, another member of APOTA said. “On one hand Taliban and other enemies are targeting us and on the other people label us as land mafia or Taliban.”

While no one was nominated in the FIR, people from the community are convinced that Manan was killed by militants. “He was shot in the head and this is how militants kill their victims,” one of them said.

Dozens of armed men now guard Dilawar’s house in Adezai. The road leading to the house is barricaded and men armed with machine guns stand on the roof.

Inside the house, cabinets and closets are stocked with light and heavy arms, and family members remain armed round the clock with Kalashnikovs.

As most of the oil tankers are owned by the people living in tribal areas of the country, each tribe has been given representation in APOTA. The Adezai tribe has more than 120 oil tankers.

So far police investigations suggest that Manan was shot by a middle aged, bearded man. They say that the killer was hiding behind an oil tanker and fired at Manan as he was going on his bike.

“Manan was killed because of his brother’s foolishness,” one of his associates said, adding: “He has never been involved in any enmity with anybody in Karachi.”

Though this is the first case of target killings by militants in Karachi that has come to light, earlier the Crime Investigation Department (CID) had arrested Hakeemullah Swati, a member of the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan’s Fazlullah group, from Orangi Town. He was said to have beheaded a militant for being an “informant of intelligence agencies”. However, no other case with direct TTP involvement has come to the surface yet. At the same time, the CID and Special Investigative Unit in the city have arrested many people recently who are allegedly associated with the Afghan Taliban, TTP or Lashkar-i-Jhangvi.

Published in the Express Tribune, June 8^th, 2010.