Despite Uzma’s prayers, the K-P Assembly lost one of its members less than a week after taking oath. PHOTO: RADIO.GOV.PK
It was only last Wednesday on the eve of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (K-P) Assembly’s maiden session when one lawmaker prayed for the safety of all MPAs.
The lawmaker was Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam-Fazl’s (JUI-F) Uzma Khan, who stood up from the women’s section after taking oath and prayed that the house not lose a single member over the next five years.
Uzma, who was also a member of the previous assembly, said it lost 12 of its members during the five-year term.
“May all of us see each other safe and sound at the end of the assembly’s tenure,” she prayed.
Despite Uzma’s prayers, the K-P Assembly lost one of its members less than a week after taking oath.
Fareed Khan, a Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) legislator from Hangu, is the first MPA to fall prey to violence. Fareed, with his large flowing beard and slippers, was conspicuous among the 121 lawmakers present at the oath-taking ceremony. Unfortunately, violence irrespective of social divide is routine for the denizens of K-P. To say a majority of people have been affected as a result would not be a tall claim. Lawmakers are no exception to this assertion.
Chronology of violence
The 2008-2013 assembly lost 12 MPAs over its five years tenure. Three of them were killed in militant attacks, while another died of wounds sustained in a suicide attack. These figures exclude those members who narrowly escaped attempts on their lives.
Alamzeb Khan, an Awami National Party (ANP) lawmaker from Peshawar, was the first to be assassinated when he was killed in a bomb blast on February 10, 2009 on Dalazak Road.
Following him, former K-P minister for prisons Mina Nisar Gul Kakakhel sustained injuries when his convoy was attacked in Darra Adamkhel in the south of the provincial capital. Nisar suffered bullet wounds and three of his guards died in the assault on June 11, 2009.
Dr Shamsher Ali Khan, an ANP lawmaker from Swat, was also killed in a suicide attack on his hujra on December 1, 2009.
MPA Mohammad Ali Khan sustained serious injuries in an attack in March 2012 but he never fully recovered and died in November 2012.
Also in March 2012, Qaumi Watan Party (QWP) provincial president Sikandar Khan Sherpao, currently a senior minister in K-P, and his father Aftab Ahmed Khan Sherpao were targeted in a suicide attack in Charsadda. Both father and son survived.
The late Bashir Ahmed Bilour, a senior minister for the Local Government and Rural Development Department, was not so lucky, however. He was the last lawmaker of the preceding assembly to fall prey to militancy. Bilour was assassinated in a suicide attack on December 22, 2012 in Dhaki Nalbandi near the historic Qissa Khawni Bazaar.
He had previously survived two suicide attempts; both narrow escapes. The first was at the main gate of Qayyum Stadium in Peshawar Cantonment on November 11, 2008 and the second was on March 11, 2009 near Sarki Gate.
Published in The Express Tribune, June 4th, 2013.
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