Drone strike gives new excuse to delay workers recovery

No headway has been made in the case of Gomal Zam Dam workers since they were kidnapped.

PESHAWAR: Ten months on, the recovery of the abducted Gomal Zam Dam workers still seems to be a far-fetched goal for all concerned, including the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (K-P) Governor House and the kings of the tribal belt, the political agents.

The Governor’s Secretariat, FATA Secretariat and political administration of North and South Waziristan agencies have failed to recover the eight Water and Power Development Authority (Wapda) employees, who were part of the Gomal Zam Dam project. This is in spite of help offered from external quarters, including the Ansar Burney Trust which made appeals to the abductors and offered financial assistance to the victims’ families.

Things seemed to grind to a halt on June 6 when the political administration told the Peshawar High Court (PHC) that the process of recovery ‘slowed down’ after the May 29 drone strike in North Waziristan Agency, (NWA) which killed Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan’s second-in-command Waliur Rehman.

The drone attack caused panic among tribesmen and the process for negotiations between the tribesmen and abductors could not progress, said an official of the South Waziristan Agency (SWA) political administration in court on Thursday. But such reasoning rings hollow in the ears of family members who are desperately waiting for their loved ones.

“They are just making excuses since they are not interested in the recovery of our relatives,” said Nazrana*, one of the abducted worker’s relatives. Nazrana appears at case hearings and also talks to the press but has always requested anonymity.

Speaking about her meetings with former governor Barrister Masood Kausar, she said Kausar ‘seemed’ to be actively involved, but made no real progress.

“Had they (the workers) been his (Kausar’s) relatives, he would have recovered them the next day,” said Nazrana. She recently also met K-P Chief Minister Pervez Khattak and minister-nominated Shaukat Yousafzai who have assured her their “all-out support”.

In August 2012, a few days before Eidul Fitr, nine workers employed at the Gomal Zam Dam project site in SWA were abducted by unidentified men when they were on their way home.

The abductors demanded ransom – said to be set at Rs160 million – however, when authorities failed to pay the amount by the given deadline, the armed men killed one of their hostages, who was an employee of the Frontier Works Organisation. After this, the deadline was extended to December 3.

The deadline was further relaxed upon the request of family members.

Ikramullah, a relative of one of the abducted workers, filed a petition before the PHC last year. Authorities did not move an inch further, despite having been directed by the court to do so.  Ground realities surrounding the kidnapping still remain as ambiguous as they were in August 2012.

Wapda security in-charge and other relevant figures have been summoned by the court, but all seemed to regurgitate different versions of “efforts to recover the eight workers are underway and a jirga is negotiating with abductors.”

*Name has been changed to protect identity

Published in The Express Tribune, June 10^th, 2013.