A clinic, a court house - now just a relic

Though the Taliban are supposedly long-gone, traces of the former rule and militant presence still haunt the area.

SWAT: Not much has changed in Tehsil Kabal, where militants had not too long ago established their own writ and Shariah courts with prisons for those who dared to defy their will and rules. Two years on, since the Army claimed to have restored the writ of the government, traces of the former rule and militant presence still haunts the regressive area.

The famous Taliban court in Tehsil Kabal which laid down sentences based on the Taliban’s own interpretation of Shariah lies in ruins - but its original owners have yet to return to the area to reclaim the building.

The court was set up in a building which was seized from a reputable family of the area. Previously owned by a physician who used the place to run a busy clinic, it was later used by the Taliban to pass sentences on many of the same people who had used it in times of sickness and injury.

“When we realised that militancy was growing and expanding, we left our houses and property including the clinic. The Taliban captured our property and started living in it.” Kamal Khan, the owner of the building told The Express Tribune. The clinic was converted into a Shariah court and his house as their rest house.

“That time when we left, we took nothing with us. We were left empty-handed,” he said, adding that his uncle, the physician, permanently shifted to Islamabad where he opened his clinic and still lives there - despite the fact that the Taliban have supposedly been shunned from the area. Jahan Sher, a resident of Kabal and an eye-witness of the proceedings of different cases conducted in the court told The Express Tribune, recalled where Husain, a high profile Talib Commander and governor of Kabal area, used to sit and how the verdicts were announcement.

“They did not follow Islamic Shariah law or act upon Quranic principles but did whatever suited their whims,” he said. Jahan Sher told of a harrowing verdict of one of the many cases conducted under the ruthless regime of the Taliban, which ordered two quarrelling men to imprisonment in a room of a deserted building, which was the abode of snakes and scorpions.

In another case, Jahan Sher said, a person filed a report against his neighbour for not returning a loan of Rs16,000, following which the Taliban arrested the second party, took the amount from him, but gave only Rs2,000 back to the owner of the money, claiming Rs14,000 as their fee.

Similarly, Kamal said that the Taliban held in custody one of his relatives for two months before releasing him for Rs600,000. “PDMA has registered the case, but has still not paid the compensation,” Kamal added.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 14^th, 2010.