Feeling inconvenienced: ‘No militants live here’, say locals under police survey

Claim law-enforcement agencies should instead focus on militants crossing into settled areas.

PESHAWAR: Residents of villages located within the jurisdiction of Badhaber police station have expressed their disapproval over the door-to-door survey being carried out in the locality to collect demographic details.

A resident of Shahab Khel told The Express Tribune on Tuesday, “This exercise in the scorching heat in Ramazan will lead the police and the government nowhere.”



“The police have assumed militants reside in the villages being surveyed and fire at airplanes from their rooftops,” said another local, wishing to remain anonymous as he referred to the attack on a Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) plane as it attempted to land in Peshawar, a week ago.

“There are no militants living here. However, in the past eight months we have seen a group of around 30 militants freely roaming in the area at nightfall. They are never challenged by any law-enforcement officials,” claimed the Shahab Khel resident.

Another resident of the village said instead of paying attention to the movement of militants from Khyber Agency to Peshawar, law-enforcement agencies decided to conduct a survey which is proving to be a painful endeavour for police and residents alike.

Slow and steady

“For the past three days, they have been coming to our houses and are trying to get us to fill forms. All males of a family above the age of 14 are required to give fingerprints but the problem is people have to go to their jobs, colleges, etc,” he added.

The head of the family is also required to be photographed. The survey teams have digital cameras and are being assisted by patwaris but the pace of the survey is still slow, he said.

The resident claimed the process is cumbersome; the teams start the survey at 5am and by 10am they only manage to cover a few houses. Around 130 to 140 houses are covered daily in each village.

The survey is a difficult task, a police official told The Express Tribune. “It’s hot and we’re fasting.”

He added, “Around 1,000 policemen have been deployed in addition to patwaris but the teams cannot work for more than a few hours each day. The effectiveness of such a database is questionable.”

The demographic survey of Suleman Khel, Ahmad Khel, Bazid Khel, Garhi Mali Khel, Kaga Wala and Shahab Khel villages started on Sunday amid strict security arrangements. The decision to collect this data was taken during a high-level meeting of the police after the attack on the PIA aircraft. IGP Nasir Khan Durrani directed a complete database be compiled with information on the houses and residents of these villages.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 2^nd, 2014.