Reign of terror

The kind of terror the Taiban unleashed in Swat during their rule is now beginning to come forward in its entirety. Perhaps this is because terrorised people are finally finding the courage to speak out about their ordeal, as they gain confidence that the reign of militants in the valley is truly over.

Following the accounts of the public flogging of two other women — including Chand Bibi, the young woman whose beating by bearded men was captured on camera and shook the world — a third woman, Mairaj Bibi, has told of being beaten by militants in 2008 in front of her father-in-law and eight year old son. An attempt seems to have been made to force her to confess to illicit relations with her father-in-law. Initial suggestions focus around the possibility of family rivalry and revenge extracted by those who had power at the time.

This fits in with other accounts of Taliban rule. Far from being driven by any kind of religious zeal, the militants seem to have been driven by a lust for power and many of their worst atrocities seem to be a means to settle small scores. The arming of thousands of young men by the Taliban offered them the opportunity to do so with no one to stop them. The accounts coming forward, such as those from Mairaj Bibi, appear to confirm this. There is no other way to explain what happened to her. The phenomenon of the Taliban needs to be studied in this light and exposed before people.

There is another aspect to all this. It is so far unclear if any of those involved have been put on trial or penalised. This needs to happen. Extra-judicial killings and other kinds of abuses we have heard of in Swat are no answer. They only worsen matters. We need a fair process of justice so that some of what went wrong in Swat can be undone.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 6^th, 2010.