#NeverForget: In the moment of weakness

Little did Shalozan Colony residents know how daybreak would dawn on them.

PESHAWAR:

Nightfall was still negotiating its exit with daybreak. Badhaber’s Shalozan Colony was still holding tight to the last moments of sweet slumber before stumbling through the usual morning drill. It was in that very moment of weakness when hell struck on Friday.

Inqilab Road cuts through Pakistan Air Force (PAF) Badhaber base which is situated a kilometre away from the Indus Highway. Policeman Mohammad Suleman had just completed his morning prayers and was proceeding to join his colleagues at Inqilab check post when gunfire broke the silence.

“It was around 5:30am. We could distinctly hear RPG-7 fire from inside the base. We rushed our armoured personnel carrier towards it but could not enter the compound,” he said. Suleman added they instead chose to cover the road while security officials took care of business inside the base.

Residents of nearby Surizai village were also woken up by the roar of the weaponry in use. “My mother was offering prayers when bullet casings clattered, dropped inside our house. She asked me to go out and see what was going on,” said Shahzeb. There he witnessed a thick cloud of smoke emerge from within rear boundary of the base. “I tried to ask the watchmen deployed near the wall but they instead asked me to get back inside,” he said.

Shahzeb said the PAF had earlier provided money and land to the locals to move away from the base’s boundary wall. “We had shifted away from the base and the PAF had constructed another wall in the area evacuated by us.”

[Un]touchable

A 15-foot-wide unpaved road separates the civilian area from the base’s boundary wall which has been topped with barbed wire. “Even we cannot touch that wall after sunset. It is baffling how the militants entered the base,” he said.

While security officials were mowing down militants one at a time, the media was not allowed to enter the premises. Up until noon it was not clear how the attackers managed to enter the high-security military installation.



A Rescue 1122 official emerging from the inside claimed the team had received 25 bodies, including 16 from the mosque where grenades were thrown.

“Bodies of nine to ten militants are still inside as they have not been cleared as yet. They had come in white Suzuki van that did not bear a registration number,” said a security official who disclosed the engine and chassis numbers of the vehicle. While the official was sharing the information, Edhi and Rescue 1122 ambulances were speeding in and out of the base, carrying bodies.

The base is home to no strategic assets of PAF but holds historic importance in the context of the Afghan war. It was constructed by the US during Field Marshal Ayub Khan’s regime.

American U2 planes flew in and out of the base to keep an eye on the Soviet Union. They abandoned the base, locally called the Badhaber Scheme and Canada, in the mid-80s.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 19^th, 2015.