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| July 05, 2006 | Wednesday | Jumadi-ul-Sani 8, 1427 |
Peshawar-born British soldier killed in Afghanistan
PESHAWAR, July 4: He was a typical Peshawari lad when he left his abode in the alleyways of the old Qissakhwani’s Shahwali Qatal. At 14, he went to England where his father owned a small store in Birmingham. At that time nobody had the slightest idea that the journey of his life would end so close to his home.
Lance Corporal Jabron Hashmi, 24, of the Intelligence Corps attached with the Royal Signals, died on Saturday in an attack by insurgent Taliban in Sangin, in the Helmand province of Afghanistan.
He is the first British-Muslim and fifth British soldier to die in the insurgency-infested Helmand during the last three weeks.
Perhaps it had been preordained. “He had always wanted to become a soldier,” recalls his uncle Javed Iqbal. “He wanted to be in army.”
But Jabron’s closest friend Tahir Rafiq says that he joined the British Royal Army because he believed that it would help him in his education. “He thought it would open up windows of opportunities for him.”
Born in Peshawar, Jabron grew up in and around the old Qissakhwani, playing cricket and basketball, his cousin and childhood friend Sanan Javed recalls. It was in 1995-96 when Jabron, his two sisters and mother moved to England to live with his father.
His class fellow in the Peshawar Model School, from where he passed his seventh grade, does not believe that a lovable so like him has died so young. “I thought my wife was joking when she called to tell me about his death,” Tahir Rafiq said.
And so it is for his uncle who brought up Jabron like his own son. “My wife, who received an early morning call from England, was dumbfounded and handed the phone to me. I couldn’t just believe that Jabron was dead,” Mr Iqbal said.
The news about his sudden death, that too in Afghanistan, was all the more shocking. According to his uncle, Jabron had told only his elder brother Zeeshan Hashmi about his deployment in Afghanistan. “Nobody else in the family knew, not even his sisters and parents.”
All thought that Jabron was on a training assignment in Germany, where he had gone before his deployment to Afghanistan about a month ago.
Tahir recalls having advised his best friend against going to Afghanistan. “I told him not to go,” he said. “But Jabron said that he was not going there for combat. He told me that he would be restricted to his camp and would not be involved in fighting. He was not the guy who had anything to do with fighting. He was still under-training and I don’t know how the British Army could send under-training cadets to fight,” he said.
Jabron loved his old ancestral home, just opposite the narrow lane that was once the abode of Bollywood superstar Shah Rukh Khan. The house, one of the three in the same street, is now locked. But Jabron would make it a point to go there. “He would stand there and kiss the door,” recalls his uncle, a businessman.
Friends and family say Jabron had not changed much. “He loved Peshawar,” says Sanan. The last time he came, about a year and a half ago, he stayed with his uncle for two months. “Most of the time he would hang out, roaming in Peshawar,” says his cousin. “He loved to hang out with his old friends.”
Tahir says that Jabron wanted to return and settle down in Peshawar three years later. “He thought he would make enough money to come back and start his own business here.”
The irony is that while hundreds of Pakistani security personnel have been killed in the restive north-western tribal regions of Pakistan in their war against enemies of US-led coalition forces in Afghanistan, it was a son of their soil who died under the Union Jack.
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