The whirr of the sewing machine comes to a halt as Mohammad Ali looks up.

The clean, square-shaped face looks younger than the 28 years he quotes as his age.

He was injured in Kurram in April 2012. After six months at a military hospital in Kohat, he was sent to the Armed Forces Institute of Rehabilitation Medicine (AFIRM) Rawalpindi, where he continues to be treated.

He has now been a familiar face at AFIRM for ten months as he is fitted with a prosthetic leg and undergoes therapy. He is being taught how to use a prosthetic limb as well as go about everyday life. In addition, Ali is also learning to sew so “I can be of use when I return to my unit”, he says softly, without any doubt in his voice about his ‘return’.

The young man from Skardu had joined the army in 2006 and after six years, he is among those jawans of the Pakistan army who have paid the real price for the war the country has been fighting in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas since 9/11.

Pakistan’s complex and troubled relationship with its armed forces has meant that very little attention has been paid to the young men who have died or suffered serious injuries while fighting in Fata. Debating the military’s conduct in the war and its successive chiefs’ attitude towards the militants, few have remembered the fate of uniformed survivors, along with the civilians, of the terrorist attacks.

As Ali moves around the hospital on his crutches, he provides a human face to this story.

According to a newspaper report, the armed forces have suffered over 15,000 casualties in Fata since 2008.

And many of them, like the young man from Skardu, end up at AFIRM’s sprawling premises in a busy corner of Pindi. This military-run institute provides tertiary level care to ordinary soldiers who need to be fitted with prosthetics; teaches them how to go about their ordinary daily routine after having lost a limb; speech therapy for those who may have suffered injuries to their brains; and physical and mental rehabilitation.The wards of AFIRM are a painful reminder of what this war has meant for ordinary young men who entered the army.

All of them remember the exact date on which they were injured. There is no vagueness about that day.

“Sipahi Mohammad Tauseef” lies in bed, his lanky body covered by a white sheet. He was injured on “May 12, 2012” within months of his entering the army while Abdul Malik from Lakki Marwat, who can sit up on his bed and joined the Frontier Corps back in 2007, was injured on “June 28, 2012”. But beyond the dates, their stories merge into one another. Most of them recount that they are out on a patrol on foot when the convoy hits an IED. Evacuated to the nearest hospital, they are treated there — amputations and surgeries take place as does the paperwork for a place at AFIRM. Pindi usually becomes their next destination.

Though it is difficult to get exact figures from the military or the hospital of the injured soldiers since 9/11, the hospital’s rapid expansion in recent years provides some sense of the numbers. It was only an outpatient institute till 2005 which has since transformed into a 100-bed hospital while catering to 1,000 outpatients every day. Its beds are reserved for soldiers who spend months between here and home as they are treated.

Malik was in Sibi at a checkpost. He and three others moved to the side of the road where they triggered a land mine at “eleven in the morning”. He caught the worst of the blast — first evacuated to the headquarters, he was sent to CMH Quetta, where a rod was placed in his left arm and the right one amputated before he was sent to AFIRM.

He goes home occasionally to visit his family but keeps returning to the hospital.

Tauseef, on the other hand, suffered a spinal injury due to which he has no sensation below his waist because of which he cannot even spend too long at home — without expert care, an overlong stay at home gives him bed sores. His doctor, a petite, fair, young woman in a sari and a head scarf, explains that he may be given stem cell therapy.

What are the chances of such patients? She says that “if successful, the patients can get sensation back” in their limbs but not “motor skills”. — Arifa Noor