Escape plan: suicide

"I was forced to marry my cousin against my will. Since I am the only child of my parents, they married me with a lot of pomp and show and gave me everything in the name of dowry. On the day of my marriage, I was feeling lifeless but for my parents’ sake, I had to accept this relationship.

The disaster started with my wedding night. My husband saw my reluctance as a sign of my relationship with another man. He called me a whore and tortured me mentally and physically.

I tolerated everything so that my parents don’t have to suffer because of me. But then came a point where I couldn’t bear it any more, not for anyone. I filed for a divorce. I tried suicide many a time but was saved.

My saviours don’t know that death is my only refuge.

— Homemaker (female), age 24, from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa

Unrelenting: boom of the bombs

"It was 21st of Ramazan when a dreadful incident occurred in my life,” the young man says.

He was attending a religious meeting in Lahore when the first bomb went off. He remembers seeing body parts ‘hovering in the air’ and then the sounds of screams coming through thick smoke.

A suicide bomber triggered the second explosion as rescuers were loading the wounded into ambulances and he was forced to watch helplessly as one of his friends succumbed to his wounds. He does not remember hearing the third bomb, another suicide blast.

By the end of the day, 31 people were said to be dead and at least 170 had been wounded, although the full toll of suffering will probably never be known.

As an angry mob set fire to a local police station in protest, the prime minister condemned the attacks as “cowardly acts of terrorism” and promised that those “playing with the lives of innocent people would not escape the law of the land.”

More than two years have passed since that day, but the man remains haunted by what he witnessed.

“I started hating terrorists and held responsible government for that awful occurrence,” he says. “There is no assurance of one’s life in Pakistan. Why are thousands of innocents being killed every year? We need good governance and rule of law in our country.”

Resolutely murderous

I belong to a tribe which was involved in tribal conflicts. While I was at work, my family entered into a conflict with some neighbours, and the opponents also included my name in the FIR. As I was returning home, the police caught me and put me in a lock-up.

After my release, I sought revenge; accompanied by my friends, I attacked our opponents. One person was killed and many were injured.

Then I become an absconder and now, I work with a criminal group which is involved in theft, robbery, vehicle snatching, kidnapping for ransom etc.

I don’t feel any guilt as the opponents were very powerful and I could not do anything against them legally. That’s why I chose this way.

— Unemployed man, age 28, from Sindh

Abuse and power

A man recounts his rape of a woman ‘captured’ by the Taliban in Afghanistan.

“In one fight, we captured many girls and Taliban gave one of them to me who was 15 years old,” he says, “the girl kept on begging me but I did not listen to her and abused her forcefully.”

Another man says that he was attempting to emigrate to the European Union via Greece, using the services of an agent. He was asked to take another man’s son with him. While waiting for their departure, the man and boy stayed together in a hotel room in Karachi.

“My intentions regarding the boy turned negative,” he says, explaining how he coerced the boy into having sex with him. The man was arrested on the way to his destination, but he says that the boy managed to escape from the police (and from the storyteller as well).

Eyes wide shut

Some women tell stories of how extremists have prevented them receiving an education.

One says she was allowed by her parents to go to school (“being a girl that was an unusual privilege to get”). One day, however, she had just left school when it was hit by a bomb planted by the Taliban, trapping one of her friends.

“I rushed back towards the school to locate my friend,” she says. “The building had turned into rubble. The scene inside was horrible. Pieces of flesh were scattered everywhere.” She is now in a refugee camp, a loner who does not like to go outside or to socialise. “This event has totally changed my life,” she says.

Aman remembers how he performed poorly at primary school due to bullying by the elder cousins he attended with.

Moving onto lower secondary school, he found that there were no proper classes, so he transferred to another school. Unfortunately, he was then savagely beaten by a teacher because his previous schooling had left him far below the required standard in the English language.

“I was unable to stand up,” he remembers. “I would even bleed when I would go to the bathroom. I was bed-ridden for 15 days.” He left school as a result and is now a day labourer: “I am daily wager because of the physical punishment meted out to me by a teacher.”

A girl was humiliated in her madressah when she missed a day’s schooling due to her mother’s illness.

Her teacher cut her hair off in front of the rest of the students. After that, she refused to return. “My life was dropped into the darkness of illiteracy,” she says. “I rejected education forever.”

"I am from Neelum Valley in Kashmir. There used to be a constant presence of fear in our house due to crossfire at Line of Control. The security situation also affected me and my siblings’ education since our school was destroyed in an attack.

Forced by ever deteriorating security situation and constant fear, my family moved. My siblings and I could not continue our education, and I was forced to attend a madressah. The situation in my hometown not only cost us our privileged status in terms of family property, but also minimised and virtually eliminated our access to quality education.

There are times when I remember my friends and peers from back home, and I worry about their safety. Even today, I often have nightmares of bombing and crossfire. I had to migrate away from my hometown at a young age and have missed it ever since. The depression of being away from your own town stays with you for the rest of your life.”

— Social worker (male), age 25 from Azad Jammu and Kashmir

"There are also accounts of violent action by the student wings of political parties. Again, this is usually without ideological motive.

A man says a fellow student was severely beaten by political activists for pushing into a queue.

A woman says her student hostel was closed down after it was attacked by political party workers in the wake of a minor dispute between the hostel owner and one of their members. Another says that he was involved in an attempt by a group with religious links to take control of a university campus.

This culminated in the indiscriminate firing of automatic weapons in an incident that led to many injuries.

In another story, conflict between two political groups blew up over the theft of a mobile phone, leading to a death and a number of injuries. Students and teachers without political connections were driven from the campus by the violence and the university was eventually closed until the conflict could be brought under control.”

Traumatic consequences

"Our three families used to live in a single home. My uncle’s sons started fighting with us and demanded that we leave the home even though my father was ill in those days. Once my cousins gathered some party workers and started a fight within the home."

“We all were tortured physically and were injured. People living nearby gathered and my uncle demanded that we leave the house.”

“We all got worried. If our blood relations could do this to us, what could we expect from others? Who would provide us protection and security? We have no trust on our relatives. There is no law. Anyone could snatch anything in this kind of a society where people are selfish.”

— Student (female), age 18, from Sindh

Security guards have little protection from attack and have died in large numbers in recent years; their fate often barely noticed in the media coverage that focuses on what happened to the people or property they were protecting.

We collected this story from a man who had worked as a security guard for a NATO convoy and was badly injured when it came under attack.

“Suddenly four armed people attacked us with their Kalashnikovs.” After escaping, he managed to walk to the border to ask for help, but he was initially refused any assistance from both soldiers and customs officials.

Only when he struggled further along the border did he find someone who would take him to a hospital in Peshawar. He now “plans to work somewhere where at least my life is not threatened.”

A man says his marriage was happy, but their home was destroyed in the 2005 earthquake and they went to live with relatives.

His wife began an affair with his first cousin and threatened to kill herself when he confronted her. She began to beat him and eventually slapped and abused him in front of the Jirga. After a divorce, he remains under treatment for the depression this caused him.

"I have been living a happy life. My husband had a job and our two children brought happiness to our lives. But after some time, militancy and lawlessness started increasing in our area. And then on one unfortunate day, masked men with weapons entered our house and kidnapped my husband.

This event made me go crazy. I could not step out of the house because of fear. I locked up my kids in a room and even closed the ventilators with clay so that no one could see us. I used to scream and faint when I saw police or army in their uniforms. After this painful period of about one and half year, I am now improving. My husband has now been released and I have been provided psychotherapy by an NGO. I pray to God that no one should suffer in life as I have suffered.”

— Homemaker (female), age 27, from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa

Tales of resilience and reconciliation

"My cousin used to drive a cab and one day he was called by a customer who needed to be picked up. That night he went missing and his family started searching for him.

The police found a body and we were called to identify it. Later on, with a local Jirga, we got to know that five people who wanted to snatch his cab, called him and then killed him. This incident left me speechless.

With the help of the Jirga members and Union Councils, we have made committees in neighbouring villages. Every village presents its problems to this organisation and the organisation helps them out. After this, I made a committee of local youth who collect funds and help out poor people and we also help the police. We still have not gotten any help from the government. We work on the basis of a ‘help yourself’ ideology.”

— Unemployed man, age 25, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa

One story provides a dramatic example of a powerless family being saved by police action.

A farm worker says that he and 17 other family members worked without wages as bonded labourers for their landlord. The landlord kept them in appalling conditions.

“Often we had to face hunger and forced fasts,” he says. “They would chain us and they had allotted numbers to us like prisoners. We were compelled to urinate and fulfill our natural needs in front of each other in plastic bags.”

They were eventually freed in a police raid.

"As I am a non-Muslim, my Muslim brothers used to look at me with disgust in their eyes. But one incident broke the roots of this hatred. The village sardar’s mother was very ill. His mother’s blood group was O negative and no one was a match. I was shaking and scared but stepped forward and stated that I was ready to donate blood.

The doctor told me to come and get tested but the sardar interrupted the doctor and told him that he will never give a non-Muslim’s blood to his mother. I got my blood group checked and by fate, it was also O negative. The doctor saw a ray of light to save the old woman but he was helpless in front of the sardar’s stubbornness.

Suddenly, his elder sister came forward and burst out crying, saying ‘please give blood to my mother to save her.’ I did and after some time, the sardar’s mother started recovering. My happiness knew no bounds when the sardar, a person who never liked to even talk to me, hugged me with tears in his eyes. From that day onwards we eat, drink and sit together.

— Agricultural worker (male), age 24, Punjab