“And the Award Goes To….” Find What are the Best of BTC – IBITIANS.com in Year 2 (from 1st July 08 to 30th June 09)

Our last year picks are the best examples of what’s exciting about the IBITIANS in its 1st year. Here we honor posts with exceptional content and interests, which grabbed attention, loyalty and appreciation from our readers. We also have slightly modified our award categories, couple of new categories introduced, and few were excluded. Give comments and let us know what your favorite posts are from IBITIANS.com.

First of all, let’s talk about the selection mechanism. The data gathered from the various stats and web monitoring resources, provided by WordPress Stats Plugin wp-stats, Google Analytics, Alexa.com, Webilizer stats from hosting server, and few other resources, which helped me to filter the data and readers / visitors pattern. Results may differ from someone’s perception, but they are listed unbaised and purely on merit.

Here are the top 12 of the last twelve months! (Read by the Visitors)

1. Most Popular / Most Commented Post of the Year

Two awards in  a row, A bit controversial but most accessed and visited post by the readers of IBITIANS.

Governor Punjab Salman Taseer’s Family Wine Dance Pictures Scandal

2. Column of the Year (Urdu)

Javed Chaudhry wins the heart of readers in this excellent column, written with historical context on daylight saving adjustment and time change in Pakistan twice a year.

Waqt Nahi Rukta

3. Article of the Year (English)

Fatima Bhutto on Indian City Jaipur during her visit in India, that’s what she observed.

The Pink City

4. Download / eBook of the Year

You dont have to analyze too much for this…

Download Urdu Novel Peer-e-Kamil (PBUH) eBook by Umaira Ahmed

5. Personality of the Year

A symbol of struggle, nation’s new hero…

Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry

6. Humor of the Year

Pakistan got rid of Musharraf bad mouth and face, and his mockery was readers favorite.

More Funny Pics of General (Retarded) Pervez Musharraf

Pervez Musharraf After Resignation – Funny Pictures

7. Most Highlighted Issue of the Year

Result was even surprising for me, but this year people accessed this issue related post the most.

Lal Masjid – Jamia Hafsa

8. Video of the Year

Number of Golden Ratio, mystery of Kaaba, Miracle of Islam and Koran, it is the high time for Divine Secrets, Divine Mysteries.

Miracle of Kaaba & Golden Ratio: Exclusive Video

9. Highest Rated Post of the Year

A tribute to great legendary Ashfaq Ahmed & His Work Zavia.

Zaavia – A Lifetime Treasure

10. Contributor of the Year

With the most number of original contributions and highest cumulative ratings.

Noushah Arshad

11. Writer of the Year

Although, It was a tough competition b/w Umaira Ahmed & Ashfaq Ahmed Sb, she won by cumulative visits, and higher average per post.

Umera Ahmed

12. Columnist of the Year

Once again, it’s your favorite, yes… salute to great and trend-setter columnist…

Javed Chaudhry

*. Special Award of Honor

A wild card entry, BTC – IBITIANS is thankful for our foriegner contributor and renowned journalist of World, to share and allow her articles and posts for IBITIANS.

Nadene Ghouri

These were the picks but there are lots of other interesting posts, and cool stuff which haven’t found its place in the list, but worth browsing and searching. Thank you very much for your patience. I guess that’s all for tonight. It was a bit long, but exciting job to analyze all of the data to find out what our readers and visitors like most.  I hope that it will not only be an good overview of site for our new visitors but also a refresher for our regular readers. Don’t forget to add your comments below. Dive in, there is plenty to read!!!

Thank you for making IBITIANS.com a success…

Yours,

Naveed Taj Ghouri
Admin & Publisher
IBITIANS.com

Signing of…

• Best of the IBITIANS 07-08
• Best of the IBITIANS 07-08
• Download Sehar Ek Ista’ara Hai by Umera Ahmed – Free Urdu Ebook
• Download Sehar Ek Ista’ara Hai by Umera Ahmed – Free Urdu Ebook
• Download Hum Kahan Ke Sachay Thay by Umera Ahmed – Urdu Novel

In the fields around this giant chemicals factory in Gujarat, the barren soil smells of paint stripper and the water from the well makes you gag. So why has it been given tens of millions of pounds of taxpayer-funded UN ‘green reward points’, which are traded hungrily on the financial markets at huge profit?

By: Nadene Ghouri

Farm worker Radha in the cotton fields beneath Gujarat Fluorochemicals: she claims her plants have been affected by chemicals from the nearby factory

The farmers, faces wizened and browned from hours in the harsh Gujarati sun, lower a bucket into a well. It’s a solid-brick cylinder 100ft deep. The sun is high in the sky, beating down on the scorched earth. In the baked fields, maize and cotton have been planted. But none of the crops look very healthy. Leaves are wilted and tinged brown. Nothing has been watered for months.

Radha, a tough, sinewy widow and the only female farmer here, says that the well, which draws from deep groundwater, used to adequately supply the village and surrounding farms.

‘We have plenty of water – but water is the problem,’ she says.

As the bucket returns to the top, we can make out a white, almost oily-looking film on the surface of the liquid, which has formed little snowflake shapes.

She scoops up some water and asks us to smell it. It has an odour so acrid it catches in the back of our throats, making us cough.

‘We can’t irrigate our crops with it,’ she says. ‘It’s the water of death. It kills most crops we put it on.’

‘Gone bad,’ says the man who brought up the pail.

Collecting polluted water in Ranjit Nagar, a few miles from the fluorochemical-manufacturing plant

Radha makes a derisive gesture across the fields. Her calloused, cracked fingers bear testimony to a lifetime of weeding, planting and hoeing. She is 40 but looks closer to 60. Since her husband died eight years ago, she’s had to feed herself and her six children. Perhaps it’s necessity that’s made her more outspoken than her male counterparts.

‘A few years ago, I grew spinach, potatoes, lots of different crops. Now… look at my plants. Weak, useless.’

We’re in a field of cotton that should be ready to harvest. But there’s nothing to reap – just a few little tufts that blow mockingly in the breeze. Radha picks up a handful of soil. The surface has a faintly visible white crust, as if talcum powder has been sprinkled over it. Hold it close and it has the same caustic smell as the water, a bit like paint stripper.

Overlooking the fields like a hulking metal skeleton is the factory the villagers claim has polluted their water and land. The plant, owned by Gujarat Fluorochemicals (GFL), produces refrigerant gases for air-conditioning units and fridges.

We can’t irrigate our land with it – it’s the water of death. It kills the crops we put it on

But this is much more than a tale of big business versus poor farmers in the Third World. GFL is part of a worldwide carbon-trading scheme, centred in London, which is supposed to be helping to save the planet from global warming. On paper the scheme, which was ratified under the Kyoto agreement and supervised by the UN, looks like an efficient way to cut global carbon emissions. However, a Live investigation has exposed a series of major failings and loopholes in the scheme.

Four years ago, GFL installed technology to reduce the greenhouse gases it produces and was given a vast financial reward by the UN; a UK company was also given considerable sums for investing in the project. However, far from being a flagship green factory, GFL stands accused of poisoning the local environment.

Our own extensive tests by an independent laboratory showed dangerous contaminants in the land and water around the factory – chemicals that match those pollutants produced by GFL. Interviews with the people living nearby reveal their livelihoods and health have been severely affected. We found that the auditors who were supposed to verify the carbon savings were paid for by GFL, a stipulation of the scheme, and they checked only for greenhouse gases, caring little about other pollution.

Gujarat’s chief minister Narendra Modi admits carbon credits can be a ‘good business opportunity’

In a further ironic twist, we discovered that GFL used some of the money it gained from the UN to build a factory making Teflon and caustic soda –both processes are massively polluting.

Meanwhile in the UK, one of our biggest industrial companies is able to claim it has off-set its own pollution by supporting GFL, yet it remains oblivious to and unconcerned about the serious accusations being made against the Indian factory.

These hypocrisies aren’t isolated to GFL. The UN carbon off-setting scheme is filled with similar examples of companies with poor environmental and human rights records being financially rewarded.

As you dig below the surface it would appear that the UN programme – with backing and finance from Britain – is as polluted as the questionable companies it chooses so generously to reward.

In the middle of the City of London is a large anonymous-looking building, home to the European Climate Exchange (ECX). About 98 per cent of the carbon-emissions trading in Europe is done in this office, with more than 25 million tons of carbon traded daily. Last year this market was worth £80 billion worldwide, and it’s set to grow to £97 billion this year, despite the recession.

Chief executive Patrick Birley meets us in the glass-panelled reception. He points out where climate protestors camped on the doorstep during the G20 protests in March.

‘I care just as passionately about saving the planet as they do,’ he says. ‘But the difference is that I believe environmentalism and capitalism can converge.’

Inside his office the trading screen flashes with yellow, red and green figures. In the office next door, traders bash the phones doing deals for clients all over the world. It’s no different to any other busy trading floor, except no one here is selling an actual commodity. Here traders sell our planet’s future in the form of carbon credits. These are part of international attempts to limit greenhouse gases, and each credit represents a ton of CO2.

Companies that cut their emissions gain credits. If, on the other hand, they exceed their quotas, they have to acquire credits. The credits are traded on markets such as the ECX and have become such an established part of the financial world that trading involves Europe’s biggest banks, including RBS and Barclays. Until the global slowdown, carbon was one of the most profitable ‘commodities’, nearly doubling in value between 2007 and 2008.

The Gujarat Narmada Valley Fertilizers Company Limited factory spews smoke into the air of southern Gujarat

But concerns are now being raised about this market approach to controlling emissions, with heavily polluting companies seemingly being financially rewarded. The hulk looming above Radha’s fields was the first factory in the world to profit from the UN scheme, and is something of a flagship project. Yet for the villagers, the scheme is rewarding the very factory that’s brought them misery.

‘The carbon-credits business operates rather like the financial-services industry did,’ says Kevin Smith of campaigning watchdog Carbon Trade Watch.

‘Insufficient scrutiny and transparency, dodgy projects getting money when they shouldn’t be. And we all know the consequences of what happened in financial services. But this is potentially much more serious, because unlike the Government, nature doesn’t do bailouts.’

Gujarat Fluorochemicals is hidden deep in the Indian countryside, and an army of uniformed guards huddle around the metal gates at the entrance. The gates are constantly being opened to let in a stream of white tankers. When we try to take photographs, we’re swiftly moved on by the aggressive guards.

The factory was built in 1989. A by-product of its  production of refrigerant gases is a greenhouse gas called HFC23; it’s one of the most dangerous gases in terms of global warming. One ton of HFC23 is equivalent to 11,700 tons of carbon.

Under the UN credit scheme, GFL installed new technology to capture and recycle HFC23. The technology was provided in 2005 by the UK’s largest chemical and oil corporation, Ineos, formerly part of ICI. Both GFL and Ineos benefited handsomely.

Nita, eight, who lives in the village of Nathkuva close to the GFL factory, was born without an elbow joint

By installing the technology, GFL made €27 million in the last quarter of 2006 – triple its total earnings for the same period the year before. The jump in earnings was due to the carbon credits that the company sold on the carbon market. Ineos was also given a substantial number of credits for helping a company in the developing world cut its emissions. Ineos was free to then sell those on or to use them to help meet UK government limits on its own emissions.

The project is just one of many that have occurred across the developing world since the UN credit scheme began in 2005, most benefiting factories in India, China and Latin America. Over half of the Indian industries given the credits are based in Gujarat, India’s most heavily industrialised state.

We arrive in Gandhinagar, the state capital, to meet Gujarat’s controversial right-wing chief minister, Narendra Modi, who’s tipped by some as a future Indian prime minister. Modi tells me he plans to make Gujarat one of the most environmentally friendly places in the world.

‘You can have big industry and be green,’ he says. ‘You talk to the industrialists today and they all speak the same language. They care about the environment because they know they have to.’

He does, however, admit that carbon credits can be a ‘good business opportunity’.

‘It’s a typical Western capitalist system, cash- and profit-based. In the East we think differently; caring for nature and the environment is something that comes naturally to us. But of course we’ll take the carbon-credits money if it is offered to us. Why wouldn’t we?’

Why not indeed? To answer that question, the following day we take a battered local taxi out to some of the villages surrounding GFL, a three-hour journey. On the way we pass factory after factory, many of them new, some of them in receipt of carbon-credit money, lots of them belching out dirty black smoke. So much for Modi’s ‘green’ Gujarat.

The road turns from Tarmac to dirt track and we reach a large village of wooden thatched huts called Ranjit Nagar. Women sit outside, clanking metal cooking pots over small fires. They’re all curious about the arrival of a car, but immediately suspicious when we start asking questions. They’re afraid of the corporation and aren’t prepared to speak until they’re reassured that we’re genuinely interested in their stories and not spying for the company.

A mustachioed man called Vijay comes forward.   He explains that scores of villagers are sick with joint aches, bone pains, unexplained swellings, throat and nerve problems and temporary paralysis. The farmers can’t put any names to their illnesses and, as low-caste dalits (or untouchables), most of them are too poor to access proper medical services.

A thick film of choking pollutants on the surface of water in a nearby store

‘We didn’t have these illnesses before this factory came. When the wind blows the gas this way, mostly at night, it hurts our throats and eyes and burns our crops. We’ve lost six healthy children. They go giddy, they fall and die. We were carrying one child out the door to the hospital and she just died in her mother’s arms.’

Vijay shows me various wells and water pumps around the village. At one, women are washing clothes, while others fill containers with water to drink. As at Radha’s well, the water smells caustic.

‘It’s the only water we have, so what else can we do?’ says one woman.

At two other villages we hear similar tales. On three occasions we are presented with children who have missing joints – symptoms synonymous with long-term flouride poisoning. One little girl was born without a fully formed elbow joint. Her arm hangs limply by her side. We’re also told of a baby born with no joints at all, who died when only eight days old.

Mahesh Pandya was an environmental engineer who turned activist 13 years ago after meeting these villagers. A group had made complaints to the Gujarat High Court claiming GFL was making them ill and damaging crops. Pandya was asked by the court to sit on an expert witness panel, which discovered fluoride poisoning in people, land and animals caused by air and water pollution.

It discovered toxic effluent in the water stream and evidence of toxic waste not being properly disposed of by GFL. The documents presented to the court have been seen by Live. They recommended that GFL pay compensation and that villagers be diagnosed and monitored regularly. None of the recommendations have been carried out. The villagers have become so frustrated that they have now made a formal submission to India’s Human Rights Commission requesting an investigation.

For the sake of objectivity, Live took its own samples of water from Radha’s well, Vijay’s village pumps and two other locations, as well as soil samples. We had them tested at an independent government-registered laboratory in India. The results were shocking.

They revealed dangerously high levels of fluoride and chloride – fluoride in the water was more than twice the international acceptable limit. All the water fell well below any safe drinking standards and the soil had worryingly high levels of these chemicals.

A man with health problems in the village of Ranjit Nargar

We showed the results to environmental specialist Hiral Mehta.

‘High flouride levels cause skeletal fluorosis in which people complain about joint pain, backache and rigid bones,’ she says. ‘The crop deterioration is another impact. Your tests confirm previous investigations.’

GFL claims it recycles or evaporates all the water it uses. But campaigners say its ‘evaporation pool’ isn’t functioning properly, and that water leaks into the surrounding land. There are also claims that flouride-contaminated effluent isn’t cleaned up properly before being disposed of. Indeed, in 2004 the Gujarat Pollution Control Board warned GFL it was failing to provide proper facilities ‘for storage, transport, handling and disposal of hazardous waste’.

It’s not just a problem of contaminated water. On November 30 2005, just weeks before the company joined the carbon-credits scheme, there was a serious accident at the factory.

In the middle of the night factory alarms started ringing. Villagers say that as they ran from their homes their eyes streamed, their throats burned and they struggled to breathe. When they returned the next day they found several dead cattle that had bled at the nose and the mouth.

The villagers marched en masse to the factory and in the resulting scuffle two security guards were injured and GFL called the police. They arrested 84 people – including women and children. Today, 22 men still have charges outstanding against them.

‘Our children live in fear because they hear us talking about our fears every day,’ says a farmer.

‘We all know the name Bhopal (a 1984 industrial disaster in central India that claimed up to 10,000 deaths). We think we’ll be next.’

‘Carbon credits are a farce, a scam,’ says environmental activist Pandya. ‘It gives money to an industry that never was and never will be green. When we saw GFL had become the first scheme to profit from carbon credits I was in shock. When did this factory suddenly become green? I can tell you when – when it got paid to pretend it was.’

In Gujarat shanty houses stand next to 21st century factories, many of which have been given carbon credits

It takes several phone calls and emails before Deepak Asher, one of GFL’s directors, agrees to meet us  – for lunch at a nearby five-star hotel. He dismisses the villagers’ allegations and at first even claims not to remember anything about the 2005 accident.

Eventually he admits, ‘There was a leak caused by a gas tanker that toppled over, but it was all sorted quickly and it was quite a small event.’

As for pollution, Asher is adamant the factory isn’t responsible for the villagers’ complaints. He says he’s ‘heard local stories about bitter water’, but insists the factory has conducted its own ‘fully scientific tests’ which prove the fluoride occurs naturally from fluoride deposits 60 miles away.

No other investigation – and there have been many, including the State Court panel and the Gujarat Pollution Control Board – has backed up this theory. Indeed, we were told that if the fluoride came from natural deposits it would affect a much wider area, and not be concentrated in the villages around the factory.

Despite repeated pressing, Asher refuses to provide a copy of GFL’s findings, citing that it’s not information in the public domain.

‘We are the only factory in the area and because of that we are a visible target. The farmers don’t understand what we do and they blame us unfairly for everything that goes wrong. We can’t employ everyone locally because we need to bring skilled labour from outside, so they become resentful.’

Live put its findings to GFL’s British partner, Ineos. A spokesman says links between the companies are limited and states that Ineos was unaware of previous local complaints against GFL. Ineos also insists that under the terms of the carbon-credit relationship, it is only responsible for the technology it supplied and not for the rest of GFL. Any possible water pollution or leaks of gases other than HFC23, it states, is not its responsibility.

‘Our relationship with GFL is confined to a relatively small project governed by the auspices of the UN, which is subject to regular independent third-party auditing,’ says a spokesman.

‘Therefore, we’re confident that this project operates and is managed in a manner consistent with our ethical standards.’

And the technology they provided to GFL has cut HFC23 emissions, something the company has since had certified by external auditors.

But emissions of other gases haven’t been audited, as they don’t fall under the scheme. This, say campaigners, is one of the flaws.

‘How can one bit of the same factory be deemed green if the rest of it is clearly not?’ says Mahesh Pandya.

‘The factories getting carbon-credits money were the serious polluters. But how can you reward them for stopping polluting in one area, when they pollute in another?

‘And who were the victims of all the previous pollution they caused? The local farmers. Surely they are the people who deserve to be compensated with the carbon-credits money. Why does it all go into the pockets of the industry that caused the damage in the first place?

‘GFL has been polluting the surrounding soil and water for years, and villagers have been fighting them in court for the past 15. So how can Ineos claim not to know or care? Incidents like the gas leak make it even worse.’

Globally, the overall impact on the environment is ambiguous. Since developing countries do not yet have any national caps on emissions, companies can take the handsome payments they receive from carbon cuts in one plant and use the money to build new polluting factories.

Bulldozers develop the river bank while the smokestacks that litter the skyline pump black fumes into the air

Wider criticism of the carbon scheme is growing. Kevin Smith from Carbon Trade Watch says, ‘The carbon market is riddled with projects like GFL. It’s not like this project is the bad apple – the whole barrel is rotten. Time and again we’re seeing evidence of gross injustices being carried out – people being evicted to make way for dams and waste incinerators being built in residential areas. Carbon trading has been the subject of a very slick PR campaign portraying it as the answer to climate change, so investigations such as this  are very important.’

One of the main problems is the lack of accountability. The companies receiving carbon credits are subject to international auditing. But in many cases auditors don’t make on-site visits, and the companies receiving credits pay the auditing firms a fee for their service, which is largely based on information the company itself provides.

Conservative MP Tim Yeo is Chairman of the House of Commons Environmental Audit Committee, which in 2007 produced a report describing the UN’s Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) as ‘significantly flawed’. He said our findings showed the importance of effective checks on companies involved in the scheme.

‘Because of the sums of money involved and the way the CDM works, it needs very rigorous policing,’ he says. ‘There may well be cases where that’s not happened. Individual schemes are scattered all over the world, sometimes in inaccessible places. The degree of transparency and scrutiny often falls short of what is necessary.’

Pandya shows me a file of newspaper cuttings advertising public consultations – a requirement by companies in the scheme. But most of the notices don’t have a time or address, meaning the public can’t turn up. The published announcement, however, is often enough for the auditor to tick that box.

GFL’s auditor’s concern is only with greenhouse gases. They never visited the surrounding villages. They didn’t talk to Vijay or Radha. They didn’t assess whether there were other pollution problems, because under the scheme that’s not taken into account.

Dr Alison Doig, senior climate-change advisor at Christian Aid, says, ‘Live’s investigation highlights exactly what’s wrong with this flawed system, which is focused only on exchanging carbon credit globally, with no accounting for other environmental or social damage. All carbon credits are doing is making some companies rich, while doing nothing to prevent global pollution. It needs either abolition or total reform.’

Back in the UK, we tell Patrick Birley at the European Climate Exchange what we found in India.

‘The carbon-credits system is in place to reduce carbon emissions, not to save bunnies or solve all the world’s problems,’ he says.

‘Is this system perfect? No. Are some companies bending the rules? Probably. Is that fair? No. But without big industry on board, saving the planet is going nowhere. At least this is a start.’

THE GREAT CARBON CREDITS MERRY-GO-ROUND

In theory the carbon-credit trading scheme is a thoroughly modern and intelligent approach to reducing world pollution. The graphic above explains the system – in a nutshell, rich First World companies are financially encouraged to help poorer Third World companies clean up their manufacturing processes. They do this by accepting ‘carbon caps’, or limits, which if exceeded can be replenished by purchasing carbon credits – via specialist traders – from manufacturers in the developing world.

In practice, however, there are loopholes that seriously threaten the schemes’ credibility. The most significant are these: they take into account only greenhouse gases, money made through trading credits can be used to expand a business so increasing pollution and, perhaps most questionably, auditors of the scheme are paid for by the companies.

CARBON CREDITS OR TOXIC DEBTS?

Carbon credits have become such a profitable commodity that market speculators – hedge funds, banks and pension funds – have enthusiastically bought into them. Traders buy and sell credits issued by both the UN and EU schemes. For trading purposes, one allowance or Certified Emission Reduction
(CER) is equivalent to one ton of CO2 emissions.

These credits can be sold privately or on the international market. Louis Redshaw, head of environmental markets at Barclays Capital predicts that ‘carbon will be the world’s biggest commodity market – and it could become the world’s biggest market overall.’

But that was before the recession. A global fall-off in manufacturing means that companies are producing far less carbon. In recent months, companies in this position have dumped their credits on the market. This has not only provided heavily polluting firms with funds to plug gaps in their balance sheets but has also pushed down prices. Carbon has now dropped to such a level it’s cheaper to burn polluting fossil fuels and buy up credits than find ways of reducing emissions.

Courtesy: Daily Mail UK (Online)

Nadene Ghouri is an award-winning reporter who specializes in telling the human stories behind the news. Ghouri has reported from countries as diverse as Liberia, Gaza, Pakistan, India, Iran, DRC Congo and Afghanistan. She is a former correspondent for the BBC and Al Jazeera English. She lives between London and Kabul. In 2007 she was short-listed for broadcast journalist of the year at the One World Awards for Children of Conflict, a TV series about the lives of children in warzones.

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By: Nadene Ghouri

The General pulls a 9mm Smith & Wesson pistol out of his suit pocket and roughly forces in a  magazine. It jams. He passes it to his driver. ‘Fix it,’ he grunts. The driver smoothly snaps it in place and, hands shaking slightly, passes the gun back to his boss, who grabs it with not even a nod of thanks.

Gun fixed, the General stares intently out at the morass that is Shahr-e Khuna, Kabul old city. A teeming bazaar, with all its colour and chaos, spills over into the road. Steaming, open sewers run below skinned meat carcasses hanging from a butcher’s door.

We drive on past bearded men in grey turbans and burka-clad women who, unable to see left or right, must hold on to their children to be guided across the road.

From his front seat, the General looks through the chaos. He is readying himself for action. Suddenly, his car comes to a screeching halt in front of 30 or so police officers. The General leaps out waving his gun and barks, ‘Go, go, go!’ His team runs round the corner, bursting into a line of lock-up stalls crammed full of illegal wares.

The shopkeepers have been caught by surprise. Most stand frozen like rabbits caught in headlights. Only one man tries to run. He sprints down an alley, pursued by six officers.

Suddenly a couple of shots ring out. The General stands in front of the shops, his pistol held up in the air. In the silence that follows he barks out an order: the shop-keepers are to bring their goods outside. If they don’t, he adds, he’ll tear them to pieces.

Some bystanders run out of the way, others stop and stare open-mouthed at the sight of a man as famous as he is feared in Kabul. Welcome to the world of General Ali Shah Paktiawal, head of Kabul police criminal investigation department, or as one observer puts it, the ‘police chief of hell’.

The General is particularly forceful this morning, but then this raid is personal. The raided stores are selling black-out film for car windows, plus aerials, sirens and fake police uniforms – everything needed to impersonate police officers.

This is a serious issue. Across Afghan-istan hundreds of crimes are committed every year by men wearing police uniforms. As a result, the police have found themselves in the international spotlight as critics ask whether gangs are impersonating policemen or whether real police are carrying out the crimes.

A suicide attack in January on the Serena, Kabul’s only five-star hotel, was carried out by men in police uniforms. It’s in Paktiawal’s interests to try to prove his men aren’t responsible. It’s even better that the media are alongside watching the raid and Paktiawal plays to his onlookers.

‘You donkey f*****!’ he screams at a hapless shopkeeper while grabbing a siren. ‘These are prohibited. They are for police only. This is about our national security.’ He smashes the siren on the floor and slaps the man around the head three times in a row. ‘Donkey f*****!’

Uniformed officers and plainclothes detectives tear the stores apart with gusto. Around 40 people are bustled into police vehicles, to be taken away for questioning. The General tells me they could face sentences of between 18 months and three years.

But as I look on, I realise how different justice is here. First of all, the public prosecutor has come along to witness the raid. And he’s also carrying a gun.

All the ‘evidence’ is thrown out of the various stores into one huge pile. There is no way of telling what each shopkeeper was selling. The General seems not to care that one man had only a single red light for sale, while another had an array of electronic components suitable for making remote-controlled detonators, used in bombs that cause the deaths of hundreds of foreign troops each year.

In the General’s eyes, they are all equally guilty, and his brutal methods entirely justified. But this is the kind of rough justice the West is trying to stamp out as Britain and America grapple to reform Afghanistan’s failing police force.

From where I stand on the edge of the bazaar, the policing here has more in common with DCI Gene Hunt in the TV series Life On Mars than with a modern democracy.

We climb back into the green truck that doubles as the General’s car. It’s a regular pick-up except for the mounted PK machine gun and six armed bodyguards sitting in the back. One of them gives me a cheery wave; he’s carrying a grenade launcher.

As part of a lengthy investigation into the problems facing the Afghan National Police (ANP), I’m spending a week embedded with the General and his men. I ask Paktiawal about the rest of his day.

‘Robbery, murder, kidnap… We arrested five people, there was an armed robbery, we rescued a kidnap victim, there was an explosion that killed two foreign troops. Oh, and a murder downtown. A normal day.’

He roars with laughter and everyone around him laughs, too. It’s not because what he has said is funny; it’s because that in the few hours I’ve spent with him I’ve come to realise that the General is quite terrifying. If you work for him, not laughing at his jokes isn’t an option.

Kabul is in the grip of a crime wave. Kidnappings, rapes, murders and car-jackings are commonplace. Last month, the shooting of British aid worker Gayle Williams and two staff from logistics company DHL brought the problem into focus. Suicide attacks are also on the increase.

Just two years ago, events like these in the heart of the city liberated from Taliban control in 2001 would have been unthinkable.

Meanwhile, Afghans are becoming increasingly disillusioned with their police force, not only because they seem to be losing control of the streets but because they are suspected of corruption or, worse, involvement in the violence. Paktiawal’s unorthodox policing methods only add to the criticism.

General Hilaluddin Hilal, a former Deputy Interior Minister and an out-spoken member of the Afghan Parliament, says, ‘Policing is about law enforcement, but General Paktiawal does not even follow the law himself. He and his men arrest people so they can abuse their powers. Many people pay bribes to get released.’ Hilal accuses the 80,000-strong Afghan National Police (ANP) of being ‘uneducated and out of control’.

It’s a problem the Western alliance is trying to address. Police recruits now attend a new training academy for a minimum of three months, and the alliance has also set up the European Police Mission (Eupol), a mentoring programme in which some of the brightest and best officers from across Europe have been flown in to work alongside the Afghans. The aim is to develop an efficient structure and an effective, modern police force.

All day, streams of people come and go – no one seems to filter the public from the General. There is a seemingly endless list of complaints: a woman seeking a new passport; a group of men accusing the foreign security company they work for of insulting Islam; and the Chinese ambassador, who is trying to find a missing national, whom he heard had been arrested by Paktiawal.

After waiting patiently for over an hour, the General tells him he has no information. The ambassador walks out looking both peeved and perplexed.

To Western eyes it’s a strange way of policing. Why does someone wanting a new passport wind up in the CID office? And why did an ambassador have to wait his turn in the mêlée?

But this is a country with hundreds of named generals – genuine or not. No one wants to be unimportant, and those with power don’t want to delegate a scrap of control.

For the foreign mentors this poses one of the biggest challenges. When they have identified up-and-coming young stars of the force, they have often then been pushed aside by their bosses who don’t like the threat of competition.

Every now and then Paktiawal pushes a little bell on the desk. Für Elise rings out, and the summoned officer appears with a click of the heels, a salute and a ‘Baleh [yes], sir’. Another ring summons an officer who was late for his morning shift.

‘Do I need to drag you from your bed and pull your legs to bring you here?’ screams the General.

‘Keep this in mind. Keep it in mind, by God. You do this again and your legs will be on opposite sides of this city. I’m going to tear you in two.’

He makes a tearing gesture with his hands.

‘Now get out.’

It’s hardly from the book of modern police management. Yet despite his fierce manner the General appears to inspire absolute devotion.

One detective tells me, ‘I’m a young man but I get tired and when I tell him I need rest, he tells me a police officer must be on duty 24/7. He inspires me to keep going. He is my mentor, he is a great man.’

Tears start to well in his eyes.

Oh, so we are the criminals? I see. Well, you’ll tell the truth when you’ve been beaten for a while

Many of these men have been hand-picked by the General and he’s given them pet names. There’s the crew-cut Commando Switch, whose reactions are as fast as a light switch. And Livewire, who says he’s always buzzing.

Then there is the huge, 23-year-old Bulldozer, who tells me how he got his name: ‘On raids I do all the hard, aggressive things like move cars and break glass.’ He explains why he wears leather gloves with metal studs: ‘Sometimes when we catch murderers we need to hit them around the back of the head.’

Because Paktiawal chose most of these men to be part of his personal protection detail – which is within the rules – none of them have been through the new police training academy. Yet they wear the same police badge and have powers of arrest.

Three suspected armed robbers are dragged into the room, handcuffed together. An officer hands the General a gun and large knife. He brandishes them menacingly. ‘So these are yours?’ asks the General.

Two of the men are in their twenties; the third – in his fifties – is as white as a sheet and looks truly terrified as he shakes his head. The General screams abuse at them for a few minutes, then rings his little bell… Da da da da dah.

A guard appears. ‘Baleh, sir.’

‘Lunch. Now.’

He turns to me with a warm smile. ‘Please, let’s eat.’

Plates of kebab and rice are brought in. We eat as the three men stand and wait, still handcuffed together. Once the General has sated his appetite, he picks up the guns and restarts his tirade of an interrogation.

‘Do you sell drugs? Why do you have this gun? Eh? Why?’

Perhaps it was the humiliation of standing there while we ate, but one of the younger men has turned defiant. ‘No, we are innocent,’ he says. ‘Your men dropped this gun on the floor and said it was ours.’

Paktiawal screams at the insolence. ‘What? Did the gun drop from the sky?’

‘No,’ replies the man calmly. ‘The police put it there.’

The General opens his mouth in mock horror and turns to his audience with dramatic indignation.

‘Oh, so we are the criminals? I see. Well, you’ll tell the truth when you’ve been beaten for a while.’

The men are led out.

Now the British are getting involved, with a number of UK police acting as mentors to their Afghan counterparts.

‘I refuse to be a pessimist,’ says Ken Deane, a former Royal Ulster Constabulary officer and Eupol’s outgoing deputy head of mission.

‘I truly believe this can be fixed. There are so many parallels to Northern Ireland. The Taliban promise people local solutions, just as the IRA did. You can’t cut and paste answers and this isn’t Northern Ireland, but Northern Ireland did change for the better. It now has a police force people can trust, so the public have turned away from supporting the insurgents. We can be similarly successful here.’

But when I meet some of the British mentors, I wonder whether Deane’s optimism is misplaced. The officers are decent men and desperate to do a good job. But without the support of key figures such as Paktiawal, their efforts are severely hampered.

‘Damn, this gun is heavy,’ says Andy Carter, a detective superintendent with Cumbria Police who for the next six months is on secondment to Eupol. He grumbles as he adjusts a pistol holster strapped to his thigh.

‘After 30 years in the British force, getting used to wearing one is hard. It feels like this big, cold lump of steel on my leg.’

Why did he come to Afghanistan?

‘I saw an opportunity to use my skills,’ he says. ‘I knew it was dangerous and I had an image of the country from what I’d read, but I could never have imagined the reality.

‘The first thing I remember seeing when I left the airport was a Russian MiG fighter on a plinth and I thought, “Andy, what the hell have you got into? You should be at home having a barbecue with the wife.”’

Today I’ve come with Andy to meet General Kohdamani, a senior Afghan officer based at the Ministry Of The Interior, who Andy is mentoring. Kohdamani admits that developing a national force in a country fresh from decades of civil war and where feudalism is the norm has been difficult.

‘The war resulted in lots of trained professional fighters,’ he says. ‘And these people joined the police force, which makes it difficult for the public to trust them.

‘Now we try to recruit people who really want to be officers – the literate and the committed. But we have never constructed a national force before, so it’s all new to us.’

Many senior Afghan officers don’t like the new methods and shun their mentors. Paktiawal, for instance, has

an American mentor but I never see him on any raid – the General has become adept at not taking him along for ‘the hard stuff’. The American has to be back in his compound before dark. Paktiawal laughs that dusk is when ‘real policing begins’.

An old man foams at the mouth and groans – but the police just kick him

The following day I get a call from Paktiawal, inviting me on another raid. On the way he tells me we are heading to the former Russian cultural centre, a sprawling war-ravaged compound with scraps of a Lenin mural still visible on the wall.

Once this place hosted Russian opera evenings to an occupied population; now it is home to heroin and opium addicts. The General says addicts steal and beg and are responsible for all manner of petty crime. He wants to ‘wash’ them from his city.

We arrive to find about 100 police in place. The General gives a command and they charge inside. It’s chaos. Addicts flee, leaping out of windows and running in all directions.

‘Catch them!’ screams the General. Bulldozer grabs a man by the hair and hauls him 20ft along the ground. Another officer bashes a man over the head with his rifle butt. It’s utterly brutal. Eventually, most of the addicts are rounded up. They are human wrecks – emaciated and dressed in rags.

‘They stink, thieving junkies – they disgust me,’ grumbles one officer, holding his hand over his nose.

As the addicts are loaded onto three waiting buses, many try to escape. Several are beaten and one officer comes close to shooting someone but is restrained at the last minute. An old man is beaten so badly he collapses. He foams at the mouth and groans but the officers laugh and kick him. Paktiawal’s American mentor is nowhere to be seen.

Later, I witness a scene that is even more distressing.

A terrified girl, aged about 12, is brought into Paktiawal’s office. She complains that her uncle abducted her, raped her, then sold her to another man who also raped her. She clearly thinks she is the victim, but is being treated by the officers that bring her in as a criminal.

She is forced to recount her ordeal over and over again. Some officers seem to take a voyeuristic delight in her story, while the General appears completely unmoved. He is busy signing papers as she talks and barely even looks at her.

In Afghan society, female victims of sex crimes are considered to have broken codes of honour – not the perpetrators.

For Andy Carter, this is hard to come to terms with.

‘There are huge challenges in the way women and victims of sexual offences are treated,’ he says.

‘But we can’t impose our own values. I heard of a case where a gang of thieves broke into a house, tied up the father and raped his wife and daughters in front of him. They were convicted of theft, not the rapes. And in court the judge chastised the father for not fighting back.’

Any real glimmer of hope is most likely to be found not in the old guard, but in the faces of recruits at the new Kabul police academy. Since 2006, 5,000 officers have graduated from here.

The day I visit, 500 of them are passing out. Many are young idealists, joining up to make their country a safer place for their children.

To a brass band – hopelessly out of tune – they goose-step around the parade ground. It’s a scene that could have come straight out of the Soviet Union in the Seventies, and another stark reminder of Afghanistan’s bloody past.

In a few days they will be dispersed around the country, where there is a very real war and where every day they will face mortal danger.

In the past six months, almost 800 members of the ANP have been killed; in all of 2007, militants killed about 925 police, meaning the pace of attacks this year has increased. The starting salary for risking their life is just $100 a month.

In such circumstances it is hardly surprising that so many of these new recruits fall for the charisma and protection that officers such as Paktiawal offer.

Without changing the attitudes and methods at the top, I wonder if Afghanistan’s police force can ever really change. But perhaps that is about to happen.

As I leave Kabul, there is a strong rumour circulating that Paktiawal is about to lose his job.

From what I have seen I doubt this forceful figure will go without a fight.

General Paktiawal in his office at police heaquarters

One of Gen Paktiawal’s personally chosen bodyguards

Gen Paktiawal’s bodyguard, Bulldozer, with a PK machine gun

THE WOMAN WHO LIVED – AND DIED – BY THE GUN…

Among the problems facing the Afghan National Police, one of the biggest is a worrying inability to protect its officers.

In Kandahar, birthplace of the Taliban and home to Afghanistan’s conservative Pashtun tribe, we met the force’s highest-ranking female police officer, Lieutenant-Colonel Malalai Kakar, pictured above posing with a pistol in her office.

Four weeks later she was dead – murdered in her car by suspected Taliban extremists as she left home for an early morning shift.

We had met this smoking, guntoting, tough-talking woman to get an understanding of how a female police officer works in Afghanistan, but she turned out to be a poignant metaphor for the crisis facing the Afghan police.

Kakar with her brother (left) and a police colleague

Kakar, 45, was famous for taking on unspoken crimes – domestic violence, rape and child abuse. Her female-only team challenged the male hierarchy while staying within its framework.

She graduated from Kandahar police academy in 1982 – the first woman to do so – and PANOS policing was in her blood. Her father and brothers were all officers. As Kandahari women usually onlytravel in the company of a male relative, one of her brothers became her police partner – just one example of how she worked the system in order to buck it.

Kakar was never a feminist. She was that particular brand of woman found only in the East – uncompromising, fiercely traditional and deeply uncomfortable with the role-model tag. She was, she said, ‘just doing her job’.

Her concept of equality wasn’t to be as good as a man, but to be like a man. In fact, to out-men the men. Her protection and safety lay in both her colleagues and enemies forgetting that she was a woman.

Meeting her was a remarkable experience. She had piercing brown eyes and a way of looking at you that made you wonder if you’d committed a crime you weren’t aware of. Then, just as you might be considering confessing, she’d suddenly burst into peals of laughter.

Witty, feisty and undeniably sexy – wearing just a hint of make-up – at these moments she was still very much a woman.

There are a few hundred women officers in Afghanistan and, with the resurgence of the Taliban, they have now come under threat. To the Taliban, they are supporters of the government and women breaking out of their traditional roles. Kakar received regular threats posted through her door at night warning her to resign.

She shrugged them off, saying: ‘When Allah chooses, I will die – until then I serve’.

With Kakar’s death, Afghanistan lost a symbol, not just of the power Afghan women can display when given the chance, but of a senior police officer widely respected and admired for her professionalism, sheer hard work and her rejection of corruption.

Her death clearly represents one of the many entrenched problems the Western alliance is having to grapple with as it tries to shore up the country’s struggling police force.

Courtesy: Daily Mail UK (Online)

Nadene Ghouri is an award-winning reporter who specializes in telling the human stories behind the news. Ghouri has reported from countries as diverse as Liberia, Gaza, Pakistan, India, Iran, DRC Congo and Afghanistan. She is a former correspondent for the BBC and Al Jazeera English. She lives between London and Kabul. In 2007 she was short-listed for broadcast journalist of the year at the One World Awards for Children of Conflict, a TV series about the lives of children in warzones.

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In the past four years, 5,000 young men have graduated from Afghanistan’s national police academy. After three months of training, new recruits join a fledgling police force that’s been tasked not only with reducing ordinary crime but also fighting terrorism. There’s no doubt it’s a dangerous job. Casualties among Afghan policemen outnumber casualties of Afghan soldiers fourfold. But in recent years there has been growing international interest in helping to train and reform the Afghan national police force as the guarantor of law and order in the country.

Last summer, FRONTLINE/World reporter Nadene Ghouri traveled to Kabul, the nation’s capital, to report on the efforts of one of the city’s leading police units: the Criminal Investigations Department, or CID. There, she met General Ali Shah Paktiawal, the department’s brash, abrasive, and seemingly ubiquitous chief. Dubbed the James Bond of Kabul, General Paktiawal is known for showing up at almost every major crime scene. He says, “There are two words not in my vocabulary. One is ‘problem,’ and the other is ‘fear.’ I don’t know fear.”

Paktiawal agreed to allow Ghouri and a small camera crew to film the team’s daily activities.

The footage Ghouri captured is a raw glimpse into Afghan policing at the street level. Over the course of several days, the team investigates a terrorist bombing attack, kidnappings, and armed robbery. They also conduct raids on an illegal black market for police equipment, and a notorious haven for the city’s drug addicts.

Twenty-four hours a day, General Paktiawal is surrounded by his hand-picked bodyguards — men he’s nicknamed Bulldozer, Switch, and Scorpion. Officially, they are responsible for protecting Paktiawal from assassination attempts, but Paktiawal’s protectors also take part in law enforcement activities, despite their lack of police training.

Hamed, or “Bulldozer,” tells Ghouri that he has a reputation for aggression. “I usually wear gloves. They are very useful. I wear them during the operations. There might be cars or some glass to break, or we catch some murderers and have to hit them in the face or round the back of the head,” says Bulldozer.

Ghouri catches Paktiawal and the CID team at a critical moment in Kabul’s evolving security situation. NATO forces are about to hand over control of the city to local police and the Afghan military. At the same time, terrorist attacks on the city are on the rise. Once considered relatively well-protected, the capital has come under brazen attacks when the Taliban targeted several government ministries in the heart of the city. Ghouri raises the question: Is this the force to bring law and order to Afghanistan?

Watch Video:

http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/watch/player.html?pkg=rc76afghan&seg=1&mod=0

Reporter/Producer
NADENE GHOURI

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ASH SWEETING

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ASH SWEETING

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SERENE FANG

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MEENA YOUSUFZAI

For FRONTLINE/World

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SHARON TILLER

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DAVID RITSHER

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KEN DORNSTEIN

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Nadene Ghouri laments the collapse of Pakistan’s most famous tourist destination while spending time as the only guest in a 50 room luxury hotel.

Staff at the Serena hotel had gone six weeks without a single guest to serve before Nadene arrived

By: Nadene Ghouri

A valley as green as the emeralds that lie beneath the mountains. Cold and clear rivers flowing from the snow-capped peaks of the Hindu Kush. A brilliant blue sky – it’s hard to describe the Swat valley without getting carried away.

It feels like one of the most beautiful and magical places on earth.

But it’s also extremely dangerous as Pakistani security forces take on Islamic extremists.

Until recently Swat was a tourist destination, popular with both Western backpackers and Pakistani honeymooners. Here you could go trekking or ride a horse along mountain passes, ski pristine slopes, view ancient Buddhist sites or shop in bustling bazaars selling brightly embroidered shawls, folk jewellery and locally produced honey.

Eighty-five per cent of Swat’s economy was dependent on such tourism.

But today the sound of nightly gunfire echoes across the mountains, the hotels and bazaars are boarded-up, and the tourists long gone.

The ancient monuments are at risk – caught in the crossfire of clashes between the Pakistan military and Taleban fighters.

The area is now deemed unsafe for Western tourists because of the fighting and threats of kidnap.

Last remaining hotel

I suspect I may have just been the last tourist Swat will see for a while.

A few weeks earlier I had arrived to work as a media consultant.

The locals now have an independent radio station, Pact radio, with a mission to inform and engage the populace in debate about their situation and encourage them to find peaceful solutions to their problems. I had gone to Swat to help train Pact’s reporters.

I checked into the Serena Hotel in the town of Mingora, Swat’s last remaining hotel in one of the few towns in the area which is still relatively safe.

The Serena has 50 rooms set in beautiful landscaped grounds. I was the only guest in the entire hotel and the first one they had seen in well over six weeks. The handful of other people they have had stay this year were all journalists like myself.

It’s become a ghost hotel.

Yet despite the empty rooms all of the uniformed staff have been kept on by the Aga Khan – who owns the Serena. They are lucky. The damage to the economy means that few people in Swat have a job anymore. And they were truly delighted to see me.

“Would you like to order dinner, madam?” a saffron-suited waiter asked on my first night.

I mumbled something about whatever they could rustle up in the kitchen being fine. His face registered surprise. “We have everything listed on the menu, madam. Fish and chips with mushy peas, sizzling beef fillet, traditional Pakistani cuisine.”

“How can you?” I asked. “You haven’t got any guests.”

“But we are a five star hotel madam,” he said proudly. “We must maintain standards at all times.”

A few minutes later a steaming plate of delicious paratha, raita and masala beans (a Swati speciality) arrived at my door. After that the staff couldn’t do enough for me. Word went out they had one – a real, live, paying guest – and all of them rushed to display their impeccable service.

Curfew

Most nights – exhausted after the pressures of trying to bring live radio to the remote mountinas – I would order a snack in my room rather than a full meal in the restaurant. It left the waiter’s face crushed with disappointment. Night after night I observed as he got through his lonely shift by pacing the vacant restaurant floor until it was time to go home.

A local resident caught up in the fighting in Swat is taken to hospital

So one night I ordered a three course meal and ate it in the restaurant just to please him. Local friends who were supposed to join me couldn’t because of a curfew imposed by the military banning all outside movement and travel after dusk.

The curfew has made normal life all but impossible for the locals – people can’t get to work on time, the sick can’t get to hospital, teachers can’t get to school. Leave it too late to set off for your destination before curfew begins and you risk being arrested, spending a cold night at a check-point until dawn, or worse, being shot on sight by a nervous and frightened soldier. Many people have been.

It seemed wrong to sit in the restaurant eating like a queen when the people of Swat are so desperate. But I realised any injection to the economy, however small, was needed. And the look of professional pleasure on the waiters face as he brought out each dish made it worth it.

The staff were so eager to look after me that on more than one occasion I guiltily put the ‘do not disturb’ sign on my door just to get a few moments of peace from the constant offers of fresh towels, a cup of tea, laundry or a shoe shine.

But if at times I found the attention annoying, I was grateful for it when the fighting began.

Unable to sleep

Fighters of Swat’s leading militant, Maulana Fazlullah

Around 7pm every evening it started. Boom boom boom, followed by the inevitable shaking of the building, sometimes so strong it was impossible to distinguish it from the earthquakes which routinely hit the region.

It was the sound of the military offensive – evidence that the Pakistani military has stepped up its battle against the local Taleban.

For several nights in a row I was unable to sleep as mortars and gunfire echoed across the mountains, sometimes for 12 hours solid. One night I counted 60 mortars in less than an hour.

Some blasts were so close the windows threatened to shatter. On those occasions I would walk the empty corridors until I found a friendly member of staff. They were always ready with gentle assurance. “Please don’t worry, madam. It’s normal. Nothing unusual happening tonight.”

For centuries nothing changed in Swat. A fiercely traditional people upholding the strong Pashtun traditions of hospitality – one reason the tourist industry came so naturally to them.

But their ancient way of life is increasingly at odds with the modern world. Here women rarely leave the home, and most men and boys carry guns. Yet the Swati people have always been open and accepting to the ways of outsiders.

And as a result this area was a real example of how Islamic conservatism can exist in peace with the secular world.

That has gone now.

The Pakistani Taleban appear to be slowly but surely taking over Swat with 80% of the Swat valley estimated to be under their control when I was there.

Suicide attacks

People in Mingora, Swat’s biggest town, say it is a question of when, not if the Taleban seize the town. From what I witnessed the Pakistan army made a lot of noise, but appear to have gained little ground.

The hotel is peaceful during the day, but the fighting sounds close at night

One man told me how his brother had just been killed by the Taleban. The brother stood out for being clean shaven and wearing a New York Yankees baseball cap, things likely to have offended the bearded, anti-American militants. He was dragged from a shop. His body was found a week later, with his hands tied behind his back and a gunshot to his head.

Suicide attacks by the extremists are also on the increase. They are ostensibly aimed at military targets but hundreds of ordinary people have been killed and injured by them.

Despite this, popular and practical support for the Taleban is growing with many locals accusing the Pakistan military of firing indiscriminately and causing needless civilian deaths.

The thing everyone does agree on is that ordinary families, women and children are paying the heaviest price.

One evening I sat with the staff sipping chai on the hotel terrace over-looking a flower-filled garden, enjoying moments of surreal calm before the nightly fighting began. I thought about how critical the events unfolding in Swat and the rest of Pakistan’s tribal areas really are, not only for the local people, but for global security.

One of the guards sighed and gestured across the grass with his arms: “This is where we used to hold weekly barbeques, we had a traditional tabla player and all the guests would dance.”

He turned to me expectantly, and asked: “Do you think those days will ever come back to us?”

He looked so desperate for me to say yes, I truly wish I could have.

But as another exploding mortar thundered in the distance, I could not.

Courtesy: BBC UK

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