A beautiful place waiting for its displaced residents to return

Mastak in Tirah valley

PESHAWAR: Until last year, Mastak was mostly in the news due to the fighting for its control between the military and the militants.

Mastak, sited in the remote lower Tirah valley, is now peaceful and the site of construction activity led by the Pakistan Army’s Corps of Engineers. An RCC bridge has been built on the river Bara at a cost of almost Rs80 million and work is in progress at Mastak on a section of the Shin Kamar-Dwa Toi road.  Once completed, the road will open up much of the strategic Tirah valley and facilitate quicker travel to Bara and Peshawar for the different Afridi sub-tribes living in this mountainous area.

During a recent visit to Mastak for the opening ceremony of the bridge and the inauguration of the work on the road leading to Dwa Toi by the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Governor Sardar Mahtab Ahmad Khan, one was captivated by the beauty of the place and the purity of its air. The sparkling clear, mineral-rich waters of the river Bara was a sight to behold, though it wasn’t served to the guests and instead the bottled water brought from Peshawar was provided to the guests in keeping with the protocol. Mastak was picturesque, but this isn’t the real Tirah valley, which is far more beautiful and bountiful as far as nature is concerned.

However, the emptiness of the Sadaq village across the newly built bridge on river Bara and also the villages further away in Mastak made one sad. The population has been displaced due to the militancy and military operations. The members of the Akakhel, a sub-tribe of the Afridis, are mostly living in the Jallozai camp in Nowshera district and at other places unaware as to when they would be able to return home. Life has come to a standstill in these once thriving green valleys.

Malik Zahir Shah, the Akakhel tribal elder who represented his absent tribe at the ceremony and put a turban on the head of the Governor as he was visiting their area, was also unsure when his displaced fellow tribespeople would be able to return home. Though elated by the Governor’s announcement that repatriation of some of the uprooted tribal people to Fata would begin in the coming weeks, he wanted firm dates for the return of the Akakhels to their ancestral land.

He wanted the suffering of his tribe to end and a new life to begin with assistance from the government.

Akakhels aren’t the only Afridis to have suffered displacement and misery. All eight Afridi sub-tribes have suffered though the Sepah endured more suffering because Mangal Bagh, the most wanted warlord and head of the outlawed militant group Lashkar-i-Islam, belonged to the tribe. The government fined the Sepah tribe and delayed its repatriation to force it to surrender some of the wanted militants and accept responsibility for the defence of their territory against the terrorists.

From Mastak, one could see the snowcapped mountain peaks located at a long distance. Tribal elders who had come from all over Khyber Agency for the ceremony addressed by the Governor, narrated tales of the beauty of the Rajgal, Kachkol and other small valleys sited in the foothills of the snow-covered mountain peaks. They said the Spinghar, or the White Mountain that serves as the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan was located in the same area. And they whispered that the militants were based in these small valleys where the military hasn’t yet carried out any ground offensive.

However, one was told that airstrikes are regularly conducted by the Pakistan Air Force against the militants and long-range artillery guns are used by the army to fire at their hideouts.