Cheegha

Cheegha, a Pashto word for an urgent call to defend individual or collective interests, is the title of a book written by a Fata resident on the area he belongs to. The author, from Darpa Khel village near Miran Shah in North Waziristan, beautifully portrays in detail the picture of a peaceful Fata before the invasion of Afghanistan by foreign forces and then of the state of turmoil it fell into thereafter. The situation sent tremors across the border setting the whole of the tribal areas of Pakistan on fire – for no fault of the residents there.
The author’s narrative of changes to life in Fata is so vivid and engrossing that, once started, the reader finds it most difficult to keep the book aside before reaching the end.
Cheegha is a call by the author to the people of the tribal areas to wake up to guard their own interests. He exhorts them to demand rights equal to those that are guaranteed to all other citizens in the country. He wants them not to sit quietly and stay silent on the difficulties encountered by them but to highlight the discriminatory attitude of the government as well as the injustices these people face. He pleads with them to publicise the fact that they have no say – whatsoever – in running the affairs of the tribal areas. Lastly, he encourages them to tell the world that there still exists, in this 21st century, a place on the face of the earth where people are treated in a manner resembling apartheid.
One fine morning, while engrossed in writing about the difficulties faced by the internally displaced people of Waziristan, I received a telephone call from a gentleman asking for my postal address so that he could send me a book he had written on Fata. Half-heartedly I gave him my address thinking that the book would be like one of so many penned on Fata by totally ignorant outsiders who claim expertise on the area and depict it as the most dangerous place on earth and the people there only as thieves, dacoits and killers. But I was happily surprised to find this book to be refreshingly different.
The book is a factual narration of what has happened, and is still happening, in Fata. The foreword aptly states: “If you wish to remove the veil of misunderstanding and obfuscation that hangs over Waziristan, read this book carefully. It will change the way you look at Waziristan”.
Ghulam Qadir Khan Daur has skilfully drawn a picture of the simple way of life of people in the tribal areas by telling the story of his own younger days in the village of Darpa Khel and how he grew up there. He recalls, with nostalgia, the good old days where everyone, irrespective of religion, lived in peace and harmony – including the Hindus who lived there and only moved to India after 1965. Nobody was looked down upon or maltreated for having a different religion.
The society was totally opposite of the violent extremism that prevails there now. Daur takes us to the days long gone in the lush green Tochi valley of North Waziristan and describes in detail a simple life of peace – where everyone was everybody’s friend and where the hujra (the guest house) was the focal point of learning the etiquette of melmastia (hospitality); of Pashtunwali (code of life for Pakhtuns) and above all profound respect for elders.
That peaceful atmosphere was first shattered by the arrival of the Soviets in Afghanistan and after that by the American invasion to which Pakistan, under dictatorial rule and throwing its own interests away, became a party. What followed next and how the people there were treated is a sad story. The militants killed the locals, accusing them of spying, and the armed forces punished them for siding with the militants.
Daur writes: “The security forces destroy whole villages during military operations without getting a militant worth his name. On the other hand the breeding of militants continues to this day. Some train them, others fund them and some others protect them. Who is doing all this – no one knows. Faceless people provide them all the support they need; even manpower is imported to join their ranks.
“The Afghan Taliban disown them, the army and intelligence agencies disown them and the international community disowns them. Yet neither their ammunition exhausts nor their funds diminish, neither their number dwindle nor their training weakens”.
While describing what happened to the people the author boldly states: “We are converted into [a] minority on our own land. The faceless enemy took over our land from us through the treachery of friends … we trusted and to whom we had not caused any harm. They took our land by betrayal and intrigue secretly converting our poor vulnerable children into demons. The land we cherished so much wasn’t ours anymore.”
Towards the end he spells the factors which, if addressed, will solve all problems in Fata. “The enemy is the lack of voice of the tribesmen; they have no provincial representation and no local government. All laws for (the) tribal areas are designed and promulgated by people in Islamabad, who have no clue about them. No local or foreign media is permitted in the tribal areas to bring out the truth. They are the only nation on the face of earth kept away from modernisation, a policy of its government, to be used against aggression or as aggressors, to use them as front men for their nefarious activities and to blame them when intending to commit high-profile crime.”
Cheega is a revealing book of the atrocities that have been, and are still, committed against people of the tribal areas and which have made life hell for them in their own land. It is an interesting eye-opener and must not be missed by all those interested in monitoring developments in Fata. It should be made ‘compulsory reading’ for all those government servants who are detailed for duty in Fata.
The writer is a former ambassador. Email: waziruk@hotmail.com