faces of war

eyes are the windows to the soul and the eyes above are full of despair and heartbreak.

most of my posts on this blog are frivolous. my travels and travails. but i like to interject with some serious posts once in a while, lest we forget in our cushy lives how lucky we are.

these two children are refugees from south waziristan in pakistan’s tribal north-west frontier province. village children who have only known poverty and war. if those faces don’t make your heart break, i don’t know if the bad news coming out of pakistan will…

shades of vlad the impaler?

Residents nicknamed it “khooni chowk” or “bloody intersection” because the militants would leave their victims’ bodies there — some decapitated, some killed in other brutal fashions. The dead often were left hanging from trees. Some had notes attached that accused the victims of spying and told local residents not to move the bodies until specified times.

good old vlad would do this kind of stuff to his own people to show the invading turks how brutal he could be. hundreds of years later, this is what’s happening in pakistan. brother to brother. kinsman to kinsman.

and to think the swat valley was, until recently, the switzerland of pakistan. what a mess…

kashmir and pakistan: part three

my asia sojourn was originally intended to be a relief and travel trip built almost entirely around kashmir. of course, things didn’t happen quite as planned. we ended up spending only three days of my 12-day trip in kashmir. was i disappointed? yes. was i going to complain to my parents about staying longer in kashmir when they were both still very ill from their mideast trip? no.

on the flip side, my father encouraged me to visit the mughal sites in and around lahore, saying that there could be much to write about there. lahore has a rich and colorful history and was once the jewel of the punjab during mughal and british rule in india. rudyard kipling wrote many a verse about his love of the city. emperor shah jahan, best known as the architect of the taj mahal in agra, loved lahore so much that he spent many summer months in the area. he even created the lovely shalimar gardens, with its more than 400 fountains, summer baths and pavilions, as a retreat for the royal family. now, it’s a UNESCO heritage site, although you’d wouldn’t know that if you saw its current state.

shalimar gardens

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i hadn’t visited the gardens since i was a kid. i remembered it being very green, with many poplar, peach and mango trees and flowers blooming all around. i was saddened to see that my memory hadn’t served me well. the fountains were silent. the landscaping, some of it patchy, some of it green, needed improvement although the people who i saw working the grounds when i visited were trying their best with the meager budget they had been given. one of the workers told us stories about elephant processions through the gardens during mughal days. the elephants are long gone and much of the fretwork needs to be restored. my mother and i spent half our visit to the gardens picking up discarded candy bar wrappers and water bottles. one beggar chased me down to make me stop but i told her this is the only world we had and we better band together to keep it beautiful.

this is a historical site and should be treated with much care. but considering pakistan is going through a dire financial and civil crisis and many people are poor, i guess the government doesn’t see the need in restoring the beauty of the gardens. it’s a shame because long after we’re gone, the remains of our civilization will still be around…

kashmir and pakistan: part one

after spending 24 hours traveling yesterday and getting no sleep on the plane due to a stomach ailment, i am up bright and early on tuesday to post about part of my kashmir and pakistan trip.

i haven’t been to the region since i was kid. the last time i visited, that bastard dictator, zia ul-haq, was president. he has much to answer for the current situation in pakistan and afghanistan. a general under zulfikar ali bhutto, benazir’s beloved father, haq (who incidentally shares a last name with my mother’s side of the family but is not a relation) overthrew bhutto, had him summarily executed and took control of the country for more than 11 years. during that time, he helped a nation that was progressing, albeit slowly, get mired in the heartbreaking afghan-soviet conflict, brought about the rise of the ISI, pakistan’s answer to the CIA, and aided the birth of taliban-like groups in both afghanistan and pakistan. these things have contributed to so much of the strife in afghanistan and pakistan. may he rot in hell.

haq also spent millions funding the kashmiri conflict. i am a pakistani-born afghan but i don’t think india or pakistan should have control of the region. while it was intended to be dispensed to pakistan after the partition of 1947 because of its predominantly muslim population, it’s been more than 50 years since then and the two nuclear powers can’t seem to come to a compromise. i have always believed that kashmir is for the kashmiris and never more so than now.

i didn’t know how my recent trip to azad jammu and kashmir would pan out. while i expected natural beauty—from waterfalls to what the norwegians call fjords to majestic peaks—and wonderful, hopeful people, what i didn’t expect was a tortuous four-hour drive from islamabad that had me clinging to my seat as the hired driver, naseem khan, traversed his way up the mountain on a two-lane road littered with more than a dozen landslides.

was i going to be a landslide victim? stay tuned to find out…

what can i expect?

this is scary, especially since i am going to this very city in a few weeks before traveling on to kashmir. but the silver lining in all of this is that the populace is fed up and chaudhry, who is really for the people and not for the elite (of which i can include some members of my mother’s family), is back in power. let’s hope this brings some measure of stability and peace to a region that’s increasingly bringing me to the brink of despair…

asia trip update

some of you know that i had planned to do relief work in central asia. initially, my heart was set on my ancestral homeland of afghanistan. but i was recently told that the situation is dire and that my family can’t ensure my safety. as an afghan-american female, i am placing myself in jeopardy. i next set my sites on baluchistan, which is a province in western pakistan and eastern afghanistan but i would be on the pakistani side. an earthquake devastated part of the region in the fall. i was told that would be a no go as well.

my third option was kashmir. i have always wanted to see it for myself after having heard that it’s a magical place, much like the mythical camelot. verdant valleys and mist-covered lakes abound, according to my sources, and those same sources have said it’s quite possibly the most beautiful place on earth. 

lucky for me, i get to go. i planned on traveling this month but was told by my mother that they close the roads in and out of kashmir for fear of avalanches. march is the earliest i can get there. my friends have asked me what my plans are once on kashmiri soil. i would like to volunteer with a local agency, doing whatever i can to help the local populace, and then i’d like to travel around the region, interviewing the locals and photographing my journey. my cousin’s husband is a general in the army so i will have unfettered access to the area. this may be the trip of a lifetime.