Peshawar on front lines of war on militants

PESHAWAR, Pakistan (AP) — Grisly ghosts haunt 8-year-old Saira Khan’s dreams.

Her tiny hands cover her mouth as she tells of the images that come to her at night, images of burnt and mutilated bodies. She heard an explosion last month just a few blocks away from her cousin’s home.

“I got so scared,” she says, her eyes getting wider. “We didn’t know what to do, so we just lay on the floor.”

Peshawar, where Saira lives, is on the front line of Pakistan’s war against militants. In October, the Pakistani army launched its most concentrated offensive yet in the Northwest, against the tribal strongholds of some of the country’s most ruthless militants.

The militants in turn are fighting back with a vicious bombing campaign. They are striking with frightening regularity anywhere and everywhere in the city.

That leaves the people of Peshawar caught in between, afraid, fed up and mistrustful of all sides — the militants, the Pakistani army and the U.S., which is seen as supporting the push against insurgents.

Peshawar hospitals are overwhelmed with wounded from nearly daily explosions. Dozens of police barricades meant to catch suicide bombers slow the chaotic traffic on bigger roads to a crawl. Schools are shut periodically because of security fears.

Ten-year-old Kainat, who goes to Saira’s school, calls her hometown scary and telephones her friends all the time now.

“I am just worried about everyone,” she says. “I talk to them all the time and I ask, ‘How is your mother and your father, and everyone is safe?’ I just want to know that everyone is all right.”

The school hides within a 10-foot-high metal gate with two guards watching it. One guard checks the small backpacks of the children every morning with a metal detector. The Taliban has routinely attacked schools, particularly ones attended by girls.

The school principal and owner, retired Maj. Sultan Hussain, says he has trained his guards to trust no one. “I have told them, ‘Don’t believe anyone, doubt everyone, search everyone,’” he says.

The strict security measures are a stark change from just a few months ago, when people were rarely stopped from entering the school compound.

“We even discourage parents from coming to the school,” says Hussain. “The fewer adults seeking access, the better. The situation here is very bad.”

Peshawar, the capital of Northwest Frontier Province, has always been on the front lines because of its location, sprawled out at the foot of the famed Khyber Pass next to Afghanistan. It has been raided by the likes of Genghis Khan, Tamerlaine and Alexander the Great, and writer Rudyard Kipling once described it as a place of tribesmen, smugglers and horsemen.

The Pakistani army launched its offensive Oct. 17. Militant leader Hakimullah Mehsud vowed to exact his revenge with suicide attacks.

In one month in Peshawar, 221 people were killed and nearly 500 wounded in bombings. A single truck bomb in a market that sells mostly women’s clothes and children’s toys killed more than 100. The latest attack was Monday when a bomb went off outside the courthouse in Peshawar, killing 10 people.

Yet in the marketplaces, people wonder at who is behind the bombing campaign. More often than not, their answer is not the militants. Occasionally, it is Pakistan’s spy agency, but most often it is a “foreign hand” — which here in northwest Pakistan usually refers to the United States.

At the entrance to Peshawar’s Saddar Street, a congested shopping area where most government and army buildings are located, steel, yellow-striped barricades force vehicles to stop. Cyclists are patted down, and four policemen are armed with AK-47 assault rifles.

They have no dogs trained to sniff out explosives, and the authorities have run out of bullet-proof vests.

“But we are not afraid,” says the head constable, Sifatullah Khan. “We are Pukhtuns. We are standing here without anything, showing the terrorists that we are not afraid of them. And if a suicide bomber explodes himself here, then a bulletproof vest won’t save you.”

The suicide bombers are becoming more sophisticated, Khan says, hiding their explosives in the door panels of their vehicles.

“Of course, we are worried about the situation here. But if I could save the whole of Saddar from a suicide bomber, then it is a sacrifice I would make of my life,” Khan says.