'War on terror' an excuse for disappearances in Pakistan

"A taste of their own medicine would be the best punishment for these people," says Mohammad Atif, 23, when asked how agents of the state who kidnapped and detained him for two years should be punished. "The only problem is no one can touch these people." A victim of "enforced disappearance," a euphemism for kidnappings carried out by military spy agencies, Atif, a student of the Quaid-e-Azam Open University, lost two precious years. He said that he was picked up while on his way home from college on Aug. 3, 2004, and freed only last week. Ali Dayan Hasan, South Asia researcher for the New York-based Human Rights Watch, says: "The Pakistani military, the principal human rights violator in the country, enjoys total impunity for its actions. Practices such as disappearances and torture are used routinely to quash political dissent, intimidate and terrorize its opponents and maintain its control." During his detention, Atif "met" or "heard about" others on a list of missing people compiled by Amina Janjua that includes the name of her own husband Masood Ahmed Janjua who was picked up in July 2005, for alleged links with the al-Qaida. Atif said most are young, about his age and "religiously inclined." The government seems to have washed its hands off Amina's husband's case, with Col. Imran Yaqub, director for operations in the Interior Ministry, telling a Supreme Court bench that they have been unable to locate Masood and suspect he may have "gone to Afghanistan." But Amina insists that she has been assured privately by various higher officials that he is "in Pakistan, alive and well" and that he is being detained in a military detention center in Pakistan-administered Kashmir." "If people from the ministry know where he is, and if they can tell me he is alive, why cannot they find him?" asks Amina. In August 2006 a petition was submitted in the Supreme Court by Amina and Zainab Khatoon, a mother whose son went missing along with Amina's husband, seeking information regarding the whereabouts of 16 missing persons. Their families have come together on a joint forum–Defense of Human Rights–to locate their loved ones. Their list includes 41 missing people. Numbers have given strength and visibility to the campaign. Media reporting of their demonstrations outside the parliament, the Supreme Court and Interior Ministry has also kept the issue from being swept under the carpet by the government. On Nov. 10, the Supreme Court ordered the government to recover the missing persons and apprise the families about their whereabouts by Dec. 1. "On the next date of hearing, no excuse will be acceptable," Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammed Chaudhury had reportedly said. To pacify the apex court, the government produced 20 persons, 10 of whom have since returned home. Still hedging, the government requested the court to dismiss the case as, even after "hectic efforts," it was unable to locate the remaining 21 people. Rebuking the government, the judge said the government should have done more and taken the investigation to the "highest level." "If they are citizens of Pakistan, you are duty-bound to find out where they are and the exercise should continue till the objective is achieved; till all those missing have been traced and brought home safely," he said. He ordered the government to provide details of the 21 missing people at the next hearing scheduled for Dec.15. Having made profiles of all the 41 victims, Amina concludes that "all come from a fairly religious background, are simple, middle-class people who do not have connections at the top nor [are they] very resourceful." The families blame the "war on terror" for these enforced disappearances. "We're labelled extremists and treated differently for our beliefs. Our way of life is considered an aberration in our own country, which professes to be an Islamic Republic," says Mohammad, 17, son of Masood Janjua, who can recite the Koran from memory. Atif, who was interrogated continuously for 20 days, and intermittently afterwards, confirms this. "Yes, I was asked about my alleged links to al-Qaida." Mohammad Siddique, 73, from Kotri in Sindh, who was released after 27 days, but whose son and son-in-law remain in custody for "terrorist activity," says the same. "They asked me why I went for jihad to Afghanistan in the 1980s. I told them I did it because it is mandatory for every Muslim," he says. While most wives and mothers just "want their loved ones back unharmed," Sohail Faraz, 29, brother of the missing Faisal Faraz, says angrily: "I want my brother back with the guarantee that this will never happen again, to him or anyone. They have to pay for this." Faisal, described as a pony-tailed, fun-loving young student who suddenly decided to join a religious group, would go away for long durations to learn the Islamic way of life. "We had no problems with this change in him. He was a good person and this made him better still. And why is this even considered a reason to be picked up? He has not violated any laws of the country. Even if they suspect something, they should take the legal recourse," adds Faraz. "The official explanation to taking legal course is that investigation of serious crime and interrogation of suspects takes longer than the time allowed by 'legal process' which supposedly hampers probe," says I.A. Rehman, director of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP). But what do the agencies stand to gain by picking up seemingly innocent people? "Perhaps the intelligence agencies pick up 'suspects' because they are under pressure to perform," remarks Rehman. "Pakistani authorities have presented figures suggesting that more than 1,000 terrorism suspects have been arrested since 2001." "The Pakistani government has processed only a fraction of the cases through the legal system," adds Hasan. Amnesty International in its report "Human Rights Ignored in the War on Terror," made public in September, reiterated that the lure of rewards has led to illegal arrests and disappearance with hundreds of suspects being handed over to the US. Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf, in his memoir In the Line of Fire, released earlier this year, acknowledges that Pakistan had captured 689 al-Qaida terror suspects and turned over 369 of them to Washington thereby earning for the country "millions of dollars," in bounty money. And yet all those who have disappeared are not linked to the "war on terror." Because of the clandestine nature of the arrests, it is impossible to know the exact number of people who have disappeared. According to data collected by the HRCP, of the 600 people that have "disappeared" over the past five years most are "Baloch nationalists, Sindhi dissidents and even sectarian leaders," from the southern provinces. "The greatest number of disappearances, it seems, have taken place in Balochistan," agrees Hasan, adding that "there are no large financial incentives on offer. He adds regretfully that while the US bounty system may have encouraged such practices, "the fact is that along with torture, illegal detention, harassment, blackmail and extra-judicial executions, disappearances are now part of standard practice by Pakistani law enforcement and intelligence agencies."