War on Terror
Reporting ''war on terror''
By Farooq Sulehria
Since Afghanistan has plunged into chaos, Peshawar has become a favourite destination for journalists arriving from all over the world to cover Afghan war. Capital of Pakistan's Frontier province, Peshawar is the gate way to Afghanistan. It takes an hour's zigzag drive through bushy hills to reach border post at Torkham. From Torkham, it takes almost three hours to Kabul. A fascinating place surrounded by steep dry hills, Torkham daily receives thousands of people arriving from Afghanistan and Pakistan. Hundreds of trucks, among them vehicles carrying NATO supplies, line on both sides of the no man's land waiting for hours to get the customs' clearance. The travellers, however, do not bother customs or passport control. As a matter of fact, hardly anybody carries a passport let alone visa, either to enter Pakistan or reach Afghanistan. Both sides of Pak-Afghan borders are inhibited by Pashtoon tribes. This artificial border, drawn by British authorities when India was ruled by London, is as absurd as Berlin Wall used to be. Not merely culture, language and religion on both sides of Durand Line are strikingly similar, human features and geography are surprisingly identical too. This similarity is what makes job for Western journalists easy and helps Peshawar-based journalists make some quick bucks. I realised it when I visited Peshawar in 2002 to do a story for my paper Internationalen, a Stockholm-based left-wing weekly. Some of my former colleagues from Lahore had moved to Peshawar in search of jobs. Couple of them had been facilitating, among others, Swedish journalists. I was taken aback when Shahid told me how the two Swedish journalists from a mainstream daily, stationed themselves at Swedish Afghan Committee's guest house, situated in city's posh Hyatabad neighbourhood, literally hired him to do the stories for them. They were too scared to venture out of the guest house. ''But very keen to get their hands on exclusive stories'', Shahid told me with a grin. This indeed was nothing compared to Ahmed Jan's revelations.
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3:56 AM
Moderate Islamist here
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