Monday, June 20, 2011

journalist Shafiullah:From North Waziristan to Peshawar and back

Young Shafiullah was on way to becoming a journalist but the barbaric suicide bombing at the Khyber Super Market here on June 11 took his life and destroyed the hopes that his family in North Waziristan had attached with him.

One would have thought that there were more chances of Shafiullah getting killed by the US drones or the roadside bombs in his native North Waziristan. Instead, he lost his life as a result of the bombing of a small restaurant in Peshawar Cantonment. This was evidence that Peshawar has become so dangerous that people of Waziristan and Swat feel safer in their own areas than in the capital of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Federally Administered Tribal Areas (Fata).

Before the June 11 twin bomb blasts in Peshawar, 10 journalists from Fata had been killed in the line of duty. The Tribal Union of Journalists has added Shafiullah to the list and declared him the 11th tribal journalist to die in acts of violence linked to militancy and military operations. He was honoured posthumously and his wish to become a journalist was granted.

Shafiullah was keen to pursue a career in journalism. After obtaining a master’s degree in journalism from the Gomal University, Dera Ismail Khan, he joined the Peshawar office of The News International to train as journalist. As luck would have it, he had barely spent a week when tragedy struck just outside his workplace and close to his rented room. The bomb explosion caused him severe burn injuries and only a miracle could have brought him back to health. The absence of burn injury centre in Peshawar and the province meant that precious time was wasted in putting him to a proper treatment regimen.

When his elder brother Azizullah, who is an officer at the Higher Education Commission in Islamabad, shifted him to the Pakistan Ordnance Factories (POF) Hospital in Wah Cantonment where a specialized burn care centre existed, doctors were surprised to find metal shrapnel in his right shoulder. It was obvious that the overworked doctors at the Khyber Teaching Hospital, Peshawar where Shafiullah and other victims of the bombing with burn injuries were taken had missed the shrapnel embedded in his shoulder. Gradually the other patients with burn injuries were also shifted to Wah, but all had to pay for the costly treatment and none were wealthy enough to bear the expenses. The government high-ups as usual gave statements directing the administration of the public hospitals in Peshawar to take care of the bomb blast victims and then forgot about it as no effort was made to find out as to how the injured poor were coping with the situation.

Shafiullah had suffered over 50 per cent severe burn injuries. Another 20 per cent of his bruised body had sustained superficial burn injuries. The doctors at Wah had told his brothers that his fate would become known in a week’s time. Exactly five days after the June 11 bombing, Shafiullah breathed his last almost at the same time at which he had been caught in the explosion. The young man had fought hard and long for life. Like all burn injury patients, he was able to talk and showed signs of improvement. He even spoke on the phone to freelance journalist Arshad Yusufzai the day he died and said that he wanted to get up from his hospital bed, walk and go to the toilet on his own. His doctors and brothers knew better and before long their worst fears came true when Shafiullah expired.

On June 17, his body was brought to the family home in Palangzai village near Miramshah, headquarters of North Waziristan, for burial. His family had sent Shafiullah to Peshawar to become a journalist but here he was in a coffin, a burned out corpse, due to a senseless bombing that killed 42 innocent civilians.

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