His son is dead, blown up with 50 other Pakistani fighters last week in Afghanistan by an American bomb that struck their military convoy.
The news is all over the neighborhood that 24-year-old Allahdad Khan was martyred in the holy war against the United States and has gained entrance to paradise. It is spelled out in a huge banner on the main boulevard (“A tribute to his greatness,” it says), and countless men have come to pay their respects and offer congratulations to the father, Miandad Khan.
Swat, an agricultural valley city with a strong fundamentalist Muslim movement, has sent several thousand young men to fight with the Taliban against the U.S. The city is about 40 miles northeast of Peshawar.
The cost of the decision to offer up its young to the war in Afghanistan is starting to hit home. At least seven have been killed, and there is worry and confusion about the fates of the others as the degree of the rout has become apparent.
There are reports that some of the men, perhaps hundreds, are fleeing toward home as the Taliban retreats, away from Kabul. But local religious leaders who rallied the troops apparently are still in Afghanistan, so there is no one here to confirm the story or to organize a fresh batch of anti-American demonstrations.
Kabul’s fall unexpected
It seems eerily quiet.
“There’s been no call from the religious leadership and no activity,” said Iftikhar Khan, a local journalist. “They don’t know what to do. They didn’t expect Kabul to fall. But then again, what would demonstrations gain now?”
Along the main road into town, two old men in turbans offered a wisecrack when they saw an American approach. “Do whatever you feel like: Kill women, children, the innocent,” one said to open the conversation.
But they also expressed a stunned helplessness at how badly the war was going.
“America is a powerful nation and can bomb with impunity,” said the first man, Muhammad. “What else could the Taliban have done? Stay?”
“All we can do is pray to God to save us from the Americans,” said the second man, Dodianosh.
In the weeks leading to the U.S.-led bombardment of Afghanistan, places like Swat were hotbeds of anti-American sentiment because of the size of the fundamentalist movement and because most people here are Pashtuns, like the Taliban.
The city is officially closed to foreigners because of fear of violence, and in the teeming market district, shops sell Osama bin Laden posters.
There had been concern that if the street protests in places like Swat spiraled out of control, they could destabilize the government and jeopardize Pakistan’s support of the U.S. alliance against the Taliban and bin Laden’s terrorist network. But that hasn’t happened. The protests have been passionate but limited, and President Pervez Musharraf has kept control by putting several radical clerics under house arrest.
In Miandad Khan’s household, the anger was hidden beneath a cloak of rapture.
The dead fighter’s religious teacher said he is proud. “Some of my students were martyred earlier, and some others are ready to go,” Abdul Allah said.
The “martyr’s” 30-year-old brother, Abdul Qayyum Shah, said the family’s only request was that Allahdad finish the last few weeks of his religious schooling before he left.
Allahdad had trained and fought in Afghanistan previously and had his own Kalashnikov rifle. They described him as a sincere and religiously committed man completely dedicated to the fight against the Americans.
Furious at Americans
When the family was first told of Allahdad’s death, the father was furious at the Americans for killing his son and threatened to go on a jihad against the U.S. But Shah convinced his father that he was too old.
“We are so angry that if we saw an American we would kill him,” Shah said, sitting in a roomful of men, none of whom knew the nationality of the reporter they were talking to.
But try as he might to look upset, Miandad Khan, an imam at the local mosque, could not stop smiling and placing a palm to his heart to emphasize his joy.
That the Taliban appeared to be losing the war didn’t concern the family. They think the Taliban withdrawal from Kabul was a strategic retreat.
Shah said it was natural that he would miss his departed brother. But what is truly important is that Allahdad gave his life defending Islam.
“We love martyrdom to the extent that you love wine,” the father said.
