RAWALAKOT, Azad Kashmir, 30 July 2004 — Grief and anger raged in this poor village near the Line of Control over the execution of two of its sons who braved chaos in Iraq to earn money for their families, only to be executed in the most barbaric manner.
Overwhelmed by shock, the 20-year-old daughter of slain hostage Azad Hussein Khan lost all powers of speech. “Nazia is in a state of deep shock. She has not uttered a word since last night,” family members said. They did not allow journalists to see her. Khan’s brother Raja Babar, 43, was wracked with sobbing.
“I am not in a position to speak,” he told reporters who came to Khan’s native village Bangoin near Rawalakot, about 75 kilometers south of the state capital Muzaffarabad.
Khan left behind his wife, two sons and three daughters. Screams and cries echoed as soon as the wailing family arrived from Islamabad where they had gone to lobby for the release of the hostages.
Some 800 people had already gathered in the small village which has sent about 4,000 people to join the Pakistani work force in the Middle East. Khan, 49, was executed along with fellow Pakistan Sajid Naeem, 29, by insurgents in Iraq over suspicions President Pervez Musharraf, a key ally in the US-led war on terror, might contribute troops to the war-ravaged country.
In a statement issued with Prime Minister Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain, President Musharraf said they received the news of killings with “great distress and anguish”.
“Those who have committed this crime have caused the greatest harm both to humanity and Islam,” the leaders said in the statement.
“Pakistan has always condemned terrorism in all its forms and manifestations and believes that such barbaric acts can never be justified,” they said.
They reiterated Pakistan’s firm commitment to the security and independence of Iraq, hoping the fellow Muslim country would see complete security and stability “free of internal and external turmoil”. Foreign Minister Khurshid Mahmud Kasuri said Pakistan had not made a decision on committing troops to Iraq. “We had repeatedly told the kidnappers that we have not yet taken a decision on sending troops to Iraq but despite that they have killed both,” Kasuri told the National Assembly, Parliament’s lower house.
Emotions were also reported high in Naeem’s Horna Mera village, about 25 kilometers away. The mourners in Khan’s town sitting under tents in the courtyards of two adjacent houses denounced the “ambiguity” maintained by the Pakistan government over persistent requests for deployment of its troops in Iraq.
Azad Khan’s cousin Raja Imtiaz said: “Pakistan should have come out with a categorical ‘No’ to troops for Iraq. “We had been weeping and crying for the past one week but no body contacted us.”
Khan’s 30-year-old cousin Amjad Yusuf appealed to international human rights groups to make arrangement for an early repatriation of the bodies of the slain Pakistanis “for the satisfaction of their wife and children.”
“We have full sympathies with the Iraqi people. But an organization working in the name of Islam must not have committed this act,” Raheed Abbasi, a neighbor, said.
Khalil Chaughtai, 80-year-old retired schoolteacher observed that “this tragedy could have been averted had Pakistan announced it would not send its troops.”
Villagers opposing any Pakistani role in peacekeeping operation in Iraq said 3,000-4000 people from the small Bangoin village had been employed in the Middle East for several years and the government should not take any step which would endanger their lives.
Speaker of the state’s legislative assembly, Siab Khalid who came to console the grieving crowd said the people of Kashmir had gone to the Middle East to earn money and feed their families.
“We have good wishes for the Iraqi people but this killing will deprive them of the prayers and good wishes of the Kashmiri people,” Khalid said. Khalid said he hoped the government of Pakistan would take a decision on its troops keeping in view of the sentiments of the people.
