On September 30, some 250 Taliban insurgents entered Chitral's tehsil Arandu from Nuristan in bordering Afghanistan and tied the Pakistani security personnel deputed at a Gudibar checkpost with rope and snatched their rifles. According to press reports "about 70 masked men armed with weapons looted the equipment including uniforms and weapons from the security personnel of the checkpost after injuring them and fled to Afghanistan". This frightened the wits out of the otherwise peace-loving and civilised Chitralis.

But, in a normally calm Chitral, a district of Malakand division of Khyber-Pakhtoonkhwa, which borders Afghanistan's provinces Nuristan and Kunar, this was not the first incident of its kind: On August 29, six men, logging forest wood in the Upper Dir district, were kidnapped allegedly by the Taliban and taken to Nuristan. A few days later, the throat-slit bodies of the three men were found in Arandu.

Incidentally, the kidnapped men belonged to Dhog Dara, an area of Upper Dir where the locals of 25 villages formed an armed anti-Taliban militia and killed many militants including two commanders in June last year. The confrontation was triggered on June 5 "when a suicide attack at a local mosque in Dogh Dara killed 40 local tribesmen", states Javed Sheikh, an Upper Dir-based journalist.

Haji Motabar Khan, a leader of Dog Dara's militia, says the network of Taliban militants kidnap the people from Chitral and its surrounding areas and then haul them to Nuristan. Khan criticised the local police and the administration, "They do not take action against the militants present in the valley".

According to him, another three labourers were kidnapped as a protest against the formation of the Dhog Dara militia.

Reportedly, Omar Hasan Ahrabi, spokesperson of the outlawed Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) Malakand Division, while claiming responsibility of kidnapping the Dhog Dara's men, said all those joining the anti-militants militias would not be spared -- as they are government agents and oppose the enforcement of Sharia in Swat and Malakand Division (The News September 2).

Later, the Taliban set the three labourers free and handed them over to the Chitral district administration.

On September 7 last year, a Greek social worker Athanassios Lerunis was kidnapped by Taliban militants from Chitral's Bambouret Valley and shifted to Nuristan. The abductors killed a policeman and injured two others who tried to foil the kidnapping. Lerunis was released in April this year in exchange of two Afghan Taliban commanders, one of them Maulana Rahmatuddin Nuristani. They also got millions of rupees in ransom, revealed an elder who was part of the jirga which went from Chitral to Nuristan to seek the recovery of Lerunis.

Authorities deny such a deal. A local elder, requesting anonymity, says Zahir, a former Afghan Taliban leader living in Chitral, played an important role in the release of Lerunis.

Nuristan, Afghanistan's north-eastern province, is considered a stronghold of the Afghan Taliban. "Afghan Taliban govern the area. The Taliban Shura appointed Sheikh Dost Muhammad as a shadow governor of the province," says Ali Afzal, a member of the local Sheikh tribe. Sheikhan tribesmen live in both Nuristan and Chitral and therefore Chitralis blame the locals for extending assistance to Nuristani Taliban in Chitral.

Some media reports also suggest that head of TTP Swat, Maulana Fazlullah, is hiding in Nuristan. Few months ago Afghan officials claimed Fazlullah had been killed in the Barg-e-Matal area of Nuristan but later Mufti Munibullah, head of Afghan Taliban in Nuristan, denied such reports. Faqir Muhammad, the TTP leader in Bajour agency, also said that Fazlullah could be in Nuristan because the Taliban have been moving back and forth along the Pakistan-Afghan border.

In an interview with BBC in November last year, Fazlullah said he had escaped to Afghanistan after a Pakistani military offensive against the Taliban in his Swat Valley stronghold in April last year.

Local political analysts are of view that Chitral has been steadily becoming more conservative and the influence of religious political parties has been on the rise. A development expert, who wished not to be named due to security reasons, confirmed the presence of both Malakand and Nuristan Taliban militants in the valley, and said these militants are also fanning sectarian violence in neighbouring Gilgit. He recalled that offices of the Agha Khan Rural Support Programme (AKRSP), sponsored by Ismaili leader Prince Karim Agha Khan, were attacked by religious extremists in late 2004 while two workers of AKRSP were killed in December 2004.

Consequently, the relations between Sunnis (that constitute 65 percent of the Chitral population) and Ismaili Shias (35 percent) have become strained because of the influence of religious radical groups in the district. A small portion of the non-Muslim Kalash community, famous for its traditional dances and beautiful dress, are based in the south of the district.

Shehzada Mahiuddin, member of National Assembly elected from the district, admits Chitral has felt the effects of insurgency going on in Afghanistan. "In a bid to stop the incursions by the Afghan Taliban, we (the local government) are sending a local tribal jirga to Nuristan to meet the Taliban leadership," he says, adding that contingents of paramilitary forces and police have been deployed at the borders and all the entry and exit point along the Pak-Afghan border following the incidents of incursion of Afghan Taliban.

The writer is an independent journalist and works on militancy, development and human rights.

Bomb blasts, target killings and other terrorist attacks have consumed so many lives around us that these are now taken as normal ways of dying; more so because other attention-grabbing events take up media space and time. This indifference aside, the brutal killings leave in their wake a unique, deep and insurmountable grief and an uncertain future for their loved ones. Yet, each survivor devises a way to deal with it in his or her own manner.

What happens when the person who has borne this kind of a loss is an artist? There are multiple choices for creative persons: to either forget it by concentrating on their routine work; or to focus on it solely and making it the main content or reason of their work. One comes across both sorts of reactions in the works of a few artists who have unfortunately witnessed the loss of their family members or friends.

There is also a middle ground preferred by some including Nausheen Saeed. Her father was brutally shot in a terrorist incident in Lahore. The experience of seeing off her father for his prayer and then in a couple of hours seeing him all wounded, struggling for life in a hospital, and soon turning into a corpse has changed the artist, who, not long ago, had suffered the death of her mother in a fatalistic illness. The sculptor who had been engaged with the depiction of female body and its association to a vessel with all its psychological, sexual and societal connotations is forced to tackle personal grief through her art.

Significantly, Saeed's position on private loss has not converted her into a pessimistic or sentimentalist artist. On the other hand, art becomes a scheme of negotiating with personal grief and a way of transforming it into works which not only relate to a specific incident in her life but allude to other ideas as well. In her recent solo exhibition, 'Intentions/Interventions', held from Sept 28 to Oct 7, 2010, at the Canvas Gallery in Karachi, works were not confined to one kind of meaning or incident and were open to multiple interpretations.

Yet, looking at the works, mostly mixed-media sculptures and installation, one felt the disappearance of a living person. Dressing table layered with blocks of concrete, writing table covered by a square form made of building blocks, pillars interjected with pillows and a bed with two television sets placed as if the heads of a couple were resting on the cushions, all refer to death in one way or the other. For example, the television sets on a double bed (Sleeping Partner) might have a link with the usual relationship between a married couple who spend their lives around television, not only to seek hours of entertainment but also as an excuse to avoid each other's company. But more than replacing the human companion, television has also turned into an organ to announce the death of a loved one, particularly when that death is part of a public massacre.

Likewise, the installation titled 'Blockade' comprising five cement pillars with different cushions inserted in their mid might have reminded of Roman and Greek elements of architecture so popular in our urban surroundings but these invoked a morbid sensation. The cushions, representing a human being or comfort, are trapped inside a building block; much like a body wrapped in cloth is placed inside a grave, to be filled with slabs of cements and bricks. The fact that there was more than one column (four standing and one lying on the floor) could have a connection with rows of graves that one witnesses after every incident of mass bloodshed.

Other works contain similar connotations. For instance, furniture pieces in The Maze of Justice (her father's writing-table topped with building blocks), The Last Look (dressing-table hidden with identical blocks), and In Between (drawers of a chest filled with cement) initially belonged to her parents and are transformed into metaphors for the relationship between a thing and a living being. Humans have a special connection with their possessions or objects around them. They are fond of their accumulated objects, which they've selected after much search, and keep them in good conditions. However, as soon as the person leaves the world, his possessions especially the ones of personal use become irrelevant and a sort of burden and are generally donated.

In that sense, Nausheen Saeed's work, initiated from a personal tragedy, has turned into a collective and shared narrative, mainly by modifying the actual and unique items of her parents. Thus, these particular pieces do not belong to a specific personality but to humanity at large; like graves -- which irrespective of the individual buried --have a common and uniform appearance; representing our society at present!

Dear All,

Ten years ago, one frosty October afternoon, I joined a small group of people standing outside the Pakistan embassy in London to protest against the imposition of military rule by General Musharraf.

We were there because it had been one year since the army chief had removed the civilian government, and had accused the PM Nawaz Sharif, of 'hijacking his aircraft'.

We were a well-meaning lot, galvanised by Arif Azad, and we reached Lowndes Square right after a large protest rally, led by Nawaz Sharif's son and peopled by coach loads of PML-N workers, had dispersed. Obviously they were a hard act to follow, but we chanted some good slogans largely thanks to Nafisa Shah's enthusiasm and cheerleading skills.

But why did we go there that day, a decade ago? Because the handful of us that had bothered to turn up actually felt strongly about the evils of military interventions and we were all of an age that remembered how General Zia's eleven-year-rule had brutalised Pakistan's society and psyche.

Fast forward to 2007: I attend a London function organised by the embassy for President Musharraf. It is packed with British Pakistanis who all seem to adore him. The man himself seems fairly drunk with power and makes a speech in roguish tones. He denounces anti-Pakistan journalists and berates (the well respected journalist) M. Ziauddin for having asked him an awkward question. He recommends that such journalists should be taught a lesson and slapped; the crowd cheers and claps, they love this military dictator and his 'no nonsense' demeanour.

Then Musharraf ends up in London in some sort of exile after having presided over the Lal Masjid crisis, dismissed the Chief Justice, scorned the judges and suspended civil liberties by imposing an emergency. The civilian government provides him with a form of honourable exit instead of trying to lynch him or put him in the dock. Musharraf then leaves his new-built palatial residence on the outskirts of Islamabad and moves to a flat on the Edgware Road.

Presumably he soon got tired of playing bridge and wining and dining, so he decides that he owes it to his thousands of Facebook 'fans' to enter politics in Pakistan... Presumably some peculiar western officials also encourage him in his ambitions...

Cut to October 2010: in the library of London Club, a suited booted Musharraf launches a political party in a style reminiscent of a rightist thinktank. Then he goes off to Birmingham to address a gathering of British Pakistanis.

Charming stuff. But I would just like to note here that this is the man who toppled a government to save his own job, who started a war with India without consulting the elected PM... The man who actively persecuted dissenting politicians and despite claims of 'enlightened moderation' ruled over an establishment that sponsored jehadi groups... This is the man who claimed to crack down on religious extremism yet who allowed the Sipah-e-Sahaba chief, Azam Tariq to contest -- and win -- the 2002 elections....

Pakistan's so-called liberals like this man and actually supported him in his do-you-want-me referendum. They loved his blunt demeanour and roguish tones and defiant words. They warmed to that early photo of him in his bush shirt holding his Pekingese dogs next to his Ammi jan in her sari.

But I have always wondered: what actually became of the little dogs? They sort of disappeared from view very soon after when Musharraf got cosy with the fundos and the crooks.

Can we read their disappearance, their being edited out of political biography, as a metaphor for the expediency that characterises General Musharraf's political career? Food for thought.

Umber Khairi