Robert Fisk: Into the terrifying world of Pakistan's 'disappeared'
In the first of a series of reports from Pakistan, our correspondent meets the wife of one of 8,000 citizens who have gone 'missing' at the hands of the state
If you want to know how brutally Pakistan treats its people, you should meet Amina Janjua. An intelligent painter and interior designer, she sits on the vast sofa of her living room in Rawalpindi – a room that somehow accentuates her loneliness – scarf wound tightly round her head, serving tea and biscuits like the middle-class woman she is. And although neither a soldier nor a policeman has ever laid a hand on her, she is a victim of her country's cruel oppression. Because, five years ago, her husband Masood became one of Pakistan's "disappeared".
It is a scandal and a disgrace and, of course, a crime against humanity. Ask not where Masood Janjua has gone – Amina does ask, of course, all the way up to the President – for he has entered that dark world wherein dwell up to 8,000 of Pakistan's missing citizens, men, for the most part, seized from their homes or from the streets by cops and soldiers on the orders of spies and intelligence agents and Americans since 11 September, 2001. In Lahore alone, there are 120 "torture houses" just for the missing of the Punjab. Their shrieks of pain from the basements could be heard by residents – who complained only that the buildings might provoke bomb attacks. In Pakistan today, preservation counts for more than compassion.
Masood Janjua was 44 when he was "disappeared" on 30 July 2005. He ran an IT college and a travel agency, the father of two boys – Mohamed and Ali, and a girl, Aisha. He just never came home. Nobody saw what happened. Amina, who was 40 at the time, glows when she speaks of him. "We were so extremely close, so happy, our world was so heavenly – we were always visiting friends, having parties at home. He was so caring and kind to our children, so affectionate. That he should be taken from me! I think it was a very big mistake that they did. But when they do it – like this – they never say they were wrong."
"They". Everyone I talk to here talks about "they". Many refuse to talk in case it provokes "them" to undertake a quick execution. "They" is the Inter-Services Intelligence. "They" is military intelligence. "They" are the Americans, some of them present – according to the few "disappeared" who have been released – during torture sessions. The Defence of Human Rights Pakistan (DHRP), the movement which Amina founded with 25 other bereft families, has gathered evidence of English-speaking interrogators who calmly ask victims questions during their torment. Ironically, Amina lives in a military district of Rawalpindi, beside an old British barracks, where US soldiers are observed in Pakistani uniforms – sometimes female American soldiers dressed, so she says, in the uniforms of Pakistani military paramedics.
Even more ironic was the first word she had of her husband after he disappeared. "When I went to the Supreme Court to demand his return, witnesses came forward to say they saw Masood inside an army barracks here in Rawalpindi, very close to his family. Just think – it was within walking distance from our home! He was inside a cell at 111 Brigade barracks. It was so sad for me – it was as if they were being cynical, to keep him so close to his family."
Amina Janjua found that one of the court witnesses lived in Peshawar and she travelled to the North West Frontier Province to speak to him five months after her husband disappeared. "He had been in the army facility in Rawalpindi. The prisoners were kept in solitary confinement and only when they were taken to the lavatory did they come close to other prisoners. They were forced to wear big hoods – hoods that went right down and covered their shoulders – and the detainees would get no chance to talk to another human being. This man said my husband was there – he even heard the guard call him 'Janjua'."
There is evidence that Pakistan's "disappeared" are moved around, between barracks and interrogation centres and underground torture facilities in different towns and cities. There are also terrible rumours – fostered, some say, by the security authorities – that the army has thrown detainees from helicopters, that the cops dispose of bodies at night by dumping them in swamps or in open countryside so that decay and animal mutilation will cover the marks of torture before the bodies are found. But Amina Janjua believes most of them are alive. You might say she has to believe that.
"After 9/11, everyone was worried. People were ruthlessly disappeared after the New York attacks. No one knew why their loved ones were taken. The first few months were like hell for me. Then I regained my consciousness and said I could not accept all this. I said I would fight. I said I would get my husband back." Brave words. Brave lady.
So she turned to the only brave institution still fighting in Pakistan: the lawyers and the judges and the courts. So far, the Supreme Court in Islamabad and the Lahore High Court have squeezed around 200 detainees out of the maw of the country's security apparatus – those, that is, who were still in Pakistan. Many are known to have been freighted off to the tender mercies of the Americans at Bagram in Afghanistan, where Arab detainees have long ago testified to being beaten and sodomised with broom sticks. There have been prisoner murders, too, in Bagram, the jail that President Barack Obama refuses to close.
"At the beginning, I went to the International Red Cross about Masood," Amina Janjua says. "I saw them over several months. There was no progress. My father-in-law went to many people, he even went to President Musharraf – he trained in the military with Musharraf and they knew each other very well – and Musharraf said, 'I will do something for you'– but he never did. After that, when we called the President's house, they would start avoiding us. We wrote to all the Pakistan intelligence agencies. All said my husband could not be found."
Many families have been given false hopes. "In some villages way out in the country," Amina recalls, "families were told by the authorities that their sons were coming home. These were poor people but they were so happy, so delighted. They would hold a party and give out sweets and slaughter valuable animals to show their happiness. But then the sons didn't come home. Can you imagine treating people like this?"
Amina Janjua's fraudulent hope came in a phone call in 2006, a year after Masood's disappearance. "We had our first breakthrough when the military secretary of the President called Masood's father to say that his son was alive and that they had heard about him, though he had been ill – in a fever. That was our first sign of relief.
"Then he started avoiding us again. There was no message after that. Then we were told 'No, he is not with us, but we are making every effort because the President has made this request to help you.' I went on asking senior people in the army what had happened to my husband, and they – I put it like this – they started shivering. They would shudder. They could not disclose any information."
Teaching herself law and fighting her own case, Amina Janjua returned to the Supreme Court. "When I did this, I started hearing of many other cases and things that are happening. And that's when I realised. It's not about 'missing' people – this is about abduction. I started organising files on these abducted people and eventually I had 788 families on my list and I started conducting research. And we got about 200 prisoners released. The courts ordered this. They were all still in Pakistan. Others, we know, had been taken to Bagram, three or four to Guantanamo Bay where at least we knew they were alive."
But Amina's research could prove terrifying. She discovered not only that abducted men were alive. They were also dead. "I suspected some of them had died," she said. "I know of three prisoners who are dead. One was Mohamed Shafiq; he was a coach driver and they released his death certificate – it said he died of 'some illness'. He was in his 40s. One of the prisoners, a businessman called Said Menon, died shortly after he was released.
"All of the 200 we got released had been tortured. Initially, it was very ruthless – they were not allowed to sleep; there were beatings and thrashings; they were hanged upside down. There was loud music. There were actual torture rooms where the things were done to them. The prisoners told us they didn't think their torturers were human beings at all. The faces of the torturers, they said, were horrifying. It was no longer a real world for them. The torturers seemed so powerful, like monsters, so big."
The questions they were asked were repetitive, according to Amina Janjua. Where are the guns? Where are the weapons? Where is Mullah Omar? Two prisoners described to Amina's committee how they were made to wear orange jumpsuits, shaven till they were bald and taken for questioning to Islamabad. "They were interrogated by foreigners – they could see them. They were English-speaking. They didn't know if they were Americans or British."
The DHRP now holds public protests in all the cities of Pakistan where the prisoners have their homes – in Lahore, Sagoda, Quetta, Faisalabad, Karachi, Peshawar – but the families focus on Islamabad where they demonstrate their fury and their anguish outside the Supreme Court and the offices of President Asif Ali Zardari and the Prime Minister, Yousuf Raza Gilani. The DHRP files show that there are 1,700 missing from Baluchistan alone. At least 4,000 appear to be in the hands of the Pakistani interior ministry, while 2,000 have been handed over to what the DHRP describes as "foreign agencies" – usually, the Americans. Perhaps 750 of the missing Pakistanis are believed to have been taken by the Americans – illegally, of course – to Bagram, the Policharki prison outside Kabul, or to Herat in western Afghanistan.
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Also in this section
- Robert Fisk’s World: On the streets of Pakistan, it's as if the sun hasn't set on the Raj
- Robert Fisk's World: As things get worse in Pakistan, the optimism continues to soar
- Robert Fisk: The mysterious case of the Grey Lady of Bagram
- Robert Fisk’s World: Try this reading list if you want to understand the Middle East
Comments
Reading a report on torture, even one as guarded as this, conveys a sense of denudation. Not of clothes from my body, or grass from my lawn - but of civilization ripped from the depths of my consciouness.
Who could have anticipated that Pakistanis or Europeans or North Americans could so easily shed civilized behaviour and return to calculated barbarism? That salaried personnel have been trained to practice physical and mental abominations on the helpless? Or that media reporting, mainly on radio and television, appears to give tacit approval to the existence and procedures of government-funded agencies of torture?
We have been educated to think of Hitler and Stalin and their bureaucratic minions as barbarians. Now we must adjust our gaze, glance away from twentieth-century history, and stare on our allied soldiers today as practitioners of torture, murder and body-disposal.
In so looking, and accepting the brute reality, the sense of civilization's degradation becomes a private pain. Denuded, I feel one with the disappeared.
Even the recent "capture" by Pak of Mullah Baradar in Karachi, where the ISI had taken him to keep him safe from the Yank assassins and killer drones that have descended on the former Taliban HQ town of Quetta, was simply to keep the Taliban from making a separate peace deal with Karzai instead of acting as Pak's pawns:
Shortly afterwards it turned out the Paks were refusing to hand him over to the Yanks. Now it has become abundantly clear that Pak just locked him up not to stop him from waging war but from making a peace deal. IOW Pak locked up Baradar so that the Taliban would continue their war against NATO.
So why is Pak still torturing hundreds of innocent people? Simple: Because the CIA pays for every one of them, just like it paid for ever random dude Pak picked off the street and shipped to Gitmo.
You think Zardari and his cohort of thieves would never do such a thing? They did a lot worse: They turned 4 million people in the Swat valley into refugees just to score some Yank dollars.
regards,
Tizab
People go missing all over the world and no one knows where they are.
It's a terrible thing to have happen but it's not uncommon.
People are still looking for this guy called Bin Laden and no one knows where he is.
Every single suicide bomber never had any problems with his family and they are all described as loving and how they just couldn't ever imagine they would join a terrorist group.
I can only assume your whole comment is written with irony. That or you are a very young naive individual
He could just have been suffering from a mid life crises or God knows what.
"By the end of 2005, there were 109531 active missing person records according to the US Department of Justice"
Over a hundred thousand missing persons in the USA alone.
Abducted by aliens? Kept in torture chambers by Americans in Pakistani uniforms? Joined a terrorist group? Or just living it up on some beach in LA with a surfboard chasing woman in bikini's?
All she has to go on that her husband is being kept in special torture chambers is some vague witness that thinks he saw him.
"After 9/11, everyone was worried." well if you are a radical Islamist with ties to Jihadist movements it's natural to become worried. I would be worried.
That is, assuming you are willing to believe that the Supreme Court and the Lahore High Court actually exist. And that this article is not just a figment of our imaginations. You might want to pinch yourself just to be sure. Maybe even hit refresh to see if this page still exists?
I certainly hope that in future chapters of this story you provide your readers with at least a hint at what it is that Mr. Janjua might have been detained for. Was he a Taliban or al Qaeda operative? A financial backer of jihad? A part-time trainer at some remote guerrilla camp? Simply a political enemy of the then ruling Musharaf gov't.?
All I get from this story is that a man disappears from a middle class life and there is no indication at all of a motivation for the disappearance to be an act of State. If this had occurred in Columbia, it would probably be blamed on the FARC. In Pakistan, are there active kidnapping mafias? Or just the ISI acting on behalf of mysterious political powers?
When the Argentinians and Chileans discuss their "desaparecidos" were invariably trade unionists or otherwise leftists who were targeted by the American CIA and collared by local right wing thugs. The same thing occurred in Indonesia in the mid-1960s when the Suharto regime disappeared thousands of CIA-listed leftists and communists.
Just who is the kidnapper here? Which master is the kidnapper serving? And what is their motivation?
The most cynical view of all might be that the kidnappings in Pakistan are nearly random, the better to instill terror in the general population. Have you worked that angle? That's the sort of thing I belive the American neocons and the CIA/DIA/ONI/NSA have been working on since Bill Clinton knocked down the World Trade Center.
R. Duray, USA
It seems that world is seeing history repeat it self, propaganda pushed by US is very reminiscent to that which was implemented in 1930s Germany, when the Nazi party 'drip' fed false stories about the Jews amongst them. We all know, where that ended up; the Holocaust. The Muslims are being used as scapegoats to further the usurping of more political power by Western governments. It’s a fact.
Corruption exist 10 times over in Us and its allies than in any poor country made poor by western governments sucking them dry of there valuable recourses. Very disgusting statistics are women getting raped every 16 seconds or is it every 1 second. No morals! you don't have respect for your own women - seeing them as objects - what would you care about women in poor countries crying for there families destroyed by US promoted 'black water' (terrorist groups to cause more havoc), so that 'war profiteers' can get even more richer.
True:
East produce 80% of the resources.USA/west produce 20%,east get 20% back while the USA/west get 80%.
ratio is inverted,like many other things nowadays,look ...you will see Zionists behind it.
read mossad part in the book:
"justice under siege" by EVA,you will see the evidence that what say is 100%.
THE CORRUPTION started from the USA/west.
this book is write by the one who is high up in the magistrate office in France,top seat in the investigation for International corruption.
Its widely acknowledged that the CIA kidnap and torture people and have done so for decades.
The Pakistani state does it too? No surprise. You think someone has to be worse or better at it? Jeez
Its about the reasons why they do it. The self-perpetuating chaos created when you have a War on Terror where nobody knows who is responsible for what. Torture producing phony evidence used to torture more people and more people.
Fault of the inhabitants? Utter crap.
You need to look around you and see how and what governments get into power these days. If you are not US subservient then you are in trouble.
To say that a people deserves to be tortured because of a US backed government.
El Salvador, Chile, Argentina, Columbia, Guatemala (to name but a few). Did all those people deserve to be tortured, disappeared?
This article includes the US as a part of this story as it does Pakistani agents
Are you supposed to ignore the US states involvement?
Pakistan was under a US-backed military dictatorship for around 60 years.
The the dramatic rise in torture and disappearing of its citizens started in 2001 when the US began its War on Terror.
I'm not anti-American by the way. I'm intelligent enough to make a clear distinction between a land, its people and its government.
If more people could make the same distinction history might be allowed to be seen for what it has been, instead of tainting people with anti-this or anti-that.
You need a history lesson if you are not aware of the US backed military dictatorships of the last 60 years that have seen millions tortured and murdered, let alone the direct US military action.
All part & parcel of western "democracy", which has historically always been an interesting idea
Great article. Grim reading.
Well said, ambricourt, zedron, thomasth. The widespread and increasing Allied State use of and collusion in abduction, torture and indeed murder in custody reveals the reality of 'the war against terror'. It is a war of Allied States against their own people. These states are increasingly colluding in a destruction of the the fundamental principles of their own, each others' and their shared International Law. I recommend Craig Murray's book 'Murder In Samarkand' - and his regularly updated website - for a glimpse into the world of another of 'our allies', that of Uzbekistan, where Murray was British Ambassador until 2004. Such allies routinely use torture the purpose of which has nothing to do with international terror prevention and everything to do with State oppression. When Murray attempted to inform his Foreign Office of the danger of allowing 'evidence' from such practice to flow into the increasingly internationalised intelligence stream - on the eve of the invasion of Iraq - he was hounded from office and into a breakdown.
For anyone who wishes to see, the real evidence is clear. Accepting such 'evidence transcripts' is about justifying and perpetuating war, not winning the peace. That people do not see 'the war against terror' for the oxymoronic intellectual disgrace it is, seek to justify the kind of power that would be quite prepared to boil them alive, literally, to justify its continuing reign, only shows how blinded citizens of the west have become.
read mossad part in the book:
"justice under siege" by EVA,you will see the evidence that CORRUPTION started from the USA/west.
this book is write by the one who is high up in the magistrate office in France,top seat in the investigation for International corruption.
ratio is inverted as the world.
"Corruption exist 10 times over in Us and its allies than in any poor country made poor by western governments sucking them dry of there valuable recourses"
True:
East produce 80% of the resources.USA/west produce 20%,east get 20% back while the USA/west get 80%.
ratio is inverted,like many other things nowadays,look ...you will see Zionists behind it.
read mossad part in the book
I am curious about the picture you use and I think it is to counter my photograph. But the circumstances are quite different. What you have is a photo of Jewish settler fanatics who live outside Israel. Such a picture could not be taken in Israel, not even with imitation guns as they are banned from sale anywhere in Israel. Real gun control is strictly applied and children could not play with them or learn how to use them. Further, in no school anywhere in Israel is race hatred taught.
For confirmation of the above, come to Israel and see for yourself. As for my photograph, it is one of dozens I downloaded from a Palestinian site.
As I said in my previous posting, don't take MY word for it, come and look for yourself. Visit any school, look in any toyshop, watch the television.
And I am not your small friend, I am over six foot tall. And if you read the Jerusalem Post this week you will find my criticism of the plans for building in east Jerusalem.
I'd like you all to watch this short documentary we made for her and what she has been through: http://www.teeth.com.pk/blog/2007/1
I am disgusted, but not at all surprised by some of the people coming here and pretty much saying that he deserved it, or that it must have happened for a good reason, or that their government has no blame in this. I can only hope nothing like this *ever* happens to YOUR families- then you'll know the true feeling of helplessness.
Back on topic, as a Pakistani, I am also horrified at myself, in a way. Horrified because at first I thought Mr. Fisk was being overly dramatic and playing everything up. Then I realized: No. This situation is truly as sick as he says it is. The reason I am not so moved by it is because I have gotten used to this.
I have gotten used to government kidnappings and state sponsored terrorism. I have gotten used to hearing that 10 suicide blasts have gone off in the same day in one of my cities, and just shrugging it off. I have gotten used to being treated like filth at foreign airports and openly treated like a criminal for the color of my skin and ethnicity.
I have gotten used to it, but I will never accept it. And I will NEVER let anyone make comments as unbelievably ignorant as "He could just have been suffering from a mid life crises or God knows what.", and get away with it. You are a very sick and ignorant person who clearly knows NOTHING about what we go through and have gone through at the hands of your governments.
I'd say "You should feel ashamed", but then I realize that's impossible for people who are incapable of understanding what it is they should be ashamed of.
Did you bother reading the article or watching the video? The vast majority of people who disappeared were kidnapped when WE WERE UNDER A U.S. SPONSORED MILITARY DICTATORSHIP.
Did the capitals help? I'll say it again: DICTATORSHIP.
Do I need to spell out for you what that means? It's what happens when foreign nations like the U.S. and U.K. support our subversive army and prop up some of the worst tyrants we have ever known. And you want to talk human rights violations? The VAST majority of the laws that make these violations legal were drafted under Zia-ul-Haq, who is ALSO the dictator who helped spearhead the creation of the Taliban. Whose support did he have? American. Which organization helped with the training, arming and financing? The CIA.
If you want us to have our democracy than maybe YOU should start telling your governments not to constantly sabotage our efforts towards democratic governments and prop up their own tin pot dictators.
Hence, you don't know what you're talking about. That is all.
I saw Fisk on Al Jazeera Inside Iraq today (last weeks episode). Same MO. He declares the bravery of voters, then p*sses all over their votes. Remember, Iraqis are free, observably so, despite and in spite of people like Fisk. Saddam's torture chambers were never honoured with Fisk's coverage. For Fisk others suffering is "raw material". Iraqis look like they have voted out their leader. Sadly for Fisk they have not voted on someone who will sacrifice their people for him like Hamas do.
Still, on the bright side, on "Inside Iraq" Fisk looked quite ill to me. Allah akhbar!
Fisk said on Al Jazeera that the west only respects democracy when their choice wins and cited Hamas as an example. He used this to discredit the Iraqis who voted (he called them brave though so that's all right). Yet he is conflating respecting with agreeing with. The west respects the Palestinians choice for Hamas but opposes Hamas. Just because you are voted in doesn't mean everyone has to not oppose you.
People should vote for who they want. If they are free to do so then their is little else others can do to help. Indeed, there is little else others should do to help IMHO.
Fisk offers nothing. Or maybe you can describe Fisk's positive vision of what should be done and how this will produce a better outcome. Of course you cannot, you have never thought beyond who you can blame and hate I suspect. Retarded indeed.
Last time i heard Mrs Clinton says that USA are not interesting in democracy but in stability in region!
stability of USA-west to keep Israel on top of the world.
keep changing the world by changing the word.
'The west respects the Palestinians choice for Hamas but opposes Hamas.'
THE WEST RESPECTS palestinians BY PUTTING SIEGE ON THE PALESTINIANS WHO ELECT HAMAS.
Can you explain it pleas?
something I failed to understand!
the whole story is to cool down the Palestinian issue til USA /west deal with Iran using Arab countries to finish Iran then give Palestinian big pore.
TO save the faces of the kings and slaves.
"justice under siege" by EVA,you will see the evidence that what say is 100%.
THE CORRUPTION started from the USA/west.
this book is write by the one who is high up in the magistrate office in France,top seat in the investigation for International corruption.
True:
East produce 80% of the resources.USA/west produce 20%,east get 20% back while the USA/west get 80%.
ratio is inverted,like many other things nowadays,look ...you will see Zionists behind it.
read mossad part in the book:
invading IRAQ + Afghanistan.
Please stop deflorating peoples blogs with your nonsense. Either learn to write or dont bother in the first place.
Please stop deflorating peoples blogs with your nonsense. Either learn to write or dont bother in the first place."
majoresy 72, just ignore him, he's in therapy. He cannot even spell freedom.