Sleepy village baffled by link to captured terrorist
Tracing the gunmen
A sleepy village in Pakistan has found itself at the centre of the Mumbai terror plot, leaving locals bewildered.
FARIDKOT, PAKISTAN — Everyone knows everyone in Faridkot,
so residents of this tiny Pakistani village are baffled by allegations that one of their own was the sole survivor of a commando-style terrorist outfit that staged one of the most daring terrorist attacks ever seen.
"There are no jihadis here," said Ijaz Ahmed, a 41-year-old farmer. "I can think of maybe 10 or 20 people here who have even been as far as Multan," he said, referring to the nearest large city, 55 kilometres away.
The village, in the southern part of the Punjab province, has been overrun by Pakistani intelligence agents and police for the past three days, after it was reported by Indian officials and media that the lone gunman who was caught alive in the Mumbai mayhem came from a place called Faridkot in Pakistan. Agents from Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) appeared to be still present yesterday, questioning locals.
"All the agencies have been here and the [police] special branch," said village elder Mehboob Khan Daha. "We have become very worried. What's this all about?"
A village of peasant farmers, Faridkot does not aspire to much. A would-be international Islamic revolutionary would stand out a long way. Buffalos and goats roam down dirt tracks. Men sit around gossiping on traditional woven rope beds, placed out in the open, wearing the usual baggy shalwar kameez pajama suits, some with turbans. Roughly built small brick homes and little mud huts dot the village, which has a population of about 3,000.
The Faridkot link is a key plank of India's "evidence," stated with certainty, that the attackers of Mumbai came from Pakistan. The captured terrorist, variously named as Ajmal Amir Kamal, Azam Amir Kasav or Azam Ameer Qasab, is said to come from Faridkot, which is repeatedly described as being near Multan. He is said to be 21 and speak fluent English, and a strikingly clear photograph of him shows a modern-looking young man swaggering in Western clothing, AK-47 in hand.
Shown a picture of the alleged militant, Mr. Daha said: "That's a smart-looking boy. We don't have that sort around here."
In Faridkot, no one appeared to be able to speak much English; most could converse only in a dialect of the provincial language. None of the villagers recognized the face in the photograph, nor could they think of anyone mysteriously missing from the village.
They said the intelligence agents wanted to know whether there was any presence of the radical Deobandi or Alhe Hadith religious movements in the village, to which they were told a flat no. The ISI agents also came with a list of five names to probe, villagers said, including Ajmal, Amir, Kamal and Azam, all common names in Pakistan.
While there were five Ajmals in the village, they were all present there for except one who is living in the provincial capital, Lahore, and none fit the description of the militant. The Azam in the village is a 75-year-old retired railway worker.
One of the Ajmals, a man who thought he was about 30, looked scared. He has worked in a nearby tea factory for the past 12 years, he said. The police and intelligence agencies have been to his house demanding to know his whereabouts.
"All I ever do is go to work, which is about three kilometres away. I have never been beyond Kanewal [the closest town]," Mohammad Ajmal said. "I'm uneducated. I never went to school for even one day."
Faridkot is in a part of Punjab that is known for extremist activity, but the village itself did not show any signs of being a hotbed of militancy. Written on a board at the entrance to the village mosque, it is declared that members of the
fundamentalist Tablighi Jamaat "are not permitted."
To add to the confusion, there are several other places called Faridkot in Punjab. And there is a well-known Faridkot in India, just across the border in the Indian half of the Punjab province.
An exasperated local police chief, Kamran Khan, who had sent his men twice to Faridkot (the one outside Kanewal), said: "Whatever we're doing to investigate, we're doing off our own initiative. No definitive information has come to us from any official channel. We're still not clear this is the right Faridkot."
SAEED SHAH
From Tuesday's Globe and Mail
December 2, 2008
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Dawn Report
MULTAN/KHANEWAL, Nov 30: As Mumbai struggles to return to normalcy in the wake of terrorist attacks, a Pakistani village named Faridkot is being mentioned in the Indian media as the place of origin of the lone gunman arrested by Indian commandos. He has been identified as Ajmal Amir Kasab.
The media, however, conveniently avoids mentioning that there is also a town with the same name in the Indian state of Punjab.
In Pakistan, there are several villages named Faridkot, but three of them — one each in Khanewal, Pakpattan and Okara — attracted the attention of intelligence agencies and media to ‘prove’ that the terrorist was a Pakistani.
Faridkot in Khanewal, also known as Chak No 90/10-R, is a hamlet on the Jahanian Road, 53km from Multan and has a population of 5,000. This village has one primary school and two mosques — one managed by Barelvis and the other by Shias — and is known for sectarian harmony.
Interestingly, the Indian media is not even sure whether the alleged attacker is named Ajmal Amir Kamal, Muhammad Ajmal, Muhammad Amin Kasab, Azam Amir Kasav or Azam Amir Kasab.
People of this village said there were four people named Ajmal in the village — the one whose name also included Kamal had died 15 years ago. The numberdar of the village, Haqnawaz Baloch, told Dawn that Kamal was son of Muhammad Shafi. Another man named Ajmal had shifted to Ahmedpur East several years ago. The third Ajmal worked in a tea processing factory and the fourth one was a labourer, he said.
He said there was no person by the name of Amin or Azam and did not know what ‘Kasab’ or ‘Kasav’ meant. He said people of the village were peaceful and no one from Faridkot had visited India.
Khanewal police raided Faridkot twice over the past two days to gather details about the alleged terrorist. “We thoroughly checked the village record when Indian media started saying someone from this village was involved in the (Mumbai) attack. The hype is misplaced,” said District Police Officer Kamran Khan. He said police had done the checking on their own, without any instruction from the government.
According to BBCUrdu.com, another village named Faridkot is near Pakpattan. It has a population of 2,000 and most of them are farmers.
Residents say they do not know anyone by the name of Ajmal or Akmal and no one from the village has links with jihadi or other banned outfits.
Another Faridkot is a remote village in Deepalpur tehsil in Okara district.
The Economic Times, an Indian paper, claimed that Azam Amir Kasav, 21, belonged to this village and “speaks fluent English”.
“We can tell you who this man is and how he has become the vital link for investigating agencies to crack the terror plot,” the paper says.