The US war on terror, launched in the aftermath of the 2001 terror attacks, did not stop at the borders of Afghanistan. Pakistan, a US ally, was left to deal with a Taliban insurgency that is believed to have killed over 30,000 people.
The fighting also left tens of thousands of women widows. Some villages in the northwestern tribal areas of Pakistan are full of women facing immense economic hardships.
‘This war has taken everything from me’
Zahida Bibi comes from the South Waziristan tribal area which borders Afghanistan, considered the birthplace of the Pakistani Taliban. The area also sheltered a number of foreign fighters — including Arabs, Chechen and Uzbeks — who fled Afghanistan during the US invasion.
Bibi’s father was a local tribal elder who fiercely resisted the presence of foreign militants, and his demands to expel them infuriated the Taliban. On August 23, 2009, he was killed, alongside Bibi’s husband, uncle, and her older brother.
“The incident left four women of my family widowed, devastating our lives,” Bibi told DW.
She says she still suffers from nightmares.
In recent times, the Pakistani Taliban have resurfaced in Bibi’s area. Now Bibi is worried about her son who works as a police officer.
“This war has taken away everything from me,” she said. “A few months back a cousin of mine was killed during a militant attack on a police station where he was serving as a policeman. My two sons are also working [as police officers] and I am always worried about their safety.”
Bibi and other widows of the family also had to take care of orphans, including children from their extended families, who have been left without any financial support.
Asya Bibi, an activist and local councilor in South Waziristan, says that the Taliban insurgency and war on terror was catastrophic for the people in her area. But it was especially bad for women, she told DW, adding that in her own village, called Kuri Koat, more than 200 women were widowed.
“It is called the ‘village of widows,’ with these poor women depending on welfare programs of the federal government or the charity offered on the occasion of Muslim religious festivals,” she said.
Analyst: State bears responsibility
Most of the women affected by the war on terrorism, the Taliban insurgency and drone strikes come from poor families, but upper layers of society were also not immune to the horrors of the war. In 2012, a suicide attack claimed the life of Bahshir Bilour, a senior minister of northwestern province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. His son was also killed in a suicide attack in 2018. Both of them fiercely resisted the Taliban.
Mussarrat Ahmed Zeb is a former parliamentarian from Swat, the hometown of Nobel laureate Malala Yousufzai. The town was once ruled by the Taliban. Zeb, whose influential family fiercely resisted the militants, bemoaned the lack of support for thousands of widows who lost their husbands during the Taliban insurgency. She called on the government to also help children and warned that her area has only a few orphanages.
“Widows have to look after their kids,” she told DW. “If there are more orphanages, then kids could be registered there, providing time to these women to earn their livelihood.”
Dr. Said Alam Mehsud, an analyst based in Peshawar, said men have been decimated during the insurgency. There have been instances where one family lost more than five or nine male members, leaving many women widowed, he told DW, adding that the state should be responsible for the plight of these women.
“It was the state policy to support these fanatics who plunged my province and parts of the country into an abyss of barbarism,” he said.
Source: Deutsche Welle