After 9/11

"I come to my shop every morning but I don't know if I am going to go home alive or in a body bag," says Sheikh Arshad, who repaired his minivan after it was damaged in a bombing and then had to sell it to keep his herbal medicine shop afloat. "When 9/11 happened I had no idea it would bring such destruction...The police come after every bombing, take down our names and promise compensation. But nothing happens."

When the people of Peshawar watched the collapse of New York's Twin Towers on television, it seemed like a distant tragedy. Few could have imagined that the events of September 11, 2001, thousands of miles away would touch their lives.

Rich history, uncertain future

For centuries Peshawar, also known as the "City of flowers," was a crossroads of culture and trade between Afghanistan, South Asia, Central Asia and the Middle East. It is also the gateway to the Khyber Pass, which sits on the ancient Silk Road and leads to the Afghan border.

During the 1980s, Peshawar became a den of spies and jihadis when the United States, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan covertly funded a mujahideen guerrilla war to expel Soviet troops from Afghanistan. At one point it was home to Osama bin Laden and other high-profile militants, long before he became the United States' enemy number one.

Destructive changes brought by 9/11 were subtle at first. Trade with neighbouring Afghanistan fell gradually after the U.S.-led invasion toppled the Taliban there in 2001. Peshawar really started feeling the heat after a full-scale war erupted between the Pakistani state and homegrown Taliban when former President Pervez Musharraf's forces launched an armed assault on militants in Islamabad's Red Mosque in 2007.

The city was soon swept up in government offensives and counter-attacks by militants. Suicide bombings have killed hundreds of people over the years.

Economy and culture suffer

Peshawar's economy has taken a battering too. Half of the city's industrial zone has shut down since 2007 and output in the remaining plants has dropped by 50 percent, says the provincial chamber of commerce and industry.

Merchants at Peshawar's famous Qissakhwani bazaar, which thrived for centuries, are barely surviving. All they can do is long for the city's past glory. "The Americans, the Canadians, the Japanese, the Germans, they always bought my merchandise," says Bashir Ahmed, referring to traditional ethnic Pashtun caps. "Now no one is coming. It's close to lunchtime and I have not sold one cap today," he adds resentfully.

In 2002, a religious political coalition sympathetic to the Taliban came to power in Peshawar and banned what they deemed un-Islamic activities. "Artists have run away. I get thousands of threats," says a theatre director, who cannot find work any more.

Once an easy-going centre of culture in a picturesque valley, today Peshawar feels like a city under siege. Soldiers are stationed across what was known long ago as the City of Flowers and many commercial buildings are protected by sandbags and barbed-wire fences.

The psychological scars are deep. "Before 9/11, I'd see maybe one in a hundred cases where a child was suffering from depression. Now it's one in every seven," says psychiatrist Khalid Mufti.

Reuters
Editor: Manasi Gopalakrishnan