KARACHI: Top Pakistani squash players Aamir Atlas Khan and Maria Toor have been nominated for Professional Squash Association Young Player of the Year and Women’s International Squash Players Association (WISPA) Young Player of the Year, respectively, by the World Squash Federation.

Both Aamir and Maria belong to the North West Frontier Province, home also to Pakistan squash legends Jahangir and Jansher Khan, where they train amidst constant threats from the Taliban. While it has been a comparatively easy ride for Aamir, by virtue of being a male in a part of the country where residents adhere to strict Islamic law, for the 19-year-old Maria it has been a journey of immense courage and perseverance.

Growing up in South Waziristan, Maria was a very different girl, often getting into brawls with boys and generally being very dominating, some very unusual traits for women in NWFP. She was equally lucky to have an open-minded father who noticed his daughter’s sporting talent and ability and did not want it to go to waste.

‘I didn’t want her talent to go to waste,’ Shams-ul-Qayum Wazir said in an interview to CNN. ‘If I would’ve kept her in the village, all she could do was housekeeping,’ he added satisfied with his decision to pack up from South Waziristan and move to Peshawar in late 1999.

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There is no trial. No due process. No evidence or witnesses as required by Islamic legal procedure. Just a band of angry young men whipping a young girl. Accused of adultery, a more likely explanation is that a false allegation was made against her by a Pakistani Taliban warlord whose advances/courtship she spurned. Does anyone seriously think a woman would try to commit adultery in Taliban-controlled Swat? That’s like a person causing him or herself to bleed in shark-infested water.

An entire region is in the hands of an uneducated and barbaric band of men between the ages of 15 and 35.

This is a terrorist frat party — not a liberation movement.

They call themselves Taliban, or the students, but most have spent barely a few years in school — if any. Most of these men are illiterate. The number of people they have killed outnumbers the books they’ve read. Fazlullah, who claims to be a maulana or religious scholar, worked at an amusement park and spent a maximum of a couple of years at a seminary. That does not qualify him for anything, let alone calling himself a maulana. He is a loser with a gun, holding thousands hostage — the equivalent of making one of those Columbine kids governor of Colorado.

They deem themselves Islamic, but they kill the innocent and violate every agreement they make. Their spokesmen, such as Muslim Khan and Maulvi Umar, routinely lie to the media.

They call themselves Pashtuns, and non-Pashtuns exhibit a deference to their acts, explaining them away with Pashtunwali concepts like badal (revenge) and nang (honor). But they, most often, are the initiators of violence. What of the right of the innocent they’ve targeted to enact revenge on them? No — these men are beyond reproach. And as for izzat and mishertob, there is no honor, no fealty to tribe, in killing and decapitating one’s tribal elders.

They call themselves freedom fighters, but no one has occupied Swat but them. They themselves are the occupiers. They take over the homes and property of others. They have caused tens of thousands to flee. Those who have remained or returned live in a Taliban-run open air prison.

Granted, this video is not necessarily an indication of the Swat courts run by Fazlullah’s father-in-law, Sufi Muhammad of the Tehreek-e Nifaaz-e Shariat-e Muhammadi. The video might have been recorded before the Swat peace deal; the injustice is likely perpetrated by vigilantes associated with Fazlullah.

That is not to say Sufi is a civil libertarian. But Fazlullah’s Tehreek-e Taliban Pakistan – Swat, quite clearly, is a band of thugs. Religion is used to obfuscate their criminal reality. Evidence of this is despite having all their major demands met, they remain indulged and invested in thuggery. They are looters, murderers, and destroyers. They have no creative capacity. They do not save or improve lives — despite the fact that one of the primary maqasid (objectives) of the shariah they routinely speak of is to protect the lives of human beings.

Right now, in Lower and Upper Dir, they are precipitating the breakdown of law and order by engaging in kidnapping and murder.

In Shangla, they just illegally took over an emerald mine.

Back in Swat, these self-described proponents of Islamic justice did not like a ruling made by the state sanctioned Islamic court; it wasn’t in their favor. So what did they do? They tried to go around the system to their warlord, Fazlullah, and get him to make his own decree.

But Fazlullah is no judge. He is a criminal. He, not this young girl, should whipped. In fact, he should be struck with the same whip used against this girl. And then, with that same whip, he should be hung to death at Rawalpindi’s Adiala Prison.

These men provide Pakistan not strategic depth, but strategic death.