Visitors resting on charpoys (portable bed) on the bank of Swat River.–Photo by Dawn

MINGORA: Starting from Eid-ul-Fitr over 300,000 tourists from across the country have so far visited Swat Valley.

Confirming this, officials and residents said that during this time not a single act of violence took place in Swat valley, which is known for its archaeological sites of Gandhara civilisation and scenic hamlets. They said that a multitude of tourists were seen in Kalam, Bahrain, Madyan, Malam Jabba, Marghuzar, Saidu Baba, Fizaghat, Mingora and other spots of Swat. They said that restoration of people’s confidence to visit the valley was a great achievement for the local administration.

Since 2008 when Taliban militants loyal to Maulana Fazlullah gained control in the area and parts of Kohistan, Dir, Malakand and other protected area, most of the tourist spots presented a deserted look.

However, owing to sacrifices rendered by people of Swat and law-enforcement agencies for restoration of peace the tourists have started reaching the valley in droves to enjoy serenity and beauty of small hamlets of Swat and cultural heritage.

Internally displaced persons return to Swat. – File photo by AP

People of Swat are known for their hospitality; they welcome visitors with open heart, accommodate them in their homes and hujras (guesthouses) and serve food free of cost to encourage and provide them opportunity to enjoy their tour. However, some hotel owners, tandoor walas (bakers), and petrol pump owners at the main tourist stations have been fleecing tourists on the pretext of artificial shortage of various items. During rush of tourists, Rs2,000 to Rs8,000 is charged for a single room for one night stay in hotels while the price of petrol touches as high as Rs550 per litre.

Khurshid Ahmed, a resident of Bahrian, told this scribe that about 300 motorcycles were seen stranded in different areas and over 1,600 tourists trapped in Kalam due to shortage of petrol during past few days. He said that work on Kalam-Havad road should be completed as proper communications system was vital to growth of tourism.

Kalam Hotels Association general secretary Rahmat Din Siddiqi told a correspondent that this year the number of tourists remained satisfactory despite unfavourable conditions. He said that his union would take action against those hotel owners who had been fleecing visitors by demanding high prices.

He also called upon the government to rebuild roads damaged in 2010 floods and restore telephone facilities to different spots to attract more visitors in next season. He also demanded upgradation of Kalam hospital and appointment of specialist doctors there.

In this May 24, 2012 photo, people sit near a sculpture of the Buddha whose face was destroyed by Taliban fighters at Jahanabad, Pakistan in the Swat valley. – AP

Sub-divisional magistrate, Madyan, Mohammad Naeem claimed that after reports of artificial price-hike the administration checked various food outlets and petrol pumps, and imposed fines on profiteers.

A large number of tourists also visited Malam Jabba Ski Resort, but due to lack of facilities the tourists retuned half-hearted. The dilapidated condition of Malam Jabba road and damaged building of PTDC also forced the tourists to turn to other places.

DSP Madyan Naveed Iqbal said that police personnel had been deployed at various points to ensure smooth flow of traffic.

However, he said that due to poor condition of Bahrian-Kalam road and rush of tourists the traffic jams were seen on some points on Kalam-Bahrian road, especially during Eid days.

Mr Iqbal said that there was complete peace in Swat and urged tourists to visit the valley without any fear. He said that that police was vigilant and providing full security to tourists. He claimed that not a single incident of sabotage occurred during Eid days.

A confiscated Buddha bust

For decades, fraudsters and smugglers have been hand in glove in forging and smuggling artefacts found in the historical sites of Pakistan. The so-called experts reproduce the relics in black stone and chemically treat them for an antique look. These counterfeits are then mixed with the original ones and smuggled out to China, Thailand and other Far Eastern countries, reveals Idrees Bakhtiar

Priceless antiquities, especially of the Gandhara civilisation, including Buddha statues, dating back to thousands of years have been the prey of unscrupulous elements. They were excavated or stolen from different sites and smuggled out to various countries. The vandalism has been going on almost unchecked for decades. Rarely the smuggling of some of the precious relics is checked, such as the ones confiscated by the police last July.

The modus operandi may vary. Sometimes some smaller pieces are sent through international mail or in luggage. In most cases, the original relics are mixed with counterfeits to beguile the casual, careless eye of the concerned officials. This was the case when the police intercepted a container loaded with tonnes of Buddha statues and other artefacts at Ibrahim Haideri, a coastal village.

The container was booked for Sialkot, apparently for smuggling out the pieces to some country through a dry port. On the indication of the driver and another person, the police later raided a godown in Korangi and recovered some more relics, in all 395.

At the time of the seizure, it was not clear if the artefacts were original or counterfeit. However, initial examination showed that some of the boxes contained huge statues of Buddha; one being a 95-inch tall and 70-inch wide sculpture of Buddha in meditation on a lotus flower. There were two eight-foot Buddha statues among the sculptures, an official of the Sindh culture department was reported to have said.

As usual, the officials were not swift in action. The police, inept in dealing with such items, damaged some of the artefacts while shifting them to the Awami Colony police station. “Some of them were too heavy to be handled manually,” a police official says.

A small crane was later summoned, but it too could not handle the relics. Similarly, the finds at the Korangi godown remained there for some days, before they could be removed to the police station.

It took the court 21 days to hand over the custody of the confiscated items to the culture department and yet some more days to shift them all to the National Museum. The Sindh culture department is said to have prepared an inventory and its director Qasim Ali Qasim states, “They were also photographed.”

The police could not arrest the real culprits, as they succeeded in getting interim bail from a session’s court. However, the suspected smugglers were identified as Atif Butt and Asif Butt. Their interim bail was later confirmed, though they were directed to cooperate with the police in investigations.

Eye witnesses report that at the police station the precious relics lay open and unguarded. Some of them were broken as they had been thrown down from the container, being too heavy to handle. It was from the police station that at least one head, broken from a larger artefact, was removed by someone unidentified. There were rumours of at least three other pieces missing.

The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KPK) government demanded their possession because the confiscated relics belonged to the Gandhara civilisation — as they were mostly Buddha statues. The federal government did not lag behind. Both authorities asked Karachi to handover the possession to them, as they might have been clandestinely dug from some historical site, but nevertheless must belong to the KPK. The Sindh government, however, has taken the stand that the antiquities are a case property and will remain in their possession until the case is decided by the court.

The KPK government even sent a team of experts to examine the relics. It has been reported that the experts termed them as ‘counterfeits’. The Sindh government’s concerned department disagrees with the examination of the KPK experts. Director Qasim Ali Qasim of the culture department, Sindh, who received the report last Monday, states that 161 of the artefacts are genuine, while the rest are counterfeit, but have an ‘art value’ as they have been expertly replicated or copied.

This is not the first time in Pakistan that huge quantities of antiquities were recovered from the possession of smugglers. At least 81 precious items were reportedly stolen from Taxila Museum in 1999. These included statues of Greek deities, one of Dionysus, the Greek god of wine, and the other of Aphrodite, the goddess of love. They were the only Greek statues ever found in Pakistan. Nothing is known as to what happened to them.

Not only that the artefacts are stolen and smuggled out on an almost regular basis, in June 1996, the statues of twin Hindu goddesses Uma-Maheshwara were exported to the United States for $1.5 million, on the basis of a surreptitiously issued No Objection Certificate by the federal government. Some other artefacts of Pakistani origin, 198 to be precise, confiscated by the British government in January 2007 have not been returned so far, according to reports.

For decades, fraudsters and smugglers have been hand in glove in forging and smuggling artefacts found in the historical sites of Pakistan. The so-called experts reproduce the relics in black stone and chemically treat them for an antique look. These counterfeits are then mixed with the original ones and smuggled out to China, Thailand and other Far Eastern countries.

Information gathered by Dawn shows that during the last decade and a half, some precious relics were recovered from the possession of smugglers in Taxila, Nowshera, Karachi, Peshawar, Kohat and other places. These include pieces of Ashoka’s time and some dating back to BC.

Intriguingly, smugglers are quoted in several newspapers to have admitted smuggling antiquities out to Thailand, Europe, America and other countries. One of them was reported to have disclosed that they find some old sites, pay huge amounts to the police and dig. “At a minimum I have sold 20 big Buddha statues for around $20,000 a piece.” He is reportedly now a millionaire.

Though an Antiquities Act actually exists, with rules and regulations for banning the digging, selling and even movement of relics, the concerned departments hardly make an effort to keep a vigilant eye on smuggling of this precious national wealth. If they catch a consignment, one source states, it is only by chance. “You never know how many of these Buddhas and other artefacts have been smuggled out,” explains one expert. After all one can find Pakistani, Taxilan Gandhara antiques in many parts of the world, he says, “From where did they reach these countries? Well, these crossed our borders to begin the journey.”

In this picture taken on July 21, 2012, Afghan-born French archaeologist Zemaryalai Tarzi stand next to an archaeological artifact in Bamiyan. – AFP Photo

BAMIYAN: “It’s there,” says an archaeologist pointing to the ground, where fragments of a Buddha statue from the ancient Gandhara civilisation have been covered up to stop them being stolen or vandalised.

Just months before the US-led invasion in 2001, the Taliban regime shocked the world by destroying two giant, 1,500-year-old Buddhas in the rocky Bamiyan valley, branding them un-Islamic.

More than 10 years on Western experts say Afghanistan’s ancient Buddhist and early Islamic heritage is little safer.

At the foot of the cliff where the two Buddhas used to stand 130 kilometres west of Kabul, an archaeological site has been found and parts of a third Buddha, lying down, were discovered in 2008.

The area of the lying Buddha is around half the size of a football pitch. A dozen statues or more lie under tonnes of stone and earth.

“We covered everything up because the ground is private and to prevent looting,” says Zemaryalai Tarzi, the 75-year-old French archaeologist born in Afghanistan who is leading the project.

Tarzi says he dug first in the potato fields to find artefacts, which he buried again afterwards. All around him, under a large area of farmland, he says, lie exceptional treasures.

In the West, the presence of such riches would lead to a large-scale excavation, frantic research and in time, glorious museum exhibitions.

In Afghanistan, ground down by poverty and three decades of war, it is the opposite.

“The safest place is to leave heritage underground,” says Brendan Cassar, head of the Unesco mission in Afghanistan, adding that policing the thousands of prehistoric, Buddhist and Islamic sites dotted around the country was impossible.

Below ground, the relics are protected from endemic looting, illegal smuggling and the corrosive effects of freezing winters.

“There is looting on a large or small scale at 99.9 percent of sites,” says Philippe Marquis, director of a French archaeological delegation in Afghanistan.

Middlemen pay Afghans $4 to $5 a day to dig up artefacts, which are smuggled abroad and sold for tens of thousands of dollars in European and Asian capitals, he says.

Cassar believes the solution is educating locals about the value of their history and the need to implement the law, and a global campaign using Interpol and customs to stop smuggling.

Unesco added the rocky Bamiyan valley, with its old forts, temples and cave paintings, to its list of endangered heritage sites in 2003. But sites have been destroyed throughout the country.

Hadda in the east was home to thousands of Greco-Buddhist sculptures dating from the 1st century BC to 1st century AD, but it was devastated in the 1990s civil war. Hundreds of pieces have disappeared or been destroyed.

Marquis says the old city of Lashkar Gah, the capital of the southern province of Helmand — whose 11th-century arch appears on the 100 afghani ($2) banknote — was irreparably damaged by an influx of refugees.

A Chinese copper mining company has been granted a concession over an area in Logar province, south of Kabul, that includes an ancient Buddhist monastery, and researchers fear the ruins will largely be destroyed.

Archaeologists complain that culture is only a secondary consideration to development and security.

“Cultural issues are never the priority. Security, yes, which eats up 40 percent of the Afghan state budget,” says Habiba Sorabi, the governor of Bamiyan province, where few public resources are allotted to archaeology.

A meeting in Paris last year decided one of the two niches that housed Bamiyan’s giant Buddhas should be left empty as testimony to the destruction, while experts should look at partially reassembling the other statue on site.

But local archaeologist Farid Haidary says “lots of money” was spent on restoring the Buddhas before the Taliban destroyed them.

“What’s the point in building something if the Taliban, who are 20 kilometres away, destroy it afterwards?” he asks.

A visitor takes photographs on his mobile of seized ancient statues at a museum in Karachi. – Photo by AFP

CHARSADDA: When a family dispute over land degenerated into cold-blooded murder, Zaman Khan was quickly in over his head.

As cousins killed cousins, he borrowed more than 18,500 dollars to buy guns, ammunition and guards. But soon debtors were demanding repayment, leaving him so depressed he contemplated suicide.

Then a friend came up with an idea.

He took Khan to a site in northwest Pakistan which dates back to the ancient Gandhara civilisation where they dug up 18 pieces of statue, selling them to market traders for two million rupees.

After two more visits, Khan – AFP has changed the names of all those involved in the trade – had found enough statues, coins and ornaments to not only settle his debts but also bankroll his long-running feud.

Thirty years on, he presides over a lucrative trade in illegally excavated treasures, smuggled to Thailand, Europe and America as part of Pakistan’s sophisticated but underworld business in archaeological remains.

“I can fight against my enemies and my friends’ enemies now. I’ve earned millions of rupees from this business,” he said, sitting next to a dozen automatic weapons in Charsadda, 130 kilometres from Islamabad.

Pakistan is home to two ancient civilisations, the Indus, which dates back to between 2500 and 1700 BC, and the Gandhara, from 530 BC to 1021 AD. It is the Gandhara artefacts that are most highly prized.

Statues of the Buddha, Siddhartha Gautama, who was born in Nepal in the 6th century BC and whose teachings grew into a major religion, can fetch thousands of dollars across the world.

“Whenever I’m on a digging mission, I pay 10,000 rupees to the relevant police station as a bribe in advance and 1,000 rupees a day while the work continues,” said Khan.

He sells the artefacts to dealers in Peshawar.

“Then they sell them to dealers in Islamabad and other cities who then export them to Thailand,” he said.

“To smuggle it from Peshawar to Islamabad, they use ladies, who aren’t usually checked by police at the security posts.”

– ‘Each Buddha sells for $20,000’ –

Smuggler Raja Javed has customers in Peshawar, Thailand and Japan.

“I’ve been doing this business for the last 20 years. I have sold hundreds of art pieces worth millions of rupees,” he told AFP at his plush villa, just metres from the museum in the Gandharan city of Taxila.

Spread over almost an acre, the grounds of his home include lawns and guest houses, while the main residential building has the kind of huge dome usually found on tombs of Mughal kings and sufi saints.

“At a minimum I’ve sold 20 big Buddha statues (weighing 40 to 80 kilograms). Each piece sold for around 20,000 dollars,” said Javed.

He does not believe what he does should be treated as a crime, but that the government should buy artefacts at market value.

The law forbids anyone from moving or selling any archaeological artefacts – statues, gold coins, jewellery or utensils – even if they are unearthed on their own property.

“They are the property of the government,” said Mehmoodul Hassan, a senior official of the archaeology department.

“Anybody who moves or sells an artefact can face imprisonment of up to five years, or a fine of 500,000 rupees ($5,300) or both.”But in the smuggling business, it is all about who you know.

In Peshawar jewellery market, a hub for Afghan and Pakistani dealers, Javed and Khan’s main contact said: “One piece can cost up to $10 million, it depends on the quality, state and history of the particular piece.

“I can arrange dozens of precious originals and copies for you, but transportation is hard,” he told an AFP reporter who posed as a buyer wanting Buddha statues for London.

Fakes and replicas are another aspect of the trade.

In Taxila, which continues to attract foreign visitors despite the terror threat in Pakistan, one sculptor chisels Buddha statues from new stone and paints them in mud to make them look ancient.

“I can provide you copies and replicas of any statue you want” he said, showing off his handiwork. “I am an expert at making fasting Buddha and the goddess.”

– The ‘king’ of antiques smuggling –

Customs officials say they have cracked down on the smugglers.

“The whole system is computerised now and the chances of corruption are rare,” said Riffat Shaheen Qazi, a customs spokeswoman.

“Some individuals might be involved in smuggling artefacts but we’re trying to curb this menace.” But an interviewee for this article suggested the names of two people in Islamabad with a gallery in Thailand who could help transport artefacts abroad.

One of them lives in a fort-style farmhouse in the mountains between Islamabad and the summer hill resort of Murree.

Sporting a beard, and wearing a blue kurta with baggy white trousers and a yellow necklace, the man said his activities had become harder to carry out, but by no means impossible. “I smuggled antiques in my hand luggage while boarding a flight. But it has become much more difficult now. In the past, we sent a lot of huge items abroad, but now everything is scanned.”

Even so, he added: “If you want to buy anything, contact my son in Bangkok. We also have a person in London, he can serve you there, but don’t try to make a deal over here in Pakistan.” Otherwise, he suggested Afghan smugglers might be able to help. “It has been four decades now,” he said. “I am a pioneer of this business, I am king.”

Sindh’s Culture Minister Sassui Palijo examines the artefacts at the National Museum in Karachi. – Photo by INP

KARACHI, Aug 7: Archaeological experts will start examining over 395 artefacts seized from smugglers last month within a couple of days to find if they are original or counterfeit, said Sindh Culture Minister Sassui Palijo on Tuesday afternoon.

Speaking at a press briefing at the National Museum, she said that once the experts confirmed that the artefacts, most of which appeared to be 1500 to 2000 years old, were not fake they would be put on display at the Gandhara Gallery in the museum.

She added that a catalogue regarding the artefacts mostly belonging to Gandhara civilisation would also be published.

Out of the 395 artefacts, around 300 are said to belong to Gandhara civilisation. While a majority of them were made from stone, a few were made from stucco and the remaining artefacts are metallic. Some of them are said to belong to the late Mughal period.

The team of archaeological department experts that will examine these artefacts is led by Qasim Ali Qasim. It includes Ejaz Illahi and Mohammad Shah Bokhari. Besides, an expert based in Moenjodaro might also be called to join in.

The whole process is expected to be completed within a few weeks.

A large number of archaeological sites had been handed over to the provinces under the 18th Amendment to the Constitution, she said.

However, she said, there was a shortage of technically-qualified staffers and efforts were being made to strengthen the culture department by getting more funding and capacity building of the staffers.

She said that efforts were also being made for provincial legislation on the pattern of Antiquities Act 1975, which was a federal law, following the devolution of archaeological sites control from the federal government to the provinces.

Later, the minister showed to the media some of the huge artefacts being kept outside the museum building.

Many of them were wrapped in paper and kept in big wooden boxes. It would be difficult to move the huge artefacts into the building and shift them to the first floor, where the Gandhara gallery is located, without their being damaged.

Some artefacts were damaged last month when policemen threw the boxes to the ground while unloading them from a container-mounted articulated truck at the Awami Colony police station. The 40-foot-long vehicle was transporting these artefacts from Karachi to Punjab when the police acting on a tip-off stopped it, confiscated the container and arrested a driver and a cleaner.

Some artefacts were reportedly stolen from the police station also. The case is being tried in a court.

The minister said that the department approached the court requesting that the precious artefacts be handed over to the National Museum for safe keeping and display till the case was decided. The plea was accepted and the court ordered the shifting of the artefacts from the police station to the museum, she added.

She said that the department also wanted to join the investigations so that the trail could be tracked to the real crooks and they be caught.

The Gandhara civilization’s remains are located in the Peshawar valley, and in some parts of Eastern Afghanistan. Texila was the main centre of the Gandhara civilization. – File photo by AFP

KARACHI, July 20: The illegally excavated Gandhara-era artefacts recovered by police in Karachi on July 6 are dumped in a compound of a police station in Landhi and so carelessly guarded that anyone can easily walk away with them.

A man who approached this reporter on Friday and wished to remain anonymous was able to remove — unnoticed and unchecked — the head of a statue from among the large number of 2,000-year-old relics.

He allowed the piece to be photographed but took it away with him, saying he could have removed other artefacts as well if they had not been too heavy for him to carry.

The head, part of a large statue of the Buddha made of heavy stone, had broken off when police failed to handle the item safely and was lying among other broken pieces when it was easily lifted and taken away. No one was present to ask any questions.

“Yes, it’s possible,” replied Qasim Ali Qasim, director of the Sindh archaeology department when informed that a piece of a statue had been removed from the police station.

He said the department had prepared an inventory that listed 395 artefacts.

“We have photographed them as well and when we take possession we will hold police responsible for any missing item.”

Mr Qasim did not appear to be satisfied with arrangements at the police station.

He said untrained people had been handling and examining the items which were lying in the open.

The Buddhist relics were discovered and seized by police earlier this month when they were searching a suspicious container mounted on a trailer in Landhi.

On further investigation and after the arrested driver and cleaner of the trailer provided information more relics were found in a godown in Korangi.

They were moved to the Awami Colony police station where, according to our visitor, they were lying haphazardly out in the open.

While unloading the pieces, police threw them down from containers from a considerable height. It was only after the intervention of some officials that two mechanical lifters were used.

There are reports that three statues have gone missing from the police station, but there has been no official confirmation.

As far as the authenticity of the relics is concerned, Mr Qasim explained that they could not be examined at the police station.

“We don’t have many working hands,” he said, adding that the antiquities can only be examined once handed over to a museum.

The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government had said it would be sending a team to examine the artefacts, while some experts were being commissioned by the Sindh government to assess their authenticity.

So far nothing has emerged about the findings of either province.

A police official inspects seized ancient statues at a police station in Karachi on July 6, 2012. Authorities in Pakistan’s financial capital seized dozens of precious antiquities belonged to 2,000-old Gandhara civilization, dug-up illegally from the country’s terrorism-torn northwest.—AFP Photo

KARACHI: Authorities in Karachi have seized dozens of precious antiquities dating from Pakistan’s ancient Gandhara civilisation, illegally dug from the country’s restive northwest, officials said Friday.

The haul included statues of Buddha, life-sized idols, bronze artefacts, utensils and decorative plaques, Qasim Ali Qasim, director of Sindh province archaeology department, told AFP.

Police intercepted a flatbed truck in Karachi and found the antiquities from the 2,000-year-old civilisation hidden under plastic and wooden items, officials said.

Senior police official Latif Siddiqui said the driver and cleaner of the truck had been arrested and an investigation was underway.

Qasim said he believed the items had been dug up in Taliban-infested northwest Pakistan and brought to Karachi a piece or two at a time, ready for dispatch to Europe overland via Afghanistan and Central Asia.

“The thieves and mafias involved in this business dig in the northwest, which is filled with Gandhara sites with little control by the authorities,” Qasim said.

“They dug up ancient pieces, accumulated them in Karachi and then sent them to Afghanistan in the garb of a Nato vehicle when they saw Pakistan has reopened the route.”

Gandhara was a Buddhist civilisation that flourished around the modern-day city of Peshawar and in parts of eastern Afghanistan.

The museum was inaugurated by General Yahya Khan; a former president of Pakistan, on 21st February 1970. The museum comprises a comprehensive array of cultural heritage dating from the Stone Age.

The material consists of pre-historic artifacts down to artifacts from the meticulously planned Indus Valley civilization, which prospered for more than a millennium dating back to 2500 BC.

Traditionally, museums embarked as classified collections of affluent individuals or associations pertaining to art or extraordinary artifacts. Public admittance was only granted to a ‘special’ few at the will of the owners.

But as time progressed these artifacts were shared and displayed publicly with pride in order to educate and teach people more about history.

Currently in Pakistan, museums are not given as much importance as they had in early times and are often left unvisited in comparison to the yester years. Efforts for excavations have also been reduced since the archaeological department is not functioning effectively.

In some cases, no updates were provided as to where exactly the fossils, found during excavations made by foreign archaeologists, were placed. It was foreign archaeologists who had helped discover dinosaur fossils in several areas of Balochistan.

The total allocated federal; budget for the fiscal year 2011-2012 was Rs.2767 billion whereas the provincial budget for Sindh was Rs.457.5 billion. Ironically, the annual budget, allocated for Sindh’s culture department, was a meager 0.8 per cent of the total provincial budget, which amounted to Rs.403 million.

This explains why the reconditioning of historic sights to withstand decay such as ‘Makli Tombs’ becomes more of a challenge. A part of reinforced walls in Mohenjodaro also collapsed recently due to salinity.

The National museum stood mostly unoccupied with just a small number of students visiting – this seemed enough to delight the eager and exceptionally knowledgeable curator.

Though the subject is often revised and remembered, the artifacts and atypical items from the past that lead to modern day civilization are left placed behind glass cabinet, with just a small number of people to visit them.

However recently, the Sindh government has sanctioned Rs.100 million for the preparation of a master plan for rehabilitation and cultural tourism of Mohenjodaro and the Punjab government and the search engine giant Google have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to promote archaeological sites of the province using Google Maps.

There have also been recent advancements in the archaeological findings of Pakistan in certain areas of Sindh, such as, the mound Nathar-j-Daro in Larkana and recent excavations in Bhanbore.

—Text and video by Shameen Khan/Dawn.com