You bar your women, confine them to homes and force them to wear tent-like veils. You are here enjoying while your women are not allowed to attend even the wedding ceremony next door, a female colleague in Islamabad almost annoyed me with these remarks. Instead of making fuss with her, I began thinking about my once paradise-like serene valley, Swat.

These and other such notions about life and society in Swat are common since the advent of mullah insurgency there four years back. From the day Maulana Fazlullah began his sermons on his FM radio, Swat has been witnessing a decline in the quality of life and faring a very low profile concerning human rights especially in respect of women. Given the mullahs version of religion, people outside Swat tend to view Swatis as rigid, primitive and medieval in outlook.

It is no surprise as people generally derive conclusions about culture and way of life by looking at certain stereotypes. And since the emergence of Taliban regime in Afghanistan, unfortunately we have the ignorant mullahs as the sole representatives of our culture and religion. The jihad in Afghanistan and its successors, the Taliban, have both given an overwhelming power to the specific sect in religion to speak on behalf of Islam and Muslims.

It is a pity and a strange fallout of imperial politics that such men sometimes become moral equivalent of our (Americans`) forefathers as stated then by President Reagan and on other occasions behave like barbarians who are out to destroy human civilisation and world peace.

Being oblivious of the real facts the people usually fall into the traps of men who apparently profess to be religious. The weak structure and power-centred way of administering justice by the state also make the poor people vulnerable to the intrigues and manipulations of demagogues especially those who promise a world free of miseries and deprivation. This is what happened in Swat when the mullah charmed the oppressed people with promises of rule of law under Shariat system. And the people in the nearby villages poured their purses into his hands. His proposed religious education complex was also raised by the voluntary labour of these simple people. Each day people used to flock to the site in hundreds motivated by religious passions, and their collective agrarian code, the Hashar. This is perhaps the reward of their devotion to the mullah that now they are being expelled from their villages to leave for wilderness.

The Swati people have never been extremists or hardliners. They have always opted for peace and harmony. In 1917, they gathered in the ground where the Jehanzeb College stands now and tied the turban around the head of Badshah Sahib, Miangul Abdul Wadood, and chose him their ruler. They made this social contract in order to avoid anarchy. Such events have been rare in the past. This act of theirs made Swat the most peaceful state. Since then the people of Swat lived in peace allying either with one Della (faction) or the other. There were two basic Dellas (parties) in Swat. The Badshah and later his son, the Wali, maintained their rule by keeping a balance between these two Dellas.

During the Swat state rule there were no significant religious insurgencies except the Sandakai Mullah who had constituted his Shariat courts in upper Swat, Matta. The then state ruler did not succumb to his threats. He just sent his man to convey the message to the mullah that Badshah Sahib wanted to kill him. The mullah took the message seriously and fled to Indus Kohistan. [Alas! No such message was conveyed to the FM mullah five years back.]

It is true that Swat is mostly inhabited by Pukhtuns who share the same race and culture as the large majority of their fellow brethren in rest of the North West Frontier Province (NWFP) and Afghanistan have but they differ with them in a number of aspects. The majority is Yousafzais but there are other tribes such as Mains besides the Kohistanis and Gujars.

The social fabric is not totally tribal like the one in Fata. They can be regarded as semi-tribal. It is perhaps due to the policy of the last Wali of Swat, Miangul Jehanzb, who had demolished the feudal system to a great extent by conferring privileges on the other segments of society and by making them Maliks.

These people did not need to be landowners; they were traders and merchants. He had also set up schools almost in every village. This provided equal opportunities of education to all people. This was the reason that at the time of merger in 1969, the literacy rate in Swat was above 20 per cent as compared to the current literacy rate of the NWFP which is 18.82 per cent.

In the days when Swat was a state there was no rule of law. It was up to the parties concerned whether they wanted to be tried under Shariat law or ordinary law. Under the ordinary law, punishments were different for different tribes. This was according to the will of the people. But when the parties favoured Shariat law, there was no room for compromise. And whatever the circumstances, the Shariat law was applied rigidly. Administration of justice was very speedy and the state ruler was there to oversee the process himself. It is indeed this speedy and cheap administration of justice that most of Swatis cherish to have again.

Now they are bewildered and depressed by the events that have changed their life altogether. Their livelihood had been destroyed, infrastructure damaged with little left to avail. More than 160 schools were blown up and above 30,000 girls were denied to go to schools. It has been more than a year that the hot operation is going on but the militancy does not come to a halt.

The leaders of militancy are still to be arrested in spite of their free movements and acts of bombing village after village. No fatal damage has hitherto been inflicted on the leaders and their followers. The more the operation is intensified; the more the common people become the victim.

The ongoing migration from the villages of Koza Bandai, Bara Bandai, Kabal and Matta presents a pathetic scene with the children and women weeping and wailing on the way. The security forces do not allow the people to leave the area by roads owing to the continued curfew. People thought their miseries were soon to end but nothing of the sort took place. The Swati people are, in fact, sandwiched between Scylla (security forces) and Charybdis (militants).