PESHAWAR: The man who delivered the kidnapped Chinese engineer to the security forces after his escape from the Taliban custody in Swat was subsequently made to pay with his life.
It wasn’t known until now that one Liaqat Ali Khan, son of Nadir Khan, a landlord from Dagai village in Matta Tehsil in upper Swat valley, was murdered by the local Taliban for helping Chinese telecommunication engineer, Zhang Guo, to reach the Pakistan Army’s roadside security post at Vennai. Members of his family, requesting anonymity due to a risk to their lives, told our sources that Taliban fighters chased Liaqat while he was driving his car near his village on November 20 last year and shot him dead.
Liaqat’s family, his cousins and other close relatives had to abandon their homes and move out of Swat after the incident. They still live in fear of the Swati Taliban and are unable to lead normal lives even in places far away from their native Swat.
The 30-year-old Zhang Guo and his colleague, Long Xiao We, were kidnapped from a spot near the Khall town in Upper Dir district on August 29 while installing towers for a mobile phone company. They were taken to Swat and mostly kept in the Shawar, Peochar and Namal mountainous areas in Matta Tehsil.
The Maulana Fazlullah-led Taliban in Swat demanded release of their 136 men and ransom in exchange for the two Chinese hostages. The government refused to make a deal with the Taliban.
It was on October 17, 2008 that the two young Chinese engineers made their move to escape from Taliban’s custody. They reportedly sneaked out of the house where they were held during the night and ran for their life. Long Xiao We, 26-year-old and heavily-built, slipped during the escape and broke his leg. The mountainous terrain and the darkness made it difficult for them to find their way to safety. It is said Zhang Guo lost his colleague on the way after the latter’s fall and after a futile search decided to go it alone. The desperate engineer wanted to seek protection in some house in Chinglalai and the nearby Dagai village as he feared that the militants would soon learn about their escape and track them down. The Taliban managed to find Long Xiao We and made him hostage again but Zhang Guo was lucky to find a place to hide and regain freedom.
According to late Liaqat’s family members, the unusual barking of dogs alarmed their security guards and prompted them to come out of the house of one of his cousins. They found the Chinese engineer shivering from cold outside the Hujra, or male guesthouse, and unable to speak a word of Pashto or Urdu, the two languages that the guards understood. Zhang Guo could barely speak English, the language the guards didn’t understand. Finding it difficult during the night to lodge him in the locked house or Hujra, the guards took him instead to a cattleshed and asked him to sleep there. They found an old blanket for him to protect himself from the cold.
In the morning, the guards contacted Liaqat in Dagai village and told him about the stranger, who they believed was deaf and dumb. After seeing Zhang Guo, he knew this was one of the Chinese engineers who had been kidnapped by the Taliban. Liaqat reportedly consulted his cousins in Swat and Peshawar and sought their advice how to handle the situation. He was advised to deliver the engineer to the Army checkpost at Vennai, located about 1.5 kms from Dagai.
According to one of his cousins, Liaqat was aware of the seriousness of the situation and he, therefore, tried to arrange a traditional, all enveloping Burqa for the Chinese engineer to wear while transporting him to the military checkpoint. Efforts to lay hands on the shuttlecock-type Burqa failed and Liaqat had little other choice than to seat Zhang Guo in the back seat of his car and drive him to the Vennai security forces’ post. He was able to return home safely but this was the beginning of his troubles.
Somehow the word got out about the Chinese engineer’s stay in the house after his escape from the Taliban and his handing over to the security forces. The Taliban started suspecting Liaqat for helping the engineer and not long after that he became a marked man. It was just a matter of time that the militants would target him.
Neither the Chinese diplomats nor most Pakistan government and military officials know that it was Liaqat Ali Khan who helped save Zhang Guo’s life but in the process paid with his own. It was a targeted killing of a man who had opted to stay in Swat unlike other Khans and resourceful people.
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