The Last of The Mohicans

It was well past the afternoon that a diplomat at from the Pakistan High Commission in Delhi called to break the news. Karachi’s super-cop Aslam Khan, otherwise known as Chaudhary Aslam, was assassinated in a suicide bomber attack in Karachi. I was stunned. I say stunned, but that probably does not indicate the intensity of it. I knew Chaudhary Aslam. The loss is personal.

 

My tryst with Aslam started almost four years ago when a journalist friend from Karachi mentioned him during a chit-chat. “Kadak banda hai Shahi sa’ab. Taliban ki fat’ti hai,” he had said. This was 2009-2010 and to trained and untrained eyes alike, Pakistan was on the verge of collapse. After initially virtually handing over Tribal Areas to Taliban, Pakistan Armed Forces had woken from the stupor. The provocations were many. Relentless attacks on ISI stations and army areas were just one of them. And then, they did the unthinkable. They mounted an attack on the General Headquarters in Rawalpindi. 

 

The operations followed and a consensus started building that Taliban needs to be tackled. It was realised that Taliban had brought the war to the cities and metropolises of Pakistan and it was no more restricted to the badlands of FATA. People particularly feared for Karachi as unlike other cities of mainland Pakistan, Karachi had seen a sizable surge in Pashtun population in the last few years and murmurs were heard that so did Taliban. 

 

Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM), a largely thuggish, secular-liberal party of Urdu speakers was forefront of those murmurs. But since they had a history of pitched battles with Pashtuns in the past, the neutral observers weren’t ready to accept the charges. Aslam, in contrast, had no such confusions. It was time to start hunting. And hunt he did. 

 

In no time, he came on the hit list. Several attempts on his life were made. Including a suicide bomber attack on his house. Minutes later, standing in the eight feet by six feet crater and facing the camera, Aslam did not betray any sign of fear. “Yeh dekho! Issi gaddhe mein dafan karunga tum sab ko (Take a good look, I will bury you all in this same crater),” was his defiant message to Taliban. Within an hour, as his children went to school unperturbed, Aslam, washed in mud and blood, was back to his office.

 

I wanted to interview him for this magazine. It was easier said than done. There was a process involved that simply refused to conclude. Being an Indian journalist was no help either. Several departments were asked for permission. I started to feel weary. It had been over nine months since I first expressed my desire to profile him and there was no sight of it happening anytime soon. I kept persisting because I really wanted to see him work. To talk to him. And then, when I had lost all hope, the permission came. 

 

As I was new to Karachi, a local journalist friend, Khurram Zaki, agreed to accompany me to his unmarked office at Garden Area in Karachi. We hit off really well. And instantly. It was a good interview as Aslam was a no-hold barred guy. And not a show off either. 

 

He did not come out as suave or well groomed. In fact he was brash, his language colourful. But he knew his stuff. He always dressed in casual, hardly ever in any uniform. While I was interviewing him, he lit five cigarettes one after another. He had requested not to click any photo with the fag, and I did not know when to click it considering he was not willing to let go his cigarettes.

 

I published the interview with all the relevant questions. But there was more. There were lots of things that he shared with me and my journalist friends, which he did not ask me to include in the interview. I never broke that promise. But since he is no more, I will share some of it to put things in perspective. During the interview he clearly indicated that there was more than a tacit understanding between sectarian outfits like Sepah-e-Sahaba and Lashkar-e-Jhangvi with Taliban.

 

He said, in most of Punjab and Karachi, it was difficult to differentiate. He also put allegations against the lower judiciary maintaining that many of the judges themselves were biased towards Taliban ideology if not their modus operandi and such judges were a pain in the back. “Jaan kha gaye hain ye log. Hum jaan par khel kar pakadte hain aur ye ek hearing mein chhor dete hain,” he had bemoaned. 

 

He also had to say things about MQM. Notwithstanding its habit of putting Karachi to ransom, and Aslam’s past feud with the outfit; he categorically said that MQM cadres were a big help in his fight to weed out Taliban from Karachi. Apart from the intelligence inputs from his own department, he said he was lucky to get many more inputs from the cadres of MQM and ANP. 

 

In between the interview, he got carried away at one point and told me, “Shahi sa’ab, inse nipatne ka bas ek hi tareeqa hai,” and flashed his gun. “Inse koi dialogue nahi ki ja sakti. Mujhse jyada inhe koi aur achche se nahi jaan sakta.” 

He was so unassuming that at one point I though whether this guy has even an inkling of the role he is playing. He did not consider himself a hero. I have seen my shares of super-cops and know that in no time, the success gets to their heads. Ray Bans come out. Not here, though. 

 

By the time the interview was over, it was already quite late in the evening. He was kind enough to ask one of his boys to see us off, but we declined. I send him the copy when the interview got published. When I called him next, he was so shy. The “Shukriya” was barely audible on the phone and you knew that the person on the other side of the phone was blushing. The guy who had killed hundreds of Taliban was blushing. I kept in touch and called him occasionally. 

 

While seeing us off, he had said, “Aaj khana nahi ho paya. Jab agli baar aayenge Shahi sa’ab to fursat se aayiyega. Khana saath mein kahenge.”Guess, that will not happen now. His blood will remain in the hands of those judges and politicians who collaborate to keep Taliban alive.