PESHAWAR, Pakistan (AP) — Hazratullah Khan, who lost his right leg below the knee in a car bombing, answers immediately when asked whether the Pakistani government should hold peace talkswith Taliban leaders responsible for attacks like the one that maimed him.

“Hang them alive,” said the 14-year-old, who survived the explosion on his way home from school. “Slice the flesh off their bodies and cut them into pieces. That’s what they have been doing to us.”

Khan, who is from the Khyber tribal region, pondered his future recently at a physical rehabilitation center in Peshawar.

“What was my crime that they made me disabled for the rest of my life?” he asked as he touched his severed limb.

In recent weeks, the Pakistani government and Taliban forces fighting in northwestern tribal areas have expressed an interest in peace talks to end the years-long conflict. An estimated 30,000 civilians and 4,000 soldiers have died in terrorist attacks in Pakistan since Sept. 11, 2001 — many at the hands of the Pakistani Taliban.

To many victims of Taliban violence, the idea of negotiating with people responsible for so much human pain is abhorrent. Their voices, however, are rarely heard in Pakistan, a country where people have long been conflicted about whether the Taliban are enemies bent on destroying the state or fellow Muslims who should be welcomed back into the fold after years of fighting.

The Associated Press spoke with victims of terrorist attacks in Peshawar, Lahore, Karachi, Quetta and the tribal areas and their families to find out how they felt about negotiating peace with the Taliban.

Khan’s classmate, Fatimeen Afridi, who was also injured in the same bombing in Khyber, said he would be happy to see negotiations with the militants — but only after those who maimed him were punished. Afridi’s left leg was amputated below the knee, shattering his dream of becoming a fast bowler on Pakistan’s cricket team.

“If I find them, I will throw them in a burning clay oven,” he said.

The push for peace talks gained momentum in December when the leader of the Pakistani Taliban offered to negotiate. The government responded positively, and even hinted that the militants would not need to lay down their weapons before talks could begin. That would be a reversal of the government’s long-held position that any talks be preceded by a ceasefire.

So far, there have been few concrete developments, and it’s unclear whether Pakistan’s powerful military supports negotiations.

Skeptics doubt the militants truly want peace and point to past agreements with the Taliban that fell apart after giving militants time to regroup. Others say negotiations are the only option since numerous military operations against the Taliban have failed.

The biggest question — especially for many of the Taliban’s victims — is whether the Taliban will have to pay any price for the people they are believed to have killed and wounded. The government hasn’t said whether it would offer the Taliban amnesty for past offenses.

Many of the victims feel forgotten, saying no one has asked their opinion about holding peace talks. They have to fight for what little health care they can obtain, and there’s almost no assistance for dealing with psychological trauma caused by the attacks.

Dr. Mahboob-ur-Rehman runs a private medical complex in Peshawar, a large facility that houses a prosthetic workshop and a therapy school, where both Khan and Afridi are being treated. Rehman said the Pakistani army has a state-of-the-art facility to treat its soldiers while there is little help for civilians. He estimated that roughly 10,000 civilians have been permanently disabled after losing limbs in Pakistani Taliban attacks.

In the southern city of Karachi, 12-year-old Mehzar Fatima was shot in the back when a gunman killed her father, a Shiite Muslim. The sectarian groups often accused of carrying out such attacks are closely aligned with the Pakistani Taliban. The gunshot left her unable to move her legs and feet and she fears she might never use them again.

Her mother, Kishwar Fatima, said she’s being pressured to leave the hospital where the girl is being treated because there’s no government assistance to help pay her bills.

Those wounded in the violence feel further victimized because many Pakistanis don’t even agree on who is to blame for their suffering.

Despite the huge loss of life and property, the views of many Pakistanis are influenced by right-wing, anti-American propaganda that spawns conspiracy theories about the terrorist attacks. Fellow Muslims could never commit acts of violence against their own people, they say, so someone else must be to blame. Some theories suggest U.S. and Indian intelligence agencies support the Taliban and other militant groups to destabilize Pakistan.

Some people who support the militants think the Taliban are better than many of Pakistan’s corrupt politicians who have failed to deliver good governance. Many Pakistanis also say the militant problems in the tribal areas are a result of the U.S. military presence in Afghanistan and when the U.S. leaves, the Pakistani Taliban will also stop fighting.

Even some of the victims aren’t sure who is to blame.

The Taliban claimed responsibility for a Feb. 2 suicide attack that killed 23 people in the northwestern city of Lakki Marwat. But Mohammad Shafi, whose 24-year-old son was among nine soldiers killed in the explosion, isn’t convinced the attackers were members of the Taliban. He says Muslims would never hurt a fellow Muslim.

Instead, Shafi thinks his son — a boxer who never lost a fight before he was shot seven times during the attack on an army post — was killed by Hindu agents that archrival India sent, with U.S. assistance, to destabilize Pakistan. He said Pakistan should sever ties with the U.S. to abolish terrorism.

“If my son was killed by infidels, he has been martyred and will go to heaven,” he said.

Confusion over who is responsible for the deadly violence also has some victims wondering if the Pakistani government makes peace with the Taliban, will it also make peace with other militant groups.

Will the government, for instance, hold talks with Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, a group linked to al-Qaida that is accused of killing more than 175 Shiite Muslims during the past two months in the southwestern city of Quetta?

Ghazanfar Ali lost his 24-year-old son in one of these attacks on Jan. 10 in Quetta. Another of his sons survived the same attack after three major surgeries.

Ali broke down in tears as he recalled sifting through rubble and identifying his son’s body by the ring he had on his finger because his head and face were wounded beyond recognition.

“There can’t be peace with the Taliban,” he said. “They slaughter a son in front of his father and then chant ‘God is great!'”

Mohammed Afzal Guru was hanged in New Delhi early Saturday. Ahead of the execution, authorities ordered people in most of the Indian-held part of the disputed Kashmir region to remain indoors indefinitely in anticipation of anti-India protests.

Despite the curfew, hundreds of angry residents protested against Indian rule on Sunday and clashed with troops at dozens of places in the region.

In Watergam village near the town of Sopore, which was Guru’s home, at least four people were wounded, one critically, as police and paramilitary troops fired tear gas shells and bullets to disperse an angry crowd, police said.

One of the injured, 12-year-old Obaid Mushtaq, died early Monday, said Aijaz Mustafa, a medical superintendent at the S.K. Institute of Medical Sciences, a government hospital in Srinagar, the main city in Indian Kashmir. He said another 18-year-old boy was on life support.

Another young man died in Sumbal village in northern Kashmir on Sunday after he jumped into a frigid river while trying to run away from troops who were firing tear gas and using batons to disperse the protesters. Four policemen were injured in separate clashes.

Tens of thousands of security troops were fanned out across the Himalayan region, and metal barricades and razor wire blocked all major roads in the area.

Cable television and mobile Internet services were shut in most parts of the region and Kashmir’s nearly 60 newspapers were unable to publish.

Showkat Ahmed Motta, the editor of an English daily newspaper, Kashmir Reader, said that his paper published Sunday’s edition, but police seized the copies. “Police gave us verbal orders not to publish for four days,” he said.

A local police official denied that any newspapers were stopped from publishing, but said the strict curfew may have prevented copies of the papers from reaching readers. He declined to give his name.

Guru’s execution is an extremely sensitive matter in the Himalayan region, where most people believe his trial was not fair. Several rights groups across India, and political groups in Indian Kashmir, also questioned the fairness of his trial.

Anti-India sentiment runs deep in Muslim-majority Kashmir, which is divided between Hindu-dominated India and Muslim-majority Pakistan but is claimed by both nations.

Since 1989, an armed uprising and an ensuing crackdown in the region have killed an estimated 68,000 people, mostly civilians.

Guru confessed in TV interviews that he helped plot the attack on India’s Parliament that killed 14 people, including the five gunmen, but later denied any involvement and said he had been tortured into confessing.

Government prosecutors said Guru was a member of the Pakistan-based militant group, Jaish-e-Mohammed, a charge that Guru denied.

Guru had been on death row since first being convicted in 2002. Subsequent appeals in higher courts were rejected, and India’s Supreme Court set an execution date for October 2006. But his execution was delayed after his wife filed a mercy petition with India’s president. That petition, the last step in the judicial process, was turned down last week.

While Indian government officials said Guru’s family had been informed of his imminent execution by express mail, the family said it learned of it only through television news.

“I wish we were the ones authorized to give the news to the family — we owed him that much,” Omar Abdullah, Indian Kashmir’s top elected official, told CNN-IBN news channel on Sunday.

After the execution, Guru was buried in the prison compound.

The secrecy with which Guru’s execution was carried out was similar to the execution in November of Mohammed Ajmal Kasab, the lone surviving gunman of the 2008 Mumbai attacks. Kasab was buried in the western Indian prison where he was hanged.

Celebrations were being held under heavy security, especially in New Delhi where large areas were sealed off for an annual parade of military hardware at which Bhutan´s king Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck was chief guest.

India´s President Pranab Mukherjee told rival Pakistan in his annual address to the nation on the eve of the celebrations that New Delhi´s hand of friendship should “not be taken for granted”.

His warning came amid a ceasefire which took hold last week in the disputed region of Kashmir after the nuclear-armed nations agreed to halt cross-border firing that has threatened to unravel a fragile peace process.

“We believe in peace on the border and are always ready to offer a hand in the hope of friendship… but this hand should not be taken for granted,” he said.

Before the ceasefire, Pakistan said three of its soldiers died in firing by Indian troops along a de facto border dividing Kashmir between the two nations.

India, in turn, accused Pakistani troops of killing two of its soldiers, one of whom was beheaded, and the Himalayan region remains on edge.

India and Pakistan have fought three wars since partition in 1947, two of them over Kashmir that both claim.

Snipers manned rooftops along the route of the parade in New Delhi while helicopters monitored the area from above.

Tens of thousands of security forces were deployed across the capital and around the country for Republic Day — a holiday celebrated in all parts of India as the day when the nation´s constitution took effect.

In his speech, the president also said it was time for India to “reset its moral compass” following the savage gang-rape and murder of a student last month that ignited nationwide demonstrations to press for better safety for women.

Mukherjee said the death of the 23-year-old woman, “who was a symbol of all that new India strives to be”, had shattered the nation´s complacency.

“We lost more than a valuable life — we lost a dream” and “we must look deep into our conscience and find out where we have faltered”, he said.

The military commanders of the two armies spoke by telephone for 10 minutes and reached an understanding not to allow the situation to escalate further, spokesman Col. Jagdeep Dahiya said.
Three Pakistani soldiers and two Indian soldiers have died in the worst bout of fighting in the region since the cease-fire was signed in 2003. India said one of its soldiers was beheaded.
The series of tit-for-tat attacks had threatened to ratchet up tensions between the two nuclear-armed neighbors.
Earlier Wednesday, Pakistan accused Indian troops of killing one of its soldiers along the cease-fire line a day earlier. The Pakistani army said the shooting was unprovoked and occurred in the Hot Spring and Jandot sectors of Pakistan-held Kashmir.
However, Col. R.K. Palta, another Indian army spokesman, said Pakistani troops fired at two Indian positions using small arms and mortar fire on Tuesday night in the Poonch sector of the Indian portion of Kashmir. “Our troops didn’t fire at all,” Palta said.
Lt. Gen. K.T. Parnaik, an Indian commander in charge of the troubled area, said, “We want to ensure that we dominate the line of control and don’t let them (Pakistanis) provoke us into making it a hot line of control.”
In a sign of the rising tensions, Pakistani Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar accused India of “warmongering” in a speech in New York on Tuesday. In New Delhi, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said his country’s relations with archrival Pakistan “cannot be business as usual.”
India and Pakistan have been rivals for decades and have fought three wars, two of them over Kashmir. The Himalayan region is divided between the two countries, but each claims it in its entirety.
Senior Pakistani and Indian officials are trying to limit the potential damage from the recent clashes to relations, which have slowly warmed since Pakistani militants killed 166 people in the Indian coastal city of Mumbai. They suspended peace talks after the Mumbai attack, but both countries have economic and other reasons for wanting better ties.
Still, the fighting along the Kashmir border highlights how easily simmering tension can flare into conflict. The biggest risk remains an attack by militants like the one in Mumbai that would likely scuttle the reconciliation process once again.
The tension has disrupted cultural and sporting ties. Performances by a Pakistani theater group were canceled in the western Indian city of Jaipur and in the Indian capital following protests by hard-line Hindu groups.
On Tuesday, nine Pakistani hockey players who came to India to participate in a tournament were sent home.
The tension comes as political turmoil is increasing in Islamabad, with Pakistan’s top court ordering the arrest of the country’s prime minister in a corruption case, officials said, and a firebrand cleric rallying thousands of people in the capital against the government.
On Monday, Indian army chief Gen. Bikram Singh accused Pakistan of planning the attacks that left the two Indian soldiers dead – making clear he felt it was not an unintentional skirmish – and warned of possible retaliation.
“The attack on Jan. 8 was premeditated, a pre-planned activity. Such an operation requires planning, detailed reconnaissance,” Singh told reporters. He said India reserved the right to retaliate at a “time and place of its choice.”
Singh urged his troops to be “aggressive and offensive in the face of provocation and fire” from Pakistan. He said the alleged beheading of the Indian soldier was “unacceptable and unpardonable” and accused Pakistan of violating the “ethics of warfare.”
The Kashmir fighting began Jan. 6 when Pakistan accused Indian troops of raiding an army post and killing a soldier. India denied launching the attack and said its troops had fired across the border in response to Pakistani shelling that had destroyed an Indian home.
Two days later, India said Pakistani soldiers, taking advantage of heavy fog, crossed the de facto border and killed two Indian soldiers, beheading one. On Jan. 10, Pakistan said Indian troops had fired across the border and killed another of its soldiers. The Pakistani army said the shooting was unprovoked, while the Indian military said its troops were responding to fire from across the frontier.
Pakistan denies India’s allegations and has suggested U.N. monitors in the region conduct an inquiry – a call that India rejected, saying it didn’t want to internationalize the issue.
Pakistan and India struck a cease-fire agreement over Kashmir in November 2003. There have been periodic violations of the cease-fire, but the incidents during the past week have been the most serious.
In Pakistan, the Supreme Court’s arrest order for Prime Minister Raja Pervaiz Ashraf on Tuesday was likely to inflame antagonism between the government and the court. The order is linked to allegations of corruption in bidding on private power stations. Ashraf previously served as minister for water and power.
The arrest order could provide ammunition for Tahir-ul-Qadri, a Muslim cleric who is leading massive protests in Islamabad to press for the removal of the government, which he says is made up of corrupt politicians.
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Abbot reported from Islamabad.