A hero who died with his boots on
By Ismail Khan
Monday, 09 Aug, 2010
The bugle was blown. A gun-salute rang in the air as the casket was lowered into the grave. At that moment the tears could no longer be held back as memories flashed through my head like the reel of a film: Safwat Ghayyur’s hearty laugh, his characteristic way of lighting up his cigarette, the way his eyes would crinkle up when he teased me about this or that.
Safwat had never hankered after a job or a particular post. An excellent police officer, the best postings dropped into his lap. But the Frontier Constabulary was one force that he wanted to command. “The force is in a bad shape. It is badly demoralised”, he told me.
So when the opportunity presented itself in December 2009 he took up the job without a second thought for his personal welfare.
Even though just a couple of months earlier in September he had sought to be relieved of his job as the Deputy Inspector General of Peshawar Range and the Capital City Police Chief of Peshawar for medical reasons –- under pressure from his family, friends and well wishers.
He was suffering from hepatitis -– a disease he had contracted because of a blood transfusion he was given after a bullet pierced his left shoulder following a shootout with an outlaw in Mardan in 1997.
At that time, he was the Assistant Inspector General, Traffic, NWFP, and had no business being part of a shoot out.
But Safwat being Safwat, he joined the force that had encircled a criminal in an encounter.It was a crippling wound for the left-handed Safwat.
The unaware doctor who operated on Safwat’s shoulder thought he was consoling his patient when he said “the good news is that it was your left shoulder that has been hit.” The quick-witted Safi retorted, “And the bad news is that I am left handed.”
But the real bad news was unbeknown to Safi then. Over a decade later, the old bullet wound came back to haunt him in the form of hepatitis C, when he was hunting down militants in the Peshawar region as the DIG/CCP, Peshawar Range.
He was a relentless man, who took his job very seriously. And therefore, when routine medical tests revealed the infectious disease, Safi called his doctor in Rawalpindi for the medicines over the phone.
A frustrated Dr Amir Bilal, a cardiothoracic surgeon and Safi’s brother-in-law said that Safi should have been in Rawalpindi for the medical check-up. “But he can’t even be bothered to take time off from his work to go as far as Hashtnagri,” Amir Bilal said, referring to a locality in the old part of Peshawar City.
Dr Amir was worried because Safi was not responding to his treatment. His platelets level had dropped and any wound from a bullet or flying shrapnel from a bomb explosion could have proved fatal for Safwat.
But then Safwat was not an armchair police officer; he never had been. And this worried his friends and relatives. He was a man who led from the front. He liked to be with his troops, rain or sunshine.
He would spend nights with his men in tents in far-away wilderness, swim through the cold river Kabul during the frosty winters drills and sweat it out in humid summers.
A real officer, who believed in action, he had no respect for colleagues who would avoid hot-zones. In his words, the “talcum-powdered, starched-uniform wearing officers.”
An MP-5 slinging from his shoulder and a wireless radio in his hand, he would always be in the forefront. No wonder then that those who cared and knew about his conditions realised that a bullet or shrapnel wound was a real possibility. It caused them nightmares.
Very few people knew in fact that six units of platelets were always kept for him in the blood bank which had to be replaced with fresh blood after every five days; the shelf life of platelets. But Safi was undeterred.
He even declined an offer from Chief Minister Akram Hoti to seek medical treatment abroad. He was too busy carrying out operations against the militants in Peshawar, the Frontier Regions and even as far as Kala Dhaka.
But while the undeterred police officer was winning the battle against militancy in the Peshawar region, the man was losing the battle against the disease. “Handsome!” (his way of addressing his friends), he would says, “One day, you will hear that your brother is no more.”
I never saw him snap under pressure. But he did feel the heat when, following an attack on the Pearl Continental Hotel, Peshawar in June last year, a whispering campaign of sorts was initiated against him.
This upset him in a way that the death threats from the Taliban against him and his family -– a wife and two kids -– did not. “I have put my life on the line and those of my family. I am not going to tolerate any talk,” a seemingly angry Safwat told me.
He was a no-nonsense, blunt man, who never shied away from calling a spade as spade, often to the embarrassment of his seniors, some of whom had no love lost for him either.
Safwat had always had a penchant for intelligence operations, something he developed a passion for while serving as the AIG, Criminal Investigation Department (CID). And he was not an ordinary criminal investigator. His work would at times take him across the border into Afghanistan.
He was probably the only police officer of his generation in Pakistan to have complete knowledge of the various militant groups and their training camps in Afghanistan including those run and operated by Osama bin Laden and his associates.
This even got him in trouble with security and intelligence apparatus and a series of inquiries were launched against him. But he was always cleared.
After interrogating a rabid anti-Shia militant he had captured in 1995, he sent a report to the government, asking for a “dispassionate review” of Pakistan’s policy of patronising the various militants groups. “These are nameless, faceless people”, he would say then. “One day, these chickens will come home to roost.”
But then Safwat’s encounters with militants started back in the 90s, with local ones as well as foreigners, when he was SSP, Peshawar.
Then he rounded up hundreds of foreign militants, after Islamabad ordered a crackdown following an attack on the World Trade Centre in New York which was traced to a Peshawar-based group led by Ramzi Yousaf.
Later, in April 1997, he planned and executed Operation Garbage Dump to flush out a group of foreign militants holed up inside a compound in Jalozai just outside of Peshawar.
That and his four years of stint at the Intelligence Bureau proved handy for him when he took over as the DIG/CCP Peshawar Range to confront the surging militancy. And he did it by first improving the sagging morale of his police force.
He was a good commander, who would take pains to look after his men; he knew most of them by name. He was a strict disciplinarian and tough task master, who took duty and professional matters very seriously.
But he was no less a human being in his personal life. The super cop, who was always on the trail of hardened criminals, kidnappers and terrorists, was also an elder brother and a dependable friend. Hardly a day would go by, when we would not meet or speak -- this had been so for almost two decades.
I knew he was on the hit list of the militants but it never occurred to me that one day, I would be standing beside his grave, looking down at his coffin. That one day, I would bid him farewell forever.
He knew he was losing the fight against the disease. But I am certain that he too would have chosen to die with his boots on than to lose life’s battle against a disease.
The hero, who was killed in a suicide attack on Aug 4 in Peshawar, has now joined the galaxy of the many other illustrious stars of our proud police force -– Malik Mohammad Saad, Abid Ali, Khan Raziq and so many others.
DAWN.COM | National | A hero who died with his boots on
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When he caught the Ustaad-i-Fidayeen, i.e. the person who would train young children to be suicide bombers and fill them with anti-American sentiment, Safwat told him that if he was so convinced about his anti-Americanism and so-called jihad, he should put his money where his mouth was. Safwat made him put on a suicide jacket and told him that he would personally take him to the American Consulate. He peed in his pants and went down on his knees pleading for his life. This is the truth behind their so-called conviction and ideas. Scum of the earth; ants eating away all that is good and decent in society.
http://www.paklinks.com/gs/pakistan-...fc-killed.html