Levies personnel in FR Peshawar, Kohat refuse to perform duty

Source The News

A number of Levies personnel in the Frontier Regions (FR), Peshawar, and Kohat refused to perform duty due to threats from militants and lack of support from the authorities, a source told The News on Monday.

“Many of the Levies personnel in the two Frontier Regions as well as other tribal and semi-tribal areas, adjacent to Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, have stopped performing duty. Some of them have properly conveyed [their decision] to their bosses while others are staying at home without informing seniors,” the source said.

The Deputy Commissioner of Peshawar, Muhammad Javed Marwat, who is the political agent for the Frontier Region Peshawar, could not be contacted despite repeated phone calls. An SMS was sent to him at his cell phone, but that too went un-responded.

Some of the officials of the FR Peshawar and FR Kohat said that nobody had

refused to perform duty and the affairs were being run smoothly. However, they admitted the Levies personnel had some apprehensions after the killing of their 21 colleagues in December last year.

“The parents of many of the Levies soldiers have refused to send their sons to perform duty at vulnerable posts, that too without any proper ammunition. Almost all their pickets and posts have been destroyed and they are inadequately armed,” said a source in the political administration of the Frontier Region, Peshawar.

The Levies personnel are already under threat for performing duty in the troubled tribal areas. The threat was taken seriously after 21 of them, who had been kidnapped by the militants from barracks and posts on December 26, were shot dead on December 29.

The Levies personnel are getting meagre salaries and don’t have sufficient ammunition to counter any kind of attack by the militants. Around 250 personnel perform duty in FR Peshawar and as many are there in FR Kohat but most of them do not have even rifles.

Hundreds of Levies personnel performing duty in all the tribal agencies and the Frontier Regions are also without proper structures, checkposts and ammunition to maintain order in the troubled regions.

Twenty-one Levies men were shot dead in Kohi Hassankhel in the Frontier Region Peshawar on December 29 after they were blindfolded and lined up with their hands tied at their backs. Their bodies were dumped in the Jabba Hassankhel area of the Frontier Region, Peshawar, about four kilometres away from the place from where they were kidnapped.

Most of the slain men belonged to Hassankhel, Janakor and nearby villages of the semi-tribal Frontier Region Peshawar, which is surrounded by Darra Adamkhel, Khyber Agency and Matani in Peshawar. The Darra Adamkhel chapter of the outlawed Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) later claimed responsibility for the kidnapping and killing of the Levies men.