In April, I had to make an emergency trip to Pakistan due to declining health
of my father. Since my last couple of trips had been very short, this was after
more than two years that I was visiting Pakistan for four weeks, most of them to
be spent in my hometown of Bahawalpur. When I had visited backin 2005, it was a
visit after 4 years, so new roads and cell phones in every hand looked quite
fresh. This time, at least on the surface, little seemed to have changed since
my last trip. On my way home from the airport, it looked like the same old
desert town of Bahawalpur. The date palms, the early summer heat, the dust and
the desert wind were all too familiar.
As the car stopped at the main gate of my parents’ house, a poster pasted on the
gate caught my attention. The title of the poster was “Azmat-e-Quran
Conference”. And the key speaker was going to be someone named Masood Azhar. Why
did the name sound familiar? I thought about it for a moment, but then as the
car moved in, the happy feeling of meeting my parents again overwhelmed me and I
quite forgot about it all. The next few days were spent making courtesy calls
and getting over the jet lag.
Then came the day when I was fresh again to go out and meet relatives and family
friends in the city. As I went out, I saw the same poster pasted all over the
city with a lot of white flags hoisted on all major intersections. I wondered
what was going on, and the name Masood Azhar clicked with some old memories of
watching this man on the news a long time ago. Yes, he was the same Masood Azhar
who founded the Jaish-e-Muhammad organization and served time in Indian jails
before getting freed through hijacking of an Indian Airlines jet.
Bahawalpur always used to be laid back small town where everyone knew everyone.
Masood Azhar was a neighbor of my cousins and used to have a small low profile
house which wasn’t even visible from the road. I remember when he was released,
the BBC wanted to film his return from the terrace of my cousins’ house, but
they refused due to privacy concerns. Since then, we heard little about him in
the news or local gossip. In general, the people didn’t give him much
credibility.
While I was thinking about the past, my attention was drawn towards the wall
chalking around me. Gone were the usual slogans of old times, directing people
to visit miraculous witchdoctors for solutions of all their problems. The walls
were filled with anti-west hate slogans, with “Al-Jihad Al-Qital” (holy war,
bloody battle) written everywhere around the central mosque. This was not the
Bahawalpur I knew when I was growing up.
As we got closer to the central mosque, I saw the adjacent ground filled with
bearded men in white robes, with more of them reaching the place in buses,
chanting the slogans which were written all over the city. A number of men were
uniformed, and they had closed the road to facilitate movement of buses into the
place. The purpose of the conference was to distribute a new book of Masood
Azhar which had supposedly substantiated that the jihad these men thought they
were preparing for was actually sanctioned by the verses of Quran, based on
their strict politically-motivated interpretation.
We reached the house of our family friends with mixed thoughts. Obviously
disturbed by these developments, I asked them what was going on in the city.
They said it had been silently going on for a long time. Over the years, Masood
Azhar had converted his small house into a multi-floor concrete compound housing
700 armed men, who freely did target practice there. All this was located in a
very central part of the city, ironically called Model Town. The police dared
not touch these men, and instead of putting pressure on them to stop their
activities, the local politicians were actually hiring these men as bodyguards
during the elections.
After leaving their house, as we got closer to my cousins’ house, a strange tall
building with the same white flags on top was visible from a distance. This was
Masood Azhar’s compound. A few blocks away from my cousins’ house, our car got
stuck in a crowd of the same bearded men in white robes who flocked outside the
compound and watched us suspiciously as we drove through them. For a moment, I
felt like a stranger in my own hometown. Everyone at my cousins’ house thought
of all this as something normal and didn’t seem to be bothered.
While talking to people about this, I had some interesting conversations with
some of the people who were involved in local politics and the internal politics
of Islamabad. Their understanding was that Masood Azhar was like Rasheed Ghazi
of Lal Masjid. The way they explained it was that ISI gets money channeled
through CIA. Some of it goes to fund extremists, some of it goes to eliminate
them, and most of it goes in shady bank accounts. The agencies get their money,
the US benefits from the instability in the region to maintain military presence
here, Musharraf gets to stay in power by showing his performance in war on
terror, and the bearded men in white robes think they are doing some great
service to religion by dedicating their lives to militancy. So this was a
win-win situation for all parties, at the expense of the fabric of Pakistani
society.
Although I took their explanation with a grain of salt, I thought a lot of it
did make sense. On my way back home, a huge billboard at the heart of the city
grabbed my attention. It showed a passenger plane on fire with a slogan on top:
Another Victory for Muslims. I had a flight back to the US coming up, and the
plane on the billboard resembled the 777 I took to fly to Pakistan. I wondered
if the ones behind this billboard actually realized what they were portraying.
Beneath the billboard, the cityscape was filled with common Pakistanis going
about their everyday struggle for survival.
This true story is about how terrorism, coupled with an odd coincidence has
affected my life. I was born in Pakistan, and spent my life there till two years
after my graduation as computer engineer. That’s when I was interviewed by
Microsoft in Dubai, and consequently offered a job in Redmond, which I accepted
and moved to USA in November 2000. Soon afterwards, first episode of this story
started.
As required by law, I went to office of the Washington Department of Licensing
to get Washington State driver’s license. At the counter, the officer took my
vision test, and then after checking some data, he sarcastically asked me, “What
kind of place is North Dakota?” Puzzled, I didn’t know what to tell him because
I had never been to North Dakota, and didn’t expect this kind of question for
driving license. With a confused expression, I told him that I didn’t know. His
next question was, “Have you ever been to North Dakota?” When I told him that I
had never been there, he asked, “Do you mean you don’t remember going there?” By
that time, it was getting irritating, so I told him that I clearly remembered
not having gone there. At this, he asked me to wait and went away. He returned
after a while and told me that according to his records, someone with same name
and date of birth as me had his driver’s license revoked by the state of North
Dakota, and so I couldn’t get a driver’s license unless I got that cleared.
Highly disappointed, I returned home. Next day, I went to work and called North
Dakota Department of Licensing. They said that all they could tell me was that
“my” driving license was revoked due to some unpaid ticket (I wasn’t even in USA
at the time of that offence). I told them that it was a problem of mistaken
identity, and that I wanted to get that cleared. They asked me to contact
another office to sort it out. I called that person, but his secretary told me
that they couldn’t do anything either. At this I was quite upset, and didn’t
know what to do. So I went to my manager and told him the situation. He called
them up again and explained to them the whole situation. Eventually, they
checked everything, and found out that the other guy spelled his first name as
Ahmed (as opposed to Ahmad), and eventually sent me a letter saying that my
driving privileges were not suspended in North Dakota.
Relieved, I went back to the Washington Department of Licensing office, and
showed them the letter. They made me wait for a long time, faxing the letter
back to North Dakota, and taking a written oath from me regarding authenticity
of the letter. Finally, I was allowed to take the written test, which I cleared.
Next, I called the number they gave me, to schedule an appointment for driving
test. Again, I was told that my driving license was revoked. So I went back to
Washington Department of Licensing office, and asked them to put a comment
related to this mistaken identity in my records. Thankfully, they did that, and
I managed to get Washington State driver’s license.
I thought I had solved the problem, but I was mistaken. Days passed by,
including the tragic day of 11th September. And then we heard that Pakistanis
were added to the list of countries whose nationals had to go through special
registration with INS. As a law-abiding tax-payer, I also scheduled an
appointment with INS, which had given special time slots to Microsoft employees.
That’s when the second episode of this story started.
I reached INS, told them that I had an appointment through Microsoft, and got in
to meet the attorney assigned to me who asked me to wait for a few minutes.
Everything seemed to be normal, till the attorney came to me and told me that
there was some problem of mistaken identity, and I should be prepared for some
questions. That got me worried, but the feeling of having done nothing wrong and
having all the documents, including the letter from North Dakota comforted me.
Next, the attorney guided me to a separate room, where two special agents from
the INS Joint Terrorist Task Force were waiting for me. One of the officers
introduced himself as an anti-terrorism expert, and told me that they needed to
ask some questions. He told me that someone with same name and date of birth as
me was in INS custody, and that was the reason why I was being interviewed by
them. I told them about the North Dakota episode, and showed them the letter
from North Dakota too. They seemed convinced that I was a different person, but
still they asked some questions, like:
Do you have any middle name or any other names?
Have you been to any country where terrorist camps are?
Do you know anyone who might have terrorist links?
Do you remember anyone jumping with joy on 11th September?
Would you inform FBI if you found out about any terrorists?
Have you been anywhere in the Middle East?
Have you been to Oregon? (At that time this one didn’t make any sense)
It took them around 20 minutes before they concluded their interview and cleared
me for special registration. The actual process of special registration didn’t
take more than 10 minutes, and the officers were all quite courteous. They told
me that they had put a comment in my record indicating this mistaken identity,
but warned me that it may not always help me from staying out of trouble
regarding this. The attorney told me that it was the first time that he had come
across such a coincidence where two people had same name and same date of birth
and one of them was facing problems due to the other one. So, I came back to
work, but this thing remained on my mind all day.
Later in the evening, I thought about doing a Google search regarding the person
I was being confused with, to find out what he had done, and soon I came across
this link:
U.S. v. Jeffrey Battle, Patrice Ford, Ahmed Bilal, Muhammad Bilal, Habis Al
Saoub, October Lewis: Case involves the arrest of 4 individuals alleged to have
received terrorist training. Oct. 3, 2002.
http://news.findlaw.com/hdocs/docs/terrorism/usbattle100302ind.pdf
I remembered something similar that I had heard in the news and related this to
the officer’s question about Oregon. The details of this case made me realize
the grave nature of charges against that guy. I thought how lucky I was that he
was in INS custody already. And I wondered how two people with same name and
same date of birth can be so different, yet one affecting life of the other.
Here I am, an introvert computer engineer working at Microsoft, absorbed in my
own world of computers and guitars, paying my taxes and living a free,
prosperous life. And contrary to me, there is someone who shares my name and
date of birth, and yet he is in INS custody, charged with planning the most
hideous of crimes against innocent people. I wondered how different
circumstances and influences can lead people to totally opposite tracks in life.
And one thing I am still wondering … is there going to be another episode of
this false alarm?