‘It will be the people versus the Taliban’
SAEED SHAH; McClatchy Newspapers
WARI, Pakistan – A popular resistance movement is emerging in Pakistan's North West Frontier province to challenge Islamic extremists, who exercise control over whole districts and maintain a stranglehold over the local population.
The movement in both the province and the lawless tribal territory bordering Afghanistan relies on fierce tribal customs and widespread ownership of guns. Leaders raise traditional private armies, known as lashkars, each with the strength of hundreds or even thousands of volunteers.
The movement arose after local tribal leaders decided that the state can’t or won’t come to their aid as a radical, alien form of Islam seeks to impose itself on them down the barrel of an AK-47.
There are parallels with the “Sunni Awakening” in Iraq, where tribesmen took on al-Qaida militants in Anbar province and elsewhere. While the movement is in only a few pockets so far in northwest Pakistan, its existence could mark a turning point in Pakistan’s battle with violent extremism.
The Taliban are heavily armed and entrenched in a line that runs along the Afghan border from South Waziristan, northward through Bajaur and Mohmand in the federally administered tribal area, and in adjacent “settled” districts in North West Frontier province, including Swat, which are governed by provincial authorities. The lashkars are appearing in many areas, including Bajaur, in the federally administered tribal zone, or FATA, and Dir and Buner, which are in the “settled” areas of the province.
BETWEEN STRONGHOLDS
“There’s going to be a civil war. These lashkars are spreading,” said Asfandyar Wali Khan, leader of the Awami National Party, which controls the provincial government. “It will be the people versus the Taliban.”
Dir – a long, narrow valley in the province – is sandwiched between Taliban strongholds in Bajaur and Afghanistan to the west and more militants in the valley of Swat to its east.
This month, around 200 elders from the Payandakhel tribe met in Wari, a small town in the north of the region. In the dusty front yard of a high school, they held a traditional tribal meeting, or jirga, and resolved to assemble a lashkar. Anyone sheltering Taliban in the area would be severely punished.
“The government forces cannot even save themselves – what good will they be to us? They are just silent spectators,” Malik Zarene, a tribal elder, told the crowd. “We will rise for our own defense.”
Many of the men at the jirga arrived with machine guns, some dating back to the 1980s Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. The meeting was called in response to a scare a few days earlier, when a group of Taliban tried to seize a school and take 300 children hostage. Without waiting for authorities, tribesmen themselves successfully tackled the assailants.
‘THE TRADITIONAL WAY’
Those at the jirga said that they’d watched with horror in recent years as extremists pounced on Swat next door, which used to be known as a tourist destination. A full-scale army operation in Swat since November hasn’t quelled the insurgency there.
In Dir, the local tribes have demanded that the federal army not deploy, to which it has agreed.
“Once the army comes in, these Taliban fire at the army, and the whole thing escalates,” said a senior security official in Dir who can’t be named because he isn’t authorized to speak to the media. “It is best this is tackled in the traditional way.”
In southern Dir, the Sulthankheil tribe raised its anti-Taliban lashkar a month ago around the town of Khall. There, 10,000 locals registered to serve. Every night, 20 men patrol villages with orders to shoot any intruders.
“If we had not formed this lashkar, we could soon be like Swat or Waziristan,” said Akhunzada Sikandar Hazrat, a Sulthankheil tribal chief. “The police only exist inside their stations. If the people show they are against the Taliban, how can they come here?”
See also Situational Awareness in Federal Way Mirror.
