PAKISTAN AWAKENING: TRIBES TURN AGAINST TALIBAN

Shades of Iraq:

Intensive Pakistani military action in the border areas has emboldened several tribes to turn against Taliban militants.

The Salarzai tribe in Bajaur, where the military is conducting a bloody campaign against militants, has formed a militia to throw the Taliban out of their area.

The operation in Bajaur has caused heavy civilian casualties and forced 300,000 to flee their homes. But the intensity of the fighting has sent out a strong message of the military’s determination, and made tribal leaders realise that even staying neutral may invite the wrath of the authorities.

On Friday about 400 men brandishing weaponry that ranged from rocket launchers and Kalashnikovs to ancient rifles gathered in the Bajauri town of Raghagan to chant support for the Pakistani government.

The Lashkar, or militia, had gathered to meet a group of journalists taken to Bajaur by the military to show that their operation had the support of locals.

The Salarzai militia is at the vanguard of several tribes on the Pakistani-Afghan border that have formed militias to keep the Taliban – and hence western-backed military operations against them – out of their areas.

Last week they burnt the offices of local Taliban commanders and killed half a dozen fighters.

Many people interviewed in the frontier areas said they had suffered enough of the Taliban’s summary justice. Many thought that local criminals had adopted the dress of the Taliban.

Military officials said tribesmen in other districts of Bajaur were raising militias to expel foreign militants. The next militia expected to be raised may be from the Mamund district even though some Arabs linked to al Qa’eda had family links with the valley.

When thousands of al Qa’eda and Taliban militants fled the US-led invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, the tribes sheltered them, viewing them as successors of the mujahideen who fought the Soviet occupiers of Afghanistan in the 1980s.

In 2003, Islamabad launched army operations at Washington’s behest in the tribal belt, especially the notorious Waziristan area, but civilian deaths helped to radicalise and fire up many more tribesmen against the government.