Asia-Pacific, Headlines

PAKISTAN: Border Villages Rise Up Against Taliban

Ashfaq Yusufzai

PESHAWAR, Aug 26 2008 (IPS) - “We are trend-setters. Others are following us,” boasts Rauf Khan, mayor of Pakistan’s Buner district, where villagers killed six militants in the Dara Shalbandi area on Aug. 14.

In some parts of the North West Frontier Province (NWFP), people are enlisting in anti-Taliban squads to take on the extremists who are blamed for a spate of abductions and arson attacks on girls’ schools, rural clinics and cyber cafes.

Rauf Khan is leading the village defence squads in Buner, a small valley between Peshawar and Swat. On Aug. 8, the Taliban had attacked the Pir Baba police station in Buner and killed nine policemen.

The village defence squad retaliated with indiscriminate firing that resulted in the deaths of eight militants, including Kamran Khan, the so-called chief of the Tehreek Taliban Pakistan (TTP) in adjacent Mardan district.

“Villagers had asked the militants to surrender before they laid siege,” Khan told IPS. “But the militants requested safe passage. That was denied. Then the militants threw a hand-grenade in the direction of the villagers to break the siege,” he recounts.

Pakistan’s border regions – the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) and NWFP – are infested with armed groups that espouse a radical Islam, influenced by Afghanistan’s erstwhile Taliban rulers. The Taliban had crossed the porous border into Pakistan when they were ousted by U.S. troops from Kabul in end-2001.

Violence has spiralled in recent months, particularly in Swat, the stronghold of the TTP. About 186 primary and middle schools for girls were torched in the district over the last two months, according to the NWFP Education Minister, Sardar Hussain Babak.

“We fear the Taliban could replicate the same in Buner if they were given a free hand. We have held several meetings and decided that we wouldn’t let Buner go Swat’s way,” says Fareedullah, a local elder, who was part of the defence squad that killed Taliban on Aug. 14.

Initially the local people – ethnic Pakhtoon or Pashtun cousins of the Afghan Taliban – welcomed the guests from across the border. But in 2005, the U.S., in the pursuit of its so-called ‘war on terror’ on militant Islam, began putting pressure on the Pakistan government to evict the outsiders, and FATA became a battleground for the military.

The following year the U.S. launched unmanned drone attacks on North and South Waziristan, forcing thousands to flee their villages. The Taliban capitalised on the strong anti-U.S. sentiment to challenge the Pakistan military.

Fear of intensifying military action in Swat and neighbouring Bajaur Agency, FATA, have triggered the current backlash against the Islamic fighters.

“We are seeing the writing on the wall. If we don’t prevent the Taliban at this stage, there is every possibility the military would launch an operation and the 11million population would be migrating in a state of helplessness to safer areas,” says Rauf Khan.

On Aug. 15, a jirga (assembly) of elected councillors in Mardan district (NWFP) decided to set up anti-Taliban squads on the Buner model.

“The Taliban had already bombed about a dozen girls’ schools besides bombing 50 CD shops and attacking police stations,” says Shakoor Khan of Bakhshali locality who participated in the jirga. “Before the Taliban resorts to torching more schools, we have decided to resist them,” he told IPS.

In Upper Dir, NWFP, the jirga met with the local Taliban on Aug. 15, and asked them to leave the district immediately.

Upper Dir has been flooded with some 100,000 internally displaced by the military operations in adjacent Bajaur Agency. “We are not going to let the Taliban play with the future of our people. We don’t want schools to be burnt and our coming generations uneducated,” asserts Gulzar Khan, a local leader of the Jamaat-i-Islami Party.

In Swabi district of NWFP, similar jirgas have established anti-Taliban squads which patrol the villages at night. “The good news is that all the political parties are supporting the move, because it has paid off in the context of Buner,” observes Rehman Shah, a local leader of the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) whose leader, Benazir Bhutto’s murder last December is blamed on the Pakistan Taliban. The PPP is in power in Islamabad.

“All the criminals in these areas are carrying out anti-social activities in the garb of the Taliban. The Taliban, used to be students of religious schools, who guided the people on the right path. But now the situation is quite the opposite. They are leading anti-social activities,” comments Himayatullah Mayar, the mayor of Mardan.

A local jirga in Buner district has advised the police to stop night patrols. “We will kill any person seen after midnight. We have advised the local population not to come out of their houses,” warns mayor Rauf Khan.

The Awami National Party-led provincial government has emerged a strong supporter of the anti-Taliban squads. On Aug 12, the provincial government had dispatched two helicopters to Buner to bombard Taliban hideouts within one hour of a request from the district administration.

Elsewhere in Lakki Marwat and Hangu districts, villagers have purged their areas of the Taliban. They have warned that all suspected Taliban fighters would be shot at sight. The NWFP government issued a quarter-page advertisement in all national Urdu dailies after the incident in Buner on Aug. 14, congratulating the village defence squads and urging other districts to put a stop to the spread of the Taliban.

It stated: “Militants bring destruction wherever they go. For a bright future, prosperity and development, follow the wise decisions of formation of anti-Taliban squads in Buner, Hangu, Dir, Swabi, Mardan, Lakki Marwat where the people have decided to cleans their areas of militants at their own.”