Tribesmen rally to the gun

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Tribesmen rally to the gun Jason Burke in Darra Adam Khel, PakistanSunday September 23, 2001The Observer IN THE distance there is the rapid rattle of a Kalashnikov. Then the slow steady hammering of heavy automatic weapons. It sounds like a war but it isn't. Or not yet. Yesterday, in Darra Adam Khel, in the semi-autonomous tribal areas that line Pakistan's frontier with Afghanistan, men were preparing for battle. They were gunsmiths and they are expecting a busy time ahead. Darra Adam Khel is perhaps the only town in the world entirely devoted to the manufacture of weapons. Its narrow, dusty streets are lined with small wooden booths where soot-faced boys sit by hand-pumped furnaces and old grinding wheels. Here everything from small handguns to light artillery can be bought or ordered. The rugged dry hills that ring the skyline are full of the sound of weapons being tested. 'I have pushed up my production of bullets,' said Noor Mohamed as he oversaw a row of young boys filing down hundreds of cartridges. 'Most people round here already have weapons so I thought I'd concentrate on ammunition.' Yesterday, Pakistan was simmering as protests against its government's deci sion to back America unconditionally in its fight against terrorism continued. On Friday - the Islamic Holy Day - Pakistan was brought to a virtual standstill by demonstrations. In Karachi, four died, three of gunshot wounds. Elsewhere, tens of thousands marched in support of Osama bin Laden, America's prime suspect, and of the Taliban, the Afghan regime that shelters him. Yesterday, there were dozens more demonstrations and ugly confrontations with police and Western reporters. Religious leaders threatened to unleash a wave of suicide bombers unless Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf reversed his decision. In much of the country, the supporters of the Taliban are a minority and Musharraf can afford to ignore them. In some crucial regions - most of all the North West Frontier - he can't. A MESSENGER arrived last Wednesday, in the village of retired sergeant-major Jalil Mohamandi, high in the Hindu Kush mountains. He had come from Afghanistan with a request from the Taliban regime. The Mohmandi tribe, the messenger said, was asked to send a representative to a meeting near the eastern Afghan city of Jalalabad where they would discuss how best the war against the Americans could be fought. Jalil summoned the other leaders of his 50,000-strong tribe. The next morning, the men took their places in his house - one of the few concrete structures in the village. All morning they debated, sipping sweet green tea, with their AK47s and old Lee Enfield rifles lying on the cushions beside them. Finally, they made a decision. Nine-tenths of those present wanted to fight America and disobey their President. All along the Pakistani side of the Afghan border similar scenes were being played out. The North West Frontier is the home of the fierce, independent and deeply conservative Pathan - or to be accurate Pashtun - tribesmen. The Mughal emperors, the Sikhs, the British all failed to conquer them and the Pakistani government has given up trying to impose its authority, instead allowing the tribes to rule themselves according to their ancient code of honour - the Pashtunwali - based on revenge, war and hospitality to a guest. All three combine with Islam in the loyalty these men feel towards bin Laden. This is not the first time the Mohmandi Pashtuns, and the Khyber Afridis and the Shinwaris, the Achakzai and the Yusufzai and all the other tribes, have reached for their weapons. They have never recognised the frontier imposed by a British bureaucrat 130 years ago that split their land between Afghanistan and British India. 'We are as Afghan as we are Pakistani,' one Pashtun tribal chief told The Observer last week. 'The government in Islamabad [the Pakistani capital] is asking us to stand by and let our own people be attacked. We cannot do that.' The Taliban are almost entirely drawn from Pashtun tribes too. The Afghan opposition, still clinging to a mere 10 per cent of the country, largely represents the rest of the state's ethnic groups: Uzbeks, Tajiks, and Persians. The Taliban, and the Pashtuns, are Sunni Muslims; the opposition largely Shia. Afghan Pashtuns at the border crossing of Torkham at the foot of the Khyber pass made the point: 'Do not fight your brothers,' they shouted to the Pakistani paramilitary policemen, across the wire fence that separates two countries. 'We must unite in Holy War against the American aggressors.' Musharraf has said Pakistan would be a pariah nation if he rejected the American request. '[My decision] is in the interests of our national security,' he told the nation in a televised address. Everyone knows the US has the power to halt the loans that keep Pakistan's ailing economy afloat. The rupee dropped 5 per cent last week, despite an announcement from Washington that Pakistan's US debt of $600m would be rescheduled on generous terms and further loans and aid packages granted. North of Peshawar, the provincial capital of the North West Frontier province, lies the valley of Dir, guarded to the south by the Malakand pass, scene of some of the fiercest fighting under the British Raj. A Pakistani army fort stands where the young Winston Churchill shot down rebels. Dir is the power base of Maulvi Sufi Mohamed, an old Muslim scholar fighting to establish a Taliban-style government in Pakistan, with bans on women's education, death for homosexuals and adulterers, and exclusively religious education. In the valleys and desperately poor, terraced mountain pastures of Dir his vision of a perfect Islamic Pakistan is hugely popular. In a village in the hills near the Afghan border, he gave a rare interview to The Observer and said why he would tell his tens of thousands of followers - all Pashtuns - to fight America 'in any way possible'. 'We support the Taliban because they are the only country in the world to follow the true path of Islam, so every Muslim has a duty to support them,' he said. Musharraf was an enemy of all Muslims and anyone who died trying to assassinate him would be a martyr. THERE ARE many like Sufi Mohamed. The war against the Soviet Union caused a huge flow of refugees into Pakistan. More than two million remain, often in appalling economic conditions. They are a reservoir of support for extreme Islam. The Afghan war also saw the establishment of a hundred medressas or religious schools along the frontier. Often funded by wealthy Middle Eastern benefactors, they offer free food, lodging and an education focused on a profoundly conservative reading of the Koran. In one medressa , run by Sami-ul-Haq, a preacher who last week called for a jihad against America and all its allies, The Observer found hundreds of boys from Chechnya, Uzbekistan, China and Morocco, as well as Pakistan. Last week, many were crossing the rugged mountains to join the Taliban. Not all tribal leaders are extremists. Lateef Afridi, a chief of the Afridi tribe who dominate the Khyber pass, is a lawyer and was elected to represent his half million tribesmen in the Pakistani national assembly. 'These are fanatic, ill-educated people who have been allowed to languish in darkness because no one has spent money on enlightening them,' he said in his sprawling home in Peshawar. 'Since the Afghan war the mullahs [clerics] have become more and more powerful. The government needs to convince the tribal elders it is in their interests to lend their support. They must offer to build the schools and the hospitals that are so desperately needed. Otherwise, they will take their weapons and all be joining the jihad.' The tension has been raised by the arrival of an estimated 40,000 Afghan refugees in the past week. Those who cannot afford the price are forming vast impromptu settlements on the frontier. In the newly established Jalozai camp thousands of new arrivals have swamped the meagre facilities. In older camps dozens are living packed into single rooms. 'We have nothing at all, just the clothes we are wearing,' said Hamid Jan, 17. 'We came over the mountains and had to leave all our belongings. I don't know what is going to happen to us.' According to the United Nations, five million people are threatened with starvation in Afghanistan. After three years of acute drought there are no reserves, and stocks that the World Food Programme have in place cannot be distributed because there are no staff and all private transport has been requisitioned to carry refugees. Almost all the refugees, and most Pakistanis, condemn the attacks in America as un-Islamic. 'It is not right to kill innocent people. This is a crime and we are against it. If bin Laden did it then he is an evil man,' said Sufi Mohamed. All want to see what evidence links the Saudi-born dissident to the hijackings. Lateef Afridi said: 'The Americans must tread very carefully. They must present evidence, convince people they are right and only then attack. If they go all out for revenge they will suffer and so will all of us.'