Wed, Oct 31, 2001 page6

• Rebuffed fighters camping out on Afghan border

  COLD SHOULDER A 9,000-strong tribal army from Pakistan had waited patiently in no-man's land, only to hear that they are not needed and should go home

  • THE GUARDIAN
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  They arrived shouting "Allah is great," "Down with America," and "Our path is jihad." Some were armed with Kalashnikovs and rocket launchers. Others had to make do with cutlasses, muskets and sticks.

  Over the last three days, a 9,000-strong tribal army had waited patiently on Pakistan's northwestern border with Afghanistan. The volunteers' aim was simple: to enter Afghanistan to fight, and possibly die, alongside Taliban forces.

  But on Monday, in what amounted to a "don't call us, we'll call you" the Taliban made it clear that they did not want any new recruits yet and said they had plenty of mujahidin fighters to deal with the Americans.

  "We have requested them not to come," the Taliban's ambassador to Pakistan, Abdul Salam Zaeef, said yesterday. Zaeef made clear that the would-be recruits currently camped in the small village of Lagharay, about four miles from the border, would not be allowed into Afghanistan.

  "At this stage it isn't needed for them to go into Afghanistan," he explained. "There are plenty of mujahidin at the front lines. If they did go, there would be a lot of congestion in these areas, and the possibility of mass casualties because of American air strikes would become much higher. It isn't wise." Zaeef added, however, that if extra fighters were needed "we will tell them."

  The Taliban's blunt declaration to the enthusiastic but untrained jihadis, who might later turn out to be a liability, suggests their grasp of military strategy is perhaps greater than western analysts have given them credit for.

  Zaker Khan is probably representative of many of the thousands of would-be jihadis now amassed dejectedly at the Afghan border. He would not exactly fit the description of the optimum fighting unit. The 18-year-old cricketer left on his long march to the front six days ago from Battar, a hamlet in the Kaghan valley east of the border, wearing only a white robe. He had no weapons, no military training and no boots. To sustain him, he carried a bottle of water, three days worth of food, and a conviction he would not return.

  Teachers at his Madras Islamic school told him of a bus leaving for the frontier with 10 other youths and Zaker seized his chance, not even returning home to ask his parents permission. His parents were distraught, fearful he would never return to their wheat and apricot farm.

  But to friends gathered in the dusk at Yar Mohammad's petrol station, his absence was a source of pride. "We are happy he has gone to fight, he will become a martyr and enter paradise," said Akbar Khan, 35. "He may not have military skills right now, but a month with the Taliban will sort that out. He is a tough boy and won't bother them asking for supplies. He will use his arm as a pillow."

  Fazil Rehman, a local mullah, had reassured volunteers that what the Taliban might lack in supplies, Allah would provide. Those aged under 17 were being turned back by older comrades but they were expected to smuggle themselves into Afghanistan through secret routes, said Zaker's friends.

  Since the American onslaught on Afghanistan began, support for the Taliban in the tribal regions that adjoin Afghanistan has been universal. Many tribal villagers belong to the same ethnic group as the Taliban, the Pashtun. They have never accepted the British-drawn Durand Line, the optimistic boundary between Pakistan and Afghanistan created by a British civil servant in 1893.

  This must make yesterday's Taliban rebuff all the more wounding. The armed volunteers belong to the Tehrik Nifaz-I-Shariat Muhammadi party, an extremist Sunni group that believes in the imposition of Sharia law in Pakistan. The volunteers, led by the party's firebrand chief, Sufi Mohammad, set off in 300 Datsun pick-ups on Saturday.

  Most of the tribesmen came from Malakand, an autonomous tribal region north of Peshawar. The local authorities were unsure whether to stop the heavily-armed convoy or allow it to proceed. In the end, it was the Taliban who turned it back. After halting next to the border, a small delegation entered Afghanistan for talks with the Taliban governor of Kunar province. "We have told the Taliban that we will depend for our living on our own resources as we are carrying food and other essential goods from here," party spokesman Qazi Ihsanullah said.

  But the plea failed to do the trick. Some volunteers are now expected to sneak across the border in small groups. There were increasing signs last night of a full-blown insurrection in Pakistan's tribal regions, a possible prelude to a wider civil war.

  Local chiefs or maliks are incensed by General Pervez Musharraf's decision to support America's bombing campaign against Afghanistan. For the past four days tribesmen have blocked the fabled Karakoram Highway that snakes along the ancient Silk Road in northern Pakistan in protest, severing road links with China.

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