Khoban Ali, a lorry driver, was distinctly peeved when
asked if every man in his tribe could handle a rifle. "Not
just the men, even the children," he tutted, dismayed at a
foreigner's ignorance. "Most of us can use a bazooka, too,
and if the Americans come we will show them how."
Villages up and down the road that snakes for 40 miles
from the Pakistani city of Peshawar through forbidding,
barren hills to the Afghan border are full of fighting talk.
"The Taliban are our brothers," Mr Ali said of the
extremist Islamic movement that has offered shelter to
Osama bin Laden. "An attack on Afghanistan will be an
attack on us. We all have to die some time, so why not
now?"
On either side of the Durand Line, demarcated by the
British in 1893, live Pashtun - sometimes known as
Pathan - tribesmen who share a language and a fiercely
conservative Islamic culture with the Taliban. Villages are
dirt poor, illiteracy is high and life expectancy low.
...................................
Off the road, Pakistan's authority yields to tribal rule.
Local newspapers reported yesterday that the village
chiefs, or maliks, old men with abundant beards and
splendid turbans, had summoned their jirgas, or councils,
to mobilise opposition to a potential US invasion to snatch
bin Laden or overthrow the Taliban.
portal.telegraph.co.uk
Few solutions to stop it now ............ pandera box open ?? Any military action will only enforce their resilinece.
Going ot read more about Nostradamus ........ to complement my knowledge |
