War on terror on outer fringes continues..
dailytimes.com.pk
4000-man tribal army formed
* Nek absent from jirga
* Houses of those sheltering militants will be razed
By Iqbal Khattak
PESHAWAR: A jirga of the Ahmedzai Wazir tribe on Sunday decided to form a 4000-man lashkar to fight foreign militants in South Waziristan if they did not agree to register with the authorities.
Meanwhile, two Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) parliamentarians were still engaged in talks with the authorities to find a peaceful solution.
“We will take on Nek Muhammad as well if he continues to support foreigners,” Malik Janan from the Kakakhel tribe told Daily Times on the phone from Wana.
The lashkar will not move unless a 40-member committee that is engaged in talks gives its approval. “We will request the foreigners to register with the government. If they refuse to do so, we will ask them to leave Waziristan,” he said.
Brig (r) Mehmood Shah, FATA security chief, said that the lashkar could begin an operation from Monday.
“If they do not register themselves and refuse to leave Waziristan, the lashkar will take action against them,” Janan said. He said the lashkar would not let anyone use Pakistan’s soil against a third country. “We will defend our country’s sovereignty,” he added.
Nek’s absence from Sunday’s jirga indicated that the issue of foreign militants’ registration is unlikely to be resolved peacefully. “He (Nek) did not show up at the jirga,” Janan and tribal elders said.
“What the government wants is unlikely to happen,” was the defiant message from one of Nek’s aide “There has to be a give-and-take policy,” he added.
The Ahmedzai jirga announced stern measures against those who opposed registration. “The houses of local residents sheltering foreigners will be demolished and offenders will be fined Rs 1 million,” the jirga said. The jirga also recommended 25 years of rigorous imprisonment and forced exile for tribesmen found sheltering foreign militants.
Janan said the 40-member committee would meet on Monday in Wana to work out its strategy. But another tribal elder was not optimistic that the lashkar would succeed in its mission. “The administration will point out where a foreigner is and then the lashkar will move in. This will give the foreigner time to relocate because Al Qaeda’s intelligence network in Waziristan is better than the administration’s,” said the tribesman who requested not to be named.
“It all depends on how strong Chief Administrator Asmatullah Gandapur is and how much the Army is backing him to deal with the situation politically,” said the tribal elder. |
