Pakistan: The tribes' revolt

For the last month Pakistan's western tribal areas bordering Afghanistan have been in flames. Army spokesmen say hundreds have been killed and thousands displaced in the South Waziristan tribal agency in running battles between local Pashtun tribesmen and foreign Islamic militants who had found sanctuary in Pakistan after the Taliban's ousting from Afghanistan in 2001. Despite the carnage, the spokesmen have championed the violence as a vindication of the government's policy of striking peace deals with tribesmen rather than waging war against the Taliban.

"The fighting validates our counter-terror strategy," says a Pakistani security official. "We want the tribal leaders to evict Al-Qaeda and the Taliban on their own, without the Pakistani army".

Is that what's happening? South Waziristan is a remote, mountainous region where hard information is difficult to come by. Mobile phones don't work and, since February, landlines have been severed due to a robbery in the agency's telephone exchange. More ominously, since a peace deal was signed between the government and pro-Taliban tribesmen in April 2004, a campaign of intimidation has been waged against journalists, usually by the Taliban but occasionally by Pakistan's intelligence forces, whose agents are everywhere in the tribal areas. Facts about the recent fighting have come in fragments. The picture assembled is not quite the same as that painted by the government.

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