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headline:

Pakistani tribesmen organize to fight Taliban insurgents
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By Saeed Shah	 | McClatchy Newspapers
WARI, Pakistan — A popular resistance movement is emerging in
Pakistan's North West Frontier Province to challenge Islamic
extremists, who now exercise control over whole districts and maintain
a stranglehold over the local population.

The movement in both the province and the lawless tribal territory
bordering Afghanistan relies on fierce tribal customs and widespread
ownership of guns in the north west of the country, to raise
traditional private armies, known as a lashkar, each with the strength
of hundreds or several thousand volunteers.

The movement arose after local tribal leaders came to realize decided
that the state can't or won't come to their aid as a radical, alien,
form of Islam seeks to impose itself on them down the barrel of an
AK-47.

There are parallels with the "Sunni Awakening" in Iraq, where
tribesmen took on al Qaida militants in Anbar province and elsewhere.
While it's in only a few pockets so far in northwest Pakistan, its
existence could mark a turning point in Pakistan's battle with violent
extremism.

These tribal armies can't stop individual acts of terrorism, such as
the suicide bombing of the Marriott hotel in Islamabad last week. But
they may be able to stop the development of an extremist mini-state,
which would threaten the existence of both nuclear-armed Pakistan and
neighboring Afghanistan.

The Taliban are heavily armed and entrenched in a line that runs along
the Afghan border from South Waziristan, northward through Bajaur and
Mohmand, in the federally administered tribal area, and in adjacent
"settled" districts in NWFP, including Swat, which are governed by
provincial authorities. The lashkars are appearing in many areas,
including Bajaur, in the federally administered tribal zone or FATA,
and Dir and Buner, which are in the "settled" areas of NWFP.

"There's going to be a civil war. These lashkars are spreading," said
Asfandyar Wali Khan, leader of the Awami National Party, which
controls the provincial government in NWFP. "It will be the people
versus the Taliban."

Dir — a long, narrow valley in NWFP — is sandwiched between Taliban
strongholds in Bajaur and Afghanistan to the west and more militants
in the valley of Swat to its east.

Last weekend around 200 elders from the Payandakhel tribe met in Wari,
a small town in the north of the region. In the dusty front yard of a
high school, they held a traditional tribal meeting, or jirga, and
made rousing speeches that resulted in a resolution to assemble their
own lashkar. Among the decisions was that anyone sheltering Taliban in
the area would be severely punished. ... (cont)