Members of the Pashtun Ahmedzai Wazir tribe on Thursday raised a 600- strong Lashkar (tribal militia) to “protect peace in the area”, elders and eyewitnesses said. “It is in our common interest to work for peace,” Amir of local Taliban Maulvi Nazir told an Ahmedzai Wazir jirga in Wana, three days after two simultaneous attacks on his offices left 10 of his men dead.The jirga would mandate the Lashkar in a meeting on Friday, tribal elders told Daily Times. According to tribal traditions, Lashkars are raised to take a unified position against a common threat.
Threat to peace: Taliban commander Matta Khan said the threat was from “the commanders who fought for Uzbek militants when Maulvi Nazir led a popular uprising against them in April last year”. He blamed “people like Ghulam Jan” of “plotting against peace in our area” and for the attacks on two offices of Maulvi Nazir in Wana and Shakai Valley last week.
“Wazir tribesmen sheltering the foreigners must now give them up,” Reuters quoted tribal elder Meetha Khan as saying. “The lashkar will give two options to those sheltering the foreigners, either to stop sheltering them and return to their tribe, or face the eviction of their families from the area,” Khan said.
The Zalikhel tribe that makes up half of Ahmedzai Wazirs was under fire from the jirga participants being asked to clarify its position on militant commanders who oppose Maulvi Nazir, a witness said. Witnesses told Daily Times no speaker at the jirga named Baitullah Mehsud as the prime suspect. Pakistan has blamed the leader from the Mehsud tribe, based in South Waziristan, for a recent wave of suicide attacks, many on security forces. The government has said Baitullah Mehsud was also responsible for assassinating Pakistan PeopleÂ’s Party chairwoman Benazir Bhutto on December 27.
The Wazir militia, Reuters said, is expected to operate only in the Wazir tribal area, and would thus have little or no impact on Mehsud and the Al Qaeda allies in his area. Thousands of foreign militants, including Arabs, Chechens and Uzbeks, fled to Pakistan’s semi-autonomous tribal lands after US-led forces ousted the Taliban in Afghanistan in 2001, a Reuters report said. It says the militants were given refuge by the Pashtun tribes who live on both sides of the porous border. “But relations between some of the tribesmen and their foreign guests began to break down last year when tribesmen, with the backing of the Pakistani military, turned against foreign militants after they had tried to kill a tribal elder,” it said. “About 300 foreign militants and up to 40 Pakistani tribal fighters were killed in days of clashes that followed.”