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IT'S not just clouds that shroud Waziristan's treacherous high country. Up here on the Afghan border, a veil of state secrecy also cloaks a new Taliban wave breaking eastward across Pakistan.
Against the totemic thump of the drums of war, dust churns as the bodies of suspected anti-Taliban spies are dragged behind Toyota utes - as many as four at a time.
The severed heads of those who cross the fanatical jihadis are held aloft in cheering, jeering crowds. And in the bazaar, just a few rupees buys one of the hottest selling new DVDs - that's the one in which a 12-year-old boy wields the decapitation knife.
Now heard for the first time in years, the boom of the dhol drums summons the lashkars - tribal armies - for an episode in George Bush's war on terror that reads like a South Asian version of Conrad's Heart of Darkness.
But this incendiary mix of extremist Islam and guerilla war unfolds amid great confusion. As President Pervez Musharraf wrestles with an explosive political crisis of his own making in Islamabad, two deadly wars are playing out on the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan.
First, there is a dangerous spillover from the US and NATO-led struggle to pacify neighbouring Afghanistan. But within Pakistan a brutal, fundamentalist uprising also frays the fabric of a society that, politically at least, has been broadly secular for decades.
In remote Miram Shah, the Herald was a captive as much as it was a guest of the Pakistani security forces - and where the military minders had us corralled, the drums were silent. All the Conradian horror happens outside the high, protective walls of this military fortress which is home to the Tochi Scouts - a unit of Pakistan's border-protection forces.
We were kept inside, pinned down amid the crisp white table linen in an officers' mess built by the British more than a century ago. The aged pipes and drums of the scouts' former colonial masters were a feature display - still draped with the regimental tartan and a tiger skin.
Framed and faded pages from the The Illustrated London News, dated 1878, recounted Britain's travails in past Afghan wars. A glass case among the antique and silver weaponry held the pistol used by the scouts' first British commanding officer in the late 1800s.
Step away from the marbled terraces and the gardens were English country, as they might have been in the time of the Raj. The lawns were flat and tight, like a billiard table; the flower beds were manicured - nodding cornflowers, stocks and foxgloves. An oak cast an eerie shadow and creepers in tubs climbed the ornate veranda posts.
Going beyond the walls was deemed to be out of the question - "too dangerous," we were told in one breath; "there is nothing for you to see - everything is peaceful," we heard in the next.
But despite the smother blanket that the authorities have thrown over the country's sprawling western flank, news of administrative chaos, fundamentalist thuggery and security madness does seep to the outside world. Here is a summary of life in Pakistan's grandly named North-West Frontier Province during a recent Herald assignment in Pakistan.
The Taliban had taken over the historic small-arms bazaar at Dara Adam Khel, near Peshawar, where long lists of those they intended to kill as spies were plastered on walls. Barbers' shops, internet cafes and businesses selling video and audio cassettes and CDs in bazaars across the region are regularly torched or bombed.
In towns like Barawal, in the Dir district, there were pitiable pleas from barbers who had complied with the Taliban threats - they were being ruined because customers were less likely to come in for a haircut unless they could have a shave at the same time. After Dir, the barbers in Bajaur took a hiding; and then it was the turn of their colleagues in Mardan to receive the infamous night letters: "Our beloved Muslim brothers ... shaving off beards is a great sin."
Militants march into boys' schools, demanding the right to lecture and recruit pupils for jihad. They hurl grenades at teachers who object and kidnap school principals who persist in opposing them. Girls' schools are constantly harassed and tribal elders deny women the right to vote. Curfews and school closures are a part of daily life as women and children are evacuated from restive centres like Tank in the frontier province.
Banks are robbed. Government compounds, including those of the security forces, and NGO depots are bombed or commandeered. The country's security forces and government ministers are under deadly attack. Suicide bombings are on the rise. Gas pipelines and power pylons are sabotaged and railway lines are blown up. Civilians die in the crossfire.
More than 120 tribal elders who opposed the Taliban or were deemed to be siding with the erratic regime in Islamabad had been murdered. Hit-lists of difficult mullahs are circulated, containing dozens of names. The mutilated bodies of some so named turn up on roadsides ... with notes fixed to their clothing denouncing them as US spies.
The whole article at :
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2007/05/21/1179601331182.html
This is why we have to stay in iraq
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ISLAM [from thinking globally] (Read 84286 times)
