Pakistan Adopting a Tough Old Tactic to Flush Out Qaeda

Saturday, January 31, 2004

By David Rohde & Ismail Khan

New York Times Writers

Mark Lyall Grant, the British ambassador to Pakistan, said the British empire sent 11 expeditions into Waziristan in the early 1900's in an effort to subdue them. Criminals had repeatedly kidnapped British colonialists, fled to the impenetrable border areas and demanded ransom. In one famous case, the saga of a schoolgirl kidnapped and taken into the tribal areas played out across London's front pages, embarrassing colonial administrators. But all 11 expeditions failed to subdue the areas, he said. The British decided instead to take advantage of an existing tribal custom that held an entire tribe responsible for the actions of one of its members. Tribes were ordered to find kidnappers themselves, or face collective punishment. "It's kind of striking to see how Pakistan today is using tactics that the British used 100 years ago," Mr. Lyall Grant said.

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan -- NYT
At the start of the month, Pakistan massed several thousand troops in and around the town of Wana, near the country's mountainous border with Afghanistan. Using a harsh century-old British method, officials handed local tribal elders a list and issued an ultimatum.

If 72 men wanted for sheltering Al Qaeda were not produced, they said, the Pakistani Army would punish the tribe as a group, demolishing houses, withdrawing funds and even detaining tribe members.

Several days later, several thousand tribal elders held a jirga, or council, and agreed to raise a force of their own to find the wanted men. In the last two weeks, the tribes have handed over 42 of them. Tribal members, meanwhile, have bulldozed and dynamited the homes of eight men who refused to surrender.

The most wanted fugitives, including foreign Qaeda members, remain at large, although as an added incentive, Pakistani officials have promised not to hand over any fugitive Pakistanis to the United States.

American officials declined to comment on the policy, but Pakistani officials hope the British method, combined with the American-financed building of roads and schools, will show results.

"There is this age-old system of collective responsibility," said Lt. Gen. Syed Iftikhar Hussain Shah, the governor of Pakistan's North-West Frontier Province and a key supporter of the new approach. "Tribes are supposed to help the government."

Since the fall of the Taliban in 2001, the tribal areas that span both sides of the border have proved to be a redoubt for Al Qaeda and Taliban fighters.

Osama bin Laden is believed to be hiding somewhere in the area's inaccessible crags. Insurgents have used the border area, home to smugglers and guerrillas for centuries, as a base to carry out cross-border attacks that have killed or wounded dozens of American soldiers.

(More: NYTimes.com)

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Dan