Dark Star

Moderate tribesmen in parts of militant-ravaged north-west Pakistan are challenging Taliban extremists threatening to overrun their area, in what could develop into a mass resistance movement.

Villagers in parts of North-West Frontier province and the tribal territory, faced with the violent advance of the Pakistani Taliban, are starting to organise an armed indigenous resistance in the absence of help from the state.

The resistance has parallels with the "Sunni awakening" in Iraq, where tribesmen took on al-Qaida militants in Anbar province and elsewhere.

The Pakistani movement relies on tribal customs and widespread ownership of guns to raise traditional private armies, known as lashkars, each with hundreds or several thousand volunteers.

These tribal armies cannot stop individual acts of terrorism, like the devastating suicide bombing of the Marriott hotel in Islamabad last week that killed more than 50 people. But they aim to stop the development of an extremist mini-state in the north-west.

The lashkars are appearing in many areas, including Bajaur, in the tribal zone, and Dir and Buner in North-West Frontier province. The Taliban are heavily armed and entrenched in a line that runs along the Afghan border from South Waziristan, north through Bajaur and Mohmand, in the tribal area, and in adjacent districts in NWFP, including Swat.

"There's going to be a civil war, " said Asfandyar Wali Khan, leader of the Awami National party, which runs the provincial government in NWFP. "It will be the people versus the Taliban."