PESHAWAR, 10 October 2003 — Pakistan yesterday arrested another 10 tribesmen for refusing to hand over three people who allegedly harbored Taleban and Al-Qaeda fighters near the Afghan border, bringing the total arrested in a two-day sweep to 42.
“We have arrested 10 more people and sealed 18 markets of Zalikhel and Karikhel tribes,” administrator Anwar Ali Shah told AFP from Wana, headquarters of South Waziristan tribal agency.
Authorities also suspended special monthly allowances for the tribesmen. The three wanted men are believed to have sheltered a band of Al-Qaeda and Taleban fighters in their residential mud-walled compounds near Angor Ada in South Waziristan, five kilometers from the Afghan border.
The militants were targeted in a major military operation last week by hundreds of commandoes who surrounded their hideouts.
Eight fighters and two Pakistani troops were killed in the ensuing battle while 18 Taleban and Al-Qaeda suspects were captured.
Shah said Wana authorities have been seizing cars and sealing commercial premises owned by the tribes hiding the three local men, and have threatened to demolish tribesmen’s homes if they do not hand the men over.
“We impounded 20 automobiles and sealed several hundred shops, petrol pumps and hotels belonging to Ahmedzai Wazir tribe and Karihel and Zalikhel sub-tribes,” Shah said.
“This operation will continue until tribesmen hand us over the three wanted men.” The tribes are all Pashtuns, who share the Taleban’s ethnicity and their religious fervor.
“If the tribesmen fail to hand over the three men who sheltered Al-Qaeda terrorists we will start demolishing their homes,” Shah said.
He cited a clause in the Frontier Crimes Regulation legal code covering the seven tribal agencies, which decrees the demolition of homes as the punishment for sheltering terrorists or criminals.
Sympathy for the Taleban runs high among Pashtuns on both sides of the porous Pakistan-Afghanistan border, as does anger at the sidelining of Pashtuns from the post-Taleban government.
Angor Ada faces Afghanistan’s Shkin district and is just 15 kilometers from the Afghan town of Barmal.
US troops hunting Taleban and Al-Qaeda remnants in Afghanistan have frequently been thwarted by the fugitives escaping over the border into Pakistan’s tribal areas, often through Angor Ada.
The 18 arrested in last week’s raid were Uzbeks, Afghans and Pakistani nationals, an intelligence official in Peshawar said Saturday.
Local residents deny any of them were Al-Qaeda or Taleban members, and have accused the government of executing last week’s operation to appease the United States.
“The (Pakistan) government in a bid to appease the US is conducting this operation in the name of Al-Qaeda,” tribesman Ahmad Sakhi told AFP.
