ISLAMABAD, 25 April 2004 — Five tribesmen accused of sheltering Al-Qaeda militants surrendered to the Pakistan Army at a tribal council yesterday, after being hunted by the tribals for a week in mountains on the border with Afghanistan.

The five fugitives were expected to hand in a list of foreign militants living with them in South Waziristan, a desolate region where Al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden and his deputy Ayman Al-Zawahiri have been pursued in the past.

Thousands of turbaned Pashtun tribesmen looked on as the five men from the Zali Kheil tribe turned themselves in before a jirga, or tribal council, and pledged loyalty to Pakistan in return for clemency.

In Shakai, a remote village around 400 km (250 miles) southeast of Islamabad, the surrendering men gave traditional peace offerings of turbans, pistols and swords to the army officers.

“We give amnesty to these people in return for their pledge of brotherhood and loyalty,” said Lt. Gen. Safdar Hussain, the regional army commander.

The commander said the foreign militants had until April 30 to surrender or he would send troops after them.

Amid loud applause from tribesmen famous for their independence from state authority, the leader of the five declared his allegiance.

“Pakistan is our home. We want peace here. The Pakistani forces are our brothers,” Nek Mohammad said. “We regret for what has been done on the basis of misunderstanding.”

Under terms brokered by local parliamentarians, Nek Mohammad’s band faced a choice of surrendering or expulsion from their homeland in the semiautonomous region of Pakistan’s North West Frontier Province.

A week ago, tribal elders formed a 2,000-strong force to hunt down their kinsmen and head off a fresh offensive by Pakistani regular forces on their territory.

The tribes were stung into action after 120 people died in fighting between government forces and militants near South Waziristan’s main town of Wana in March.

President Pervez Musharraf provoked militants’ wrath by siding with Washington in a war on terror after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the United States and blamed two assassination attempts on him in December on groups linked to Al-Qaeda.

US-led forces in Afghanistan are banking on a “hammer and anvil” strategy with Pakistan’s Army to trap Al-Qaeda and Taleban remnants hiding out in the badlands along the border.

But there are frequent complaints from the US side that Pakistan could do more.

Pakistan has 25 senior Al-Qaeda and Taleban suspects on its wanted list. But it has offered to let other foreign mujahedeen who have made homes with the tribes during the past two decades, stay on so long as they register their presence.

Many Arab and Central Asian veterans of the war against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, who later backed the Taleban, married into families of tribesmen they had fought alongside.

American Lt. Col. Matt Beevers told a news briefing in Kabul he welcomed the negotiated settlement in Shakai but military action was still likely to be needed.

“At the end of the day, I think we expect some Pakistani action there. They’ve done it in the past and I think they will continue to do it,” Beevers said. “They’ve been fighting in there and they have been dying in there, and I think that speak volumes.”

Meanwhile, several people were wounded yesterday after the roof of a school building collapsed in Shakai, local sources said.

The incident occurred at a ‘madrassa’ or religious school in Shakai, about 20 kilometers north of the region’s administrative headquarters of Wana.

The building was due to be used yesterday for the jirga to discuss the surrender of the five tribesmen, wanted by the authorities for sheltering Al-Qaeda and Taleban fighters.

“There were many people on and under the roof when it caved in,” local tribal sources told reporters.