Pakistani border sees re-emergence of Taleban-style justice

ISLAMABAD - BARBERS are afraid to shave customers' chins, alleged thieves with blackened faces are paraded through the streets in shame and suspected spies for the United States are found beheaded in a ditch.

Tales of Taleban-style justice in Pakistani border regions are proliferating - a sign that an area already serving as a base for militants fighting in neighbouring Afghanistan is slipping further out of government control.

This week, the United States voiced growing concern that Al-Qaeda was re-grouping in the area. Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf's recent strategy of seeking peace with pro-Taleban tribesmen appears to have backfired.

'The pro-Taleban militants are making their presence felt in some very ugly ways,' said Ms Samina Ahmed, South Asia director for the Brussels-based International Crisis Group think-tank. 'They seem to be dictating the agenda.'

Residents of Miran Shah, the main town in Pakistan's North Waziristan area and a militant stronghold, say the Taleban runs an office where inhabitants can file complaints and receive a quick ruling based on Islamic law from a 10-member committee.

The committee has reputedly dealt with family feuds and seized suspected thieves.

Shopkeepers say three men accused of stealing cars were driven through jeering crowds in the nearby town of Mir Ali last week, their faces blackened and heads shaved.

Further north, several barbers in the Bajur district recently said they would no longer shave customers' beards after receiving a warning that it was 'un-Islamic' and being threatened with unspecified punishment.

More ominous were the cases of scores of people who were accused of being aligned with Pakistan's government or being foreign agents, and were later found shot or beheaded, their bodies dumped beside country roads.

In the latest such incident, a teacher's body was found on Tuesday in a sack on a roadside in South Waziristan.

A note found with the corpse identified the slain man as 'Akhtar Usman, the one who spied for America'. The word 'hypocrite' was scrawled on the temple of his severed head in Urdu, Pakistan's main language.

There is little indication that the authorities are willing or able to confront such developments in an area steeped in Islamic radicalism since it was a base for the mujahideen war against Soviet troops in Afghanistan in the 1980s.

Taleban fighters and Al-Qaeda militants - including Arabs and Central Asians - poured into Pakistan's rugged border zone in 2001 and 2002 as US-led forces drove them from Afghanistan. They found refuge in the fortress-like houses of sympathetic tribes and Afghan refugee communities.

Under US pressure, General Musharraf sent his army into the semi-autonomous tribal areas for the first time in Pakistan's 60-year history to pursue the militants.

Hundreds were killed on both sides in scores of operations in the tribal belt, mostly since 2004.

Gen Musharraf then changed tack.

A peace deal struck with North Waziristan last September demanded that the militants stop attacks in Afghanistan and halt 'Talebanisation' in return for Pakistani troops moving out of towns such as Miran Shah while retaining a presence at the border.

A peace agreement was also signed with South Waziristan in 2005.

But tribal elders who acted as guarantors for the North Waziristan deal appeared powerless to enforce it. Even Gen Musharraf has acknowledged that some of his security forces have been turning a blind eye to militant infiltration.

ASSOCIATED PRESS