Tribesmen cross into Afghanistan

The first two convoys of heavily armed Pakistani tribesmen to join Taliban ranks as part of their jihad entered Afghanistan via Kunarh province yesterday, as the students' militia succumbed to the pressure exerted by Maulana Sufi Muhammad and his followers to allow them to cross into the war shattered country.

"As many as 1200 armed people from Upper Dir using different routes entered Afghanistan yesterday and more convoys will follow them in days to come. The process will go on every day", said the spokesman of Tanzeem Nifaz Shariat-I-Muhammadi, Muham-mad Abdullah.

Local journalists and TNSM sources said the fighters were taken to the Pak-Afghan border in about 100 pickups to be given in the control of Taliban authorities in Kunarh province. One of the convoys was headed by TNSM's deputy chief, Maulana Abdul Ghafoor while the second one was led by Dr. Ismail.

The chief of TNSM, Maulana Sufi Muhammad is still in Afghanistan and had been stying in Kunarh to receive these convoys of fighters, sources in the organization said adding that these fighters would be taken to Jalalabad for onward deployments in the frontlines elsewhere in the country.
"They will fight under the command of Taliban, be that against the Americans or their allies inside Afghanistan", said Muhammad Abdullah.

Taliban have asked the TNSM leadership not to bring people below 25 and above 50 year of age for fighting, but the organization is in a fix, as the aged men and teenagers have refused to go back and insist on going into Afghanistan, he said.

"My son is 17, but he refused to come back and wants to go to Afghanistan. I tried my best to convince him not to go, but to no avail. He is a Grade 9 student and has memorized the Holy Quran by heart", Muhammad Abdullah said.

"Muhammad bin Qasim was also 17 when he was sent on a mission to the sub-continent", he said while comparing the age of his son with the young Arab general, who attacked Raja Dahir of Sindh and defeated his army.

"Our fighters will cross into Afghanistan through different routes in groups due to security reasons. We fear U.S. air attacks on these people", he said. According to rough estimates, more than 10,000 armed tribesmen are waiting at Lagharai and other villages of Bajuar Agency for the last one week, where locals provide food and other facilities to them.

"We are scarefully checking the identity of those entering Afghanistan as part of moves by the lashkar to ward off unwanted elements", said the spokesman. A Taliban official in Jalalabad said that efforts were being made to transport these Pakistani tribesmen to safer places.

Our Islamabad Correspondent and agencies add:

TNSM chief Soofi Mohammad, who is inside Afghanistan, had sent instructions after the first batch of around 8,000 tribesmen on the list of volunteers left from Baujar yesterday afternoon.
Ismail said more volunteers would be going in batches of different size over the coming days depending on the guidelines received from the party's leader.

The Pakistan government, at loggerheads with the Taliban over support to the U.S.-led military strikes on Afghanistan, has asked the Taliban not to allow any Pakistanis to join their military forces, but the authorities apparently did not intervene to stop the tribesmen.

TNSM is one of the several staunchly pro-Taliban groups in Pakistan. They are generally known as Pakistani Taliban espousing the similar mission as the ruling Islamic military in Afghanistan.

"Our volunteers will operate inside Afghanistan according to the wishes and instructions of the Taliban authorities," Ismail said, explaining that only those trained in use of arms were being sent to fight alongside the Taliban forces.

Meanwhile more than 70 lawyers in this frontier town of Quetta in south western Balochistan announced yesterday they were joining the holy war against the United States and would offer the Taliban their legal expertise.

"We will take part in the jihad (holy war) and be with the Taliban," the president of the Quetta Bar Council, Zahoor Ahmed Shawani, said after a meeting of the city's lawyers. "The Muslim world must not allow America to continue its strikes against Afghanistan."

Leading attorney Adbul Aziz Khilji added: "The lawyers of Quetta are now with the Taliban. We will deal with them, help them. "We have practised law for a long time and we know there is no evidence that the Taliban are responsible for the terrorism (attacks in the United States on September 11)."

Security sources meanwhile said that around 550 Quetta businessmen had crossed the border into Afghanistan yesterday to join the Islamic militia. They were among a convoy of 1,500 unarmed people who passed through the Chaman border post.

While buildings have been flattened and lives lost in Afghanistan since the U.S. unleashed its military might on October 7, many small businesses continue to flourish and there is a regular procession of Pakistanis crossing to ply their trade.

The sources, however, said around 40 per cent of the men who went yesterday had indicated they would not be returning. It was not clear where they were eventually heading. In a related development, Paki-stani authorities were busy yesterday removing boulders and stones from the fabled Karakoram highway after angry tribesmen protesting against Islamabad's support for Washington blocked the road.

"The road will be opened by this evening," an official from the northern town of Gilgit said by telephone. "We are clearing it right now, but the protesters have left." Witnesses said huge boulders and stones littered the spots where roadblocks were erected by the armed tribesmen opposed to Pakistan's support for the U.S.-led military campaign against Afghanistan's ruling Taliban movement, which has many sympathisers in Pakistan, particularly in the northern belt.

Local newspapers said tribesmen, responding to calls from local religious leaders, had used dynamite to create landslides to block the road. The government was now using heavy machinery to remove the earth and rocks.

"The blockade has ended but there is no traffic yet," another resident of Gilgit said. The town had been cut off for eight days from the rest of the country, sending food prices soaring, he said.

Hundreds, possibly thousands, of trucks and buses, have been unable to move on the Karakoram Highway that snakes along the ancient Silk Road. The Pakistani north, a popular destination for foreigners and locals alike, has not been busy recently because the summer season is over and because of general fears among overseas tourists following the September 11 attacks on the United States.

Washington's prime suspect in the attacks is Saudi-born Osama bin Laden, who has been living in Afghanistan under the Taliban's protection. Officials say the blockade also did not affect Pakistan-China trade because China had closed the border since September 11.

The Pakistani government, reluctant to take action against the hundreds of armed tribesmen perched on hilltops and beside the road, had persuaded them to end the blockade with the help of Islamic clerics.