Families blame religious leaders for fighters' death

Karbala: A steady flow of bodies being returned to Pakistan has prompted tribal elders to appeal to intelligence agencies and religious leaders to stop sending young men to fight against coalition forces in Afghanistan.

"We have made it known to the military intelligence and the clerics that we want them to stop sending our youth to their deaths," said one tribal leader from the province of Pishin in Balochistan.

His sentiments are echoed by a growing number of secular-minded politicians from the Pashtun tribal belt that runs from Balochistan to the North-West Frontier Prov-ince.

Karbala, a town in Pishin, is a key recruiting area for the Taliban as many of the religiously-conservative locals belong to tribes that span the border. Yet this month five families from Karbala accused religious leaders of being responsible for the deaths of their sons.

The 20-year old grandson of Sayyad Dost Mohammad went the way of many a young jihadi. "Qari Asadullah was one of five boys from the village who went to Afghanistan five months ago without their families' knowledge," said Dost Mohammad. "We heard that all five had been killed."

Asadullah and his four friends had graduated from the local madrassa and headed to a more radical school in Karachi, from where they went to Afghanistan.

Karbala has four madrassas, all linked to the Jamiat-e-Ulema Islam (JUI), a party that governs Balochistan and the North West Frontier Province and whose history is linked to the Taliban.

During President Pervez Musharraf's recent visit to Britain, a leaked document drawn up by a think-tank claimed that Pakistani military intelligence funnelled support for the Taliban through the JUI. This month, Musharraf said retired Pakistani intelligence officers could be running the Taliban insurgency.

Maulana Mohammad Noor, a JUI member of Pakistan's national assembly, denied that his party offered material support to the Taliban. "We offer only moral support and our prayers," he said.