PESHAWAR – The bands tribesmen fighting the Taliban-are threatening to give up their struggle in the face of a string of attacks and a perceived lack of government help. Armed with the Kalashnikov rifles that swill around this lawless region and dressed in traditional tribal garb, the militia or ‘lashkar’ members patrol their villages daily to ward off home-grown militants and protect communities.
Set up from late 2006 to support the armed forces’ battle, the role of lashkars has made them an obvious target for Taliban, and after a string of bomb and suicide attacks, as well as targeted assassinations, many of the villagers who form these private armies say they are ready to quit. In Matani near Peshawar, a suicide bomber on Wednesday hit a funeral being held for the wife of one militiaman, killing 37 people and wounding 150 others.
Matani’s lashkar is made up of more than 4,000 tribesmen who formed their group in 2007 to fight Taliban mostly based in neighbouring tribal area of Darra Adam Khel, where army troops had launched several of their own operations. The group says it has already been the target of two suicide attacks, five bombs and more than 60 rocket attacks. The men blame not only the attackers, but the government and security forces for failing to provide material support.
“Our Kalashnikovs cannot match the Taliban’s rockets and mortars,” said one lashkar leader in the area, Malik Sakhi Jan, 50. “We have become the Taliban’s target. They say we are lackeys of America because we are supporting the government. But the government is doing nothing for us,” said Jan. Another local militia leader Dilawar Khan told AFP that the police had promised support but gave nothing.
“We lack resources, we receive no weapons, we have no ammunition and we have no cash, no rations for the lashkar volunteers. The lashkar will be there if we get support from the government, otherwise we will dissolve it,” he said. A government official said more than a dozen anti-Taliban militias are active in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and across the tribal areas. But the government says it is not willing to beef up the lashkars for fear of creating an unwieldy force in parallel to the army and police.
“We are talking to them and will accept their reasonable demands,” Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Information Minister Mian Iftikhar Hussain told AFP. “But the lashkars’ task was to help our troops to trace militants and to provide self-defence for the villages. They are not an attacking force, this job is done by our security forces,” Hussain said.
In Bazid Khel village, close to the Khyber border where NATO supply trucks bound for Afghanistan come under regular attack, head of the local 500-man anti-Taliban militia, Fahimuddin, also complains that he lacks guns and money. His enemy is the anti-government force Lashkar-e-Islam, which enforces Taliban-style strict Islamic law in the area.
But not all believe the pro-government forces are a good idea. Former minister of the province Siraj-Ul-Haq told AFP that the militias were failing in what they set out to do. “They form these lashkars in the name of peace but have failed to establish peace,” he said.
