T he village of Jalouzai is located on a jagged tongue ofasphalt directly south of Nowshera, between the a-

gricultural expanses that lead to Khigana Mountains andthe city of Kohat. We are in the heart of the Khyber

ters from Peshawar, capital of the province and an impor-tant commercial hub and military center. I’m welcomedinto the camp by a chaotic procession of men wearingPakulas (the typical Pashtun hat), groups of burqa-cladwomen, and children scampering around determined toweave their way past holes filled with old bicycle tires.

I arrive as Pakistani army prepares a new offensive a-gainst the militants of Lashkar-i-Islam (LII) in Bara, whichis a subdivision of Khyber Agency, a tribal area nominal-ly under the control of FATA (Federally AdministeredTribal Areas, where Pakistani law does not apply). Theirefforts are in retaliation for a series of violent LII ambush-es that began in mid-October. The attacks claimed thelives of 12 soldiers, 48 militants and nine civilians.

Before beginning their offensive, the troops have evac-uated some of the settlements, giving the tent city resi-dents, mostly farmers, just a few hours to leave. “We gotto take very little,” says Imdad Khan, 34, who was forcedfrom his home along with his family. “We left the houseopen and walked away with whatever money we had andthe clothes on our backs.”

I met him as he stands in what seems like an endlessline that snakes toward a tiny hut surrounded by reeds

where new arrivals are being registered and counted. Theinterminable wait is made worse by how little those inline are told. Most are tense and frustrated. Basic ques-tions remain unanswered. How will they eat? Where willthey sleep? What about their families?

But the complaints are hardly louder than murmurs.Armed police with truncheons patrol the long line,restoring order at random. According to Noor Akbar Afri-di, the coordinator of the camp, says the encampment hasaccepted and registered 18,450 new arrivals over threedays, adding to the 27,887 refugees already in the tent c-ity. “Some of these people have been living in tents since2009,” says Noor. The size of displacement, and the en-campment, is a direct consequence of the Pakistani gov-ernment offensive against the Tehrik-i-Taliban (TTP, thePakistani Taliban) who guerrillas are concentrated inSwat and Dir districts.

Almas Khan is 45 years old and belongs to the StoriKhel tribe. His life in the camp involves waiting for mealsinterspersed with conversation with others of his clan.“When the Taliban came in, they told us not to cooperatewith the army, and we obeyed them,” says Almas. “Whenthey were in power we had no choice. We basicallyworked, prayed and went home. As long as you remainneutral, you have no problems.”

Almas greets me with a group of fellow refugees in thesouthern part of the camp, which is reserved for get-

togethers and social life, such as it is. Women, of course,are not allowed. Life is even harder for them, since they’reobliged to preserve family honor, which means limitingtheir movements to the tent area, partitioned by curtains.

In the circle of seated men I meet 38-year-old Nigra, arugged, bearded fighter on leave to visit his family in thecamp. He’s careful to call himself a “fighter,” not a soldier,which defines him as a member of the “lashkar,” Bara’sassociation or army of anti-Taliban irregulars. Locally,these fighters are called “khassadars” and are armed anddeployed in support of Pakistani troops. The khassadarare used by the Pakistanis because of their excellentknowledge of the area, usually far more extensive thanregular troops. Many choose to fight in defense of theirland and their homes or to avenge the death of a family.They sense a call to arms in defense of the Pashtun peo-ple. “A few months ago,” says Nigara, “I was at a check-point about 30 other ‘troops.’ At midnight the Taliban,

Pakhtunkhwa, one of the four Pakistani provinces onceknown together as North-West Frontier Province, near theDurand Line, the border that separates Pakistan andAfghanistan. Jalouzai has little if anything to offer.There’s a butcher selling slaughtered goats, the inevitablemosque and a couple of electronics stores, where youngPashtuns sell Made-in-China palm pilots to passersby.

Just beyond the town outskirts is a sealed-off dirt roadthat leads a police roadblock. Beyond that point is a hugetent city that stretches for nearly 700 acres across the flat-lands. With me is Zia ul Islam, 25, journalism intern whoworks at the local newspaper, “The News.” He’s a nativeof Mardan in the Dir district. Jalouzai is the largest refugeecamp in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, which is some 30 kilome-

T

A ReportFrom the Durand LineThough Pakistan continues fighting Muslim insurgency within its own borders, its “War on Terror”

alliance with the United States is all but over. Many Pakistanis blame the U.S. for domestic instability.

ASIA . PAKISTAN

109number 40 . february 2012108 east . europe and asia strategies

Registry lines at Jalouzai. Most “residents” live in squalor.The entrance to the sprawling refugee camp at Jalouzai.

More telling, Islamabad is beginning to consider

re-establishing ties with the Taliban. The reason?

To keep Indian ambitions at bay.

text and photos by Emanuele Confortin

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mountains, a six-hour walk from Afghan portion of theNuristan province, most people are adamant in saying thatPakistan has sacrificed far too much for its alliance withthe United States, getting bombings, death, and allegationsof collusion with terrorism in return. A public poll con-ducted in late summer revealed that 70 percent of all Pak-istanis see the United States the biggest threat to the coun-try’s internal stability. Another 18 pointed to Pakistan’s tra-ditional enemy, India, while only 11 percent picked theTaliban. “Since the beginning of taking military sides withU.S., Pakistan has lost some 4,000 troops, while civilianscasualties are estimated as 35,000. The cost of the alliancehas exceeded $65 billion, of which we’ve received only$20 billion,” says Rahimullah Yusufzai, a reporter for “TheNews” and BBC correspondent. He considered a leadingregional expert and was the last man to interview OsamaBin Laden before the September 11 attacks.

I meet Yusufzai meeting in his Peshawar a few weeksbefore November 26, which has become known as 26/11.That day two attacks, one by American bombers and an-other from helicopters belonging to Afghanistan ISAF

troops, killed 24 Pakistani soldiers and destroyed twobases in Mohman Agency, located in Pakistani territory.Islamabad immediately closed supply lines through Pak-istan to American troops in Afghanistan. Prime MinisterYusuf Raza Gilani then ordered the evacuation of theShamsi and Balochistan airbases, previously used by the

they hid out in mountains not knowing what to do next.“We slept on the ground in caves and makeshift shelters,without blankets or food,” says Bahadur. “Eventually I gotto Peshawar, where I make do with whatever work I canget hoping to some day be able to return home.”

Those who have been forced to relocate to Peshawarhave learned not to pay much attention to political

pledges, let alone proclamations by the army and the mil-itants. Stability, for them, is measured in terms of thenumber of attacks, or revenue curves at the Saddar Bazaarmerchants. More purchased mean the attacks have di-minished. “In recent years the attacks have generated ahuge amount of fear among the people. Many are afraidto even come to the bazaar, which means that business isbad,” says Munawar Khan, 60, while sitting in his smallfabric and clothes shop. “Since September 11, the num-ber of clients has increasingly dropped. Before then I wasearning about 30,000 rupees a day. Now, I’m lucky to hit10,000, or 15,000 at most.” His views about the origin ofthe problem are clear-headed. “The terrorists got angrywith Pakistan because the government sided with theAmericans. If we continue to help them [the Americans],the situation will only get worse.”

Munawar’s sentiments are widespread across Pakistan,regardless of age and social standing. Whether you speakto people in Karachi, Lahore, Islamabad or the Kalash

111number 40 . february 2012

while others by the Taliban. Once I was sitting at home,and a car full of Taliban fighters drove by. The drone over-head moved in and opened fire with two missiles, killingall eight people in the car. Civilians are often killed justhours after such an attack, even when they’re just out re-moving bodies and clearing vehicles from a road, or justremoving rubble from house. The drone will suddenlyreappear and fire again.”

Manan Gul was once a merchant who made a modestliving in his village. He now lives with his wife and fivechildren in a mud hut in the woods behind a warehouse.The timber workers earn of 1,200 rupees (about €9) amonth plus commissions on any sales. “We’re not hap-py, but we have no choice,” he says.

Further on, I meet Bahadur Khan, a bright 53-year-oldman with a lustrous red beard. He’s also from SouthWaziristan. “I fled suddenly, two years ago, with my fam-ily and two other families,” he recalls. “For four days therehad been heavy fighting between the army and militia.Then the situation deteriorated, and the military took overthe village, so we fled, leaving our houses as they stood.”His odyssey, and that of his family, lasted for four days, as

about 400 of them, attacked us. We lost three men, but wemanaged to turn them back. Had they overrun us wewould have certainly been slaughtered.” Nigra points totaciturn boy seated nearby. He can’t be 18 years old. TheTaliban killed his brother and father during a long moun-tain battle, says Nigara. “He put everything aside to jointhe khassander and avenge the death of his family.”

Along the Durand Line, the threat of the Taliban is sup-plemented by the risks of friendly fire. “A few months a-go my nephew was wounded by a Pakistani army artilleryshell that hit our house,” says Yar Afzal, a 32-year-oldwho arrived the day from Bara and is lined up to register.“He was seriously injured, but the army only let us takehim to the hospital in Hayatabad 11 hours later.” AkhtarGul, 65, of the Miah Noor Khel tribe, says they conflicthas claimed two grandsons, one 11 and the other seven,both killed by a missile from a U.S. drone directed againstmilitant targets.

Then there’s Manan Gul, a 52-year-old from Razmak, a“tehsil,” or administrative division, in South Waziristan.He fled the fighting between the army and militants threeyears ago. I meet him at a timber market in Peshawar, a-long the way to Khyber Pass and Afghanistan, known asthe Grand Trunk Road, a 2,500 kilometer-long artery thatconnects Chittagong in Bangladesh to Kabul. “I’ve seendrones high in the sky on a number of occasions,” he says.“Some inhabitants of my village were killed by them,

110 east . europe and asia strategies

LEFT Almas Khan, third from left, with members of his clan in the camp.

CENTER The broken roads of south Pakistan between Swat and Dir.

RIGHT A wooden bridge over the Chitral River

in the district of the same name north of Peshawar.

ers. Islamabad rejected that claim and spoke instead of“deliberate aggression.” Pakistani analysts generally be-lieve the attacks were in fact premeditated and intendedto serve as punishment for new talks between Pakistaniintelligence officials and the both TTP and Haqqani net-works.

On June 18, 2004, Americans forces used drones to goafter Nek Mohammad, commander of the Taliban in theSouth Waziristan city of Wana. The attack came shortlyafter he’d signed ceasefire deal with the Pakistanis. His-tory appeared to repeat itself, since just days before theattack, on November 21, news leaked of a previous cease-fire deal between the TTP and unspecified representativesof Pakistani intelligence, which was to last until the be-ginning of November. “We are not attacking the Pakistaniarmy because of the peace process,” wrote the Britishnewspaper “The Telegraph,” attributing the statement toTTP figure close to Hakimullah Meshud, leader of the or-ganization.

The 26/11 may well have represented a punitive actionintended to object to, and disrupt, renewed dialogue be-tween Islamabad and the Taliban. The aversion of the U-nited States to such dialogue may well turn out to be acrucial strategic mistake, particularly since the attackshattered months of relative calm. “The Taliban would n-

ever accept to deal with Hamid Karzai, who is seen as apuppet of the Americans,” says journalists and writerYusufzai. “I think they’d be open to dialogue with the U-nited States, since the U.S. has a handle on power. But theAmericans insist on three conditions the Taliban find u-nacceptable, namely respect for the Afghan Constitution,total dissociation from Al Qaeda, and disarmament.”

The fact that Pakistan has other priorities, particularlyafter the cooperation deal between India and Afghanistansigned in New Delhi on October 4, makes the possibilityof U.S. to the Taliban a remote prospect at best. India’sgrowing influence in Afghanistan is smoke being blowninto Islamabad’s eyes, and a as such a gesture that couldlead Pakistan back toward the Taliban, with which it hasmaintained relations over the years, if for no other reasonthan to vex India. “The agreement between [Indian PrimeMinister Manmohan] Singh and Karzai has changed therules of the game,” says Yusufzai. “Pakistan feels exclud-ed and it’s now almost unimaginable that they’ll really goafter the Taliban and the Haqqani network. Islamabad hasgood relations with the Karzai government, so it is logi-cal to think that it will attempt to gain strength inAfghanistan by supporting the Taliban.” That makessense, since in this part of the world, one year of war canoften be followed by a decade of feuds and vendettas. .

U.S. forces as base for launching drones. As the final U.S.

troops left Shamsi, convoy of 20 tanker and trucks loadedwith supplies destined for NATO bases in Afghanistanwas destroyed in an attack near Quetta for which nogroup claimed responsibility. The Pakistani army alsostrengthened its air defenses along the border. The news-paper “Down” printed a report in which an anonymousPakistani official said, “We now have a fully equipped airdefense system that can intercept any aircraft or helicop-ter and shoot it down.” As a result of 26/11, the Pakistanigovernment also decided to boycott the Dec. 5 Bonn Con-ference, scheduled to help determine the time limits forAfghanistan peacekeeping efforts after the departure ofAmerican troops, scheduled for 2014. The meeting wasa fiasco, marked by the absence of two key players in thehypothetical peace process: namely, Pakistan and the Tal-iban. The November attacks opened what seems to be anirreparably rift relations between Washington Islamabad,in particular in terms of the army establishment, whichholds sway in Pakistan. The army is more hostile to theUnited States than ever before.

But just what happened on 26/11 remains unclear. TopU.S. military officials insisted the attacks were retali-

ation for similar assaults on U.S. troops and peacekeep-

112 east . europe and asia strategies 113number 40 . february 2012

LEFT Toward Kalash Valley in Chitral.

CENTER A young Kalash student in the town of Balanguru.

In the background, the mountains of Nuristan Province.

RIGHT A young Pashtun in Jalouzai.

Munawar Khan among his wares in the Saddar Bazar of Peshawar.