Want cheap Kalashnikovs? A shop in Pakistan sells just that, and everything a diehard guerrilla might need: ammunition, sleeping bags and even water bottles. It is located in Pakistan's Mohmand tribal agency, which is officially under the control of Pakistan but tribes there have been semi-autonomous since the days of the British Raj.
Shopkeeper Haji Ahmed Khan stocks everything a Taliban or Al-Qaeda fighter might want. A Kalashnikov assault rifle is available for #150. His shop is one of the many that have sold arms and ammunition to even Sri Lankan Tamil Tiger guerrillas and Jammu and Kashmiri separatists.
The Telegraph reported Wednesday that fighters, arms, money and logistical support from Pakistan's border areas of the North West Frontier Province (NWFP) and Balochistan were fuelling Taliban's renewed offensive in Afghanistan. Pathan tribesmen in the agency are overwhelmingly opposed to the presence of American forces in Pakistan and Afghanistan and deeply sympathetic to theTaliban, who are fellow Pathans.
"That sense of Pathan brotherhood is even stronger in the seven federally administered tribal agencies which run north to south in a 750-mile-long wedge between Afghanistan and the settled areas of NWFP" the report said. It quoted Shakir-ullah, another shop owner, as saying: "The Taliban are clean,honest, believe in Islam and will rout the Americans. Anyone fighting the Americans is our friend."
The area is isolated from mainstream Pakistan and the media, and misinformation is rampant. After the defeat of the Taliban in Afghanistan, the Pakistani Army entered the tribal agencies one by one at the request of American forces patrolling on the Afghan side of the border looking for Al- Qaeda units.
In August, at the behest of the Americans, thousands of Pakistani troops occupied the Mohmand agency for the first time. "Pakistani troops are all along the border now and we are co-operating with the US coalition forces in Afghanistan," Lt. Gen. Mohammed Ali Jan Orakzai, the corps commander on the Northwest Frontier, told the paper. The army has not stopped the flow of guns and fighters to the Taliban.
For 10 days, up to 1,000 Taliban
have been fighting a similar number of American and Afghan government troops
in southern Afghanistan. A group of US Special Forces is believed to be
operating in the Mohmand agency, but it is holed up in safe houses provided
by Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence and rarely venture out.