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A COUNTRY IN DENIAL

Western leaders claim there's a connection between the bloody war in Afghanistan and "extremist safe havens" in Pakistan. The Economist's central Asia correspondent heads to the borderlands ...

From THE ECONOMIST online

As I walk through the bazaars of Peshawar, the capital of Pakistan’s North-West Frontier Province, it is easy to think there is nothing wrong. I struggle through the crowds and pass mounds of spices in great brown sacks, birds trilling in pink cages and tiny old men struggling to restrain honking donkeys and whooping boys. Trade is brisk, and many of the shopkeepers, spotting a foreigner, grin and call out “How are you, Mister?”

But round the next corner is a different scene: a large building has had its front blown out, littering the street with bricks and slabs of concrete. “Suicide bomb yesterday,” explains Kausar, a local. “Many died. The people are scared—every week there is a new attack. They slaughter us even in the bazaars now.” Their attacks have been unrelenting: on March 5th, in the Hangu district of the North-West Frontier Province, a convoy of Shiite pilgrims and paramilitary soldiers was attacked by a suicide bomber. Twelve people were killed and more than 300 injured.

Theories abound as to who Mr Kausar’s “they” are. “They are Blackwater operatives,” says Dr Naveed Irfan, a prominent psychiatrist whose house was damaged by one recent explosion. “That is why they never recover the body.” He is equally confident about Osama bin Laden. “I met him once. Al-Qaeda is not a terrorist network. It is a conspiracy by the Americans to destabilise our country.” Similar theories are aired regularly by Pakistan’s newspapers and TV channels. This is a country in denial.

In recent months, international attention has been concentrated on the open warfare waged in southern Afghanistan’s Helmand province. But far from the borderlands around Kandahar, the battle for “hearts and minds” rages on in the other major Pushtun-majority region, the vast area between Peshawar in Pakistan and Jalalabad in Afghanistan. President Barack Obama and every other Western leader involved in the war with Taliban have emphasised the importance of “recognising the fundamental connection between our war effort in Afghanistan, and the extremist safe havens in Pakistan.” I undertook this trip to learn something about that connection.

At Islamia College, a prestigious institution with buildings and grounds like an English public school’s, I meet a young man who is reading for his master’s in political science. He does not know who is behind the bombings in Peshawar, but he has convictions about the fighting over the border. “The Americans have no right to be there,” he insists. “They invaded Afghanistan and Iraq because they wanted bases next to Iran and China.” We are interrupted by a college lecturer who insists on convincing me of his love for English literature by listing his favourite books (practically the entire Western canon, it seems). He assures me that Pakistan “wants to march with the rest of the world.” The student scowls.

For lunch, I drive to the outskirts of the city to meet Sikander Afridi, a tribal chief. His compound is just beyond the Smugglers’ Bazaar, whose stalls sell everything from narcotics and fake dollars to World Food Programme biscuits (“Gift of Germany—not for individual sale”) and British and American military uniforms. Ordinary police have no authority here in the Khyber Agency, part of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA). A bodyguard ushers me into Mr Afridi’s office, decorated with Islamic calligraphy and submachine guns. The chief himself lies on a long sofa. Lunch turns out to be a Nestlé cereal bar, a change at least from curried mutton with plain naan. (As far as I can tell, “Peshwari naan” is a myth propagated by British restaurateurs.)

He invites me to sit next to him with a gesture and takes out his mobile phone. “Look,” he says, selecting a video. The camera zooms in on an elderly man who has had his head chopped off and placed between his legs, a pool of blood spreading rapidly around him. “Taliban did this, Taliban this morning.” Members of his tribe have not been targeted like this before. This afternoon he will chair a shura to decide what to do. As he speaks, he takes a packet of white powder from his pocket, pours some onto his hand and snorts it. (Is it naswar, the Pushtun version of snuff? But naswar’s not white.) “For the stomach,” his bodyguard tells me, smiling.

To meet the Taliban, I need to head deeper into the Khyber Agency. Azam Khan, a local politician, has agreed to take me to one of their madrassas. A friend of his drives us most of the way, but we have to hail a donkey taxi to take us the final mile. The walls of the madrassa are whitewashed and I feel the force of the mid-day sun as we stand in the courtyard. About 40 young Taliban, 15 to 30 years old, quickly gather around us. Azam introduces me to the centre’s imam, a cold man in his forties who, like those of his students who are old enough, sports an impressive beard. He leads us to an underground classroom where we sit cross-legged in the gloom. A tall man with a black turban joins us: he has recently returned from Kandahar, we are told.

The imam explains that his students study the Koran here for eight years: some already have the 6,666 verses completely memorised. The Taliban answer my questions—yet more conspiracy theories—and then say they have one for me. “Why are your countrymen trespassing on Muslim soil?” a young man asks. “Why do they slay our Muslim brothers?” I choose my words carefully, explaining how the Americans demanded the Taliban hand over Osama bin Laden after September 11th 2001, but were refused. “Listen,” says the young man, his fierce, proud face framed by a short black beard and a white prayer cap. “We are Pushtun people. We live by the Pushtun code. If your enemy came here”—he gestures towards the sky—“we would protect you with our lives. It is our duty. So it was when the Americans came for bin Laden.” The imam nods, smiling. “The Taliban said, ‘Give us proof, and we shall hand him over.’ But the Americans did not give the Taliban proof. So it is our duty to protect him, as it is our duty to protect you.”

(This is the first instalment of a correspondent's diary about Pakistan's border with Afghanistan, published on The Economist online.)

Picture credit: Umair Mohsin (via Flickr)