Pakistani tribesmen fear losing their guns

By Tim Craig

Seven months after Pakistan’s army launched a massive operation to oust militants from the country’s loosely regulated tribal areas, it is preparing to allow more than 1 million displaced residents to return home.

But it is telling them there may be one condition: Giving up some of their weapons.

For generations, the Pashtun tribesmen who populate the area say they have considered carrying a weapon outside as important as wearing sandals — and Pakistan’s government has made little effort to stop them. Unlike in most of Pakistan, where there are gun licensing requirements, the tribal belt is semiautonomous, and residents say that has given them a right to keep an array of weapons.

Now, though, the army vows it will keep the area clear of militants and bring more order to the famously unruly region.

Whether Pakistani security forces succeed will be a key test of the government’s long-term strategy for curbing terrorist attacks. Many analysts are skeptical that anything close to true order can ever be established in North Waziristan and Khyber Agency, and the tribesmen say that is why they are not likely to disarm.

“We have been keeping arms to protect our tribes, protect our people,” said Shah Jahan, a 50-year-old tribal elder from Khyber Agency. “But the government is asking us to go back without arms. How could we protect our honor and our dignity?”

Here in northwestern Pakistan, the culture of gun ownership can be traced to what the mostly Pashtun tribesmen call their “warrior instinct” combined with fact they rarely had to look far to find a weapon. Over the decades, both Pakistan and foreign governments, including the United States, have dumped arms into the area to try to influence the near continual war in neighboring Afghanistan.

As a result, it is common for men in the region common to own not only assault rifles but also rocket launchers and grenades. Some tribesmen even claim to possess antiaircraft weapons.

Those men say going home without a gun would be like going home without their wives. Many doubt Pakistan’s army can provide protection against Islamist militants, drug-runners and other criminals.

“Without weapons, we have no protection,” said Babu Khan, a 42-year trader from Khyber Agency who is now living in a refugee camp on the outskirts of Peshawar. “How would I defend myself and defend my family?”

The army declined to comment on the conditions they plan to set before the refugees can return home. But army chief Gen. Raheel Sharif has given assurances to U.S. officials that the military will maintain a long-term presence in the region. This week, Secretary of State John F. Kerry announced $250 million in U.S. aid to help rebuild and modernize North Waziristan.

“We understand that the weapon is part and parcel of the culture, so it may be a difficult thing, but we do need to regulate things,” said Nasir Khan Durrani, head of the police department in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province, which borders the tribal areas.

Residents of both Khyber Agency and North Waziristan argue that the 1948 agreement that made those areas part of Pakistan left it up to individual tribes and councils to regulate weapons ownership. They say they were expected to stockpile weapons to settle land disputes, battle rival tribes and to serve as a front-line militia to help Pakistan protect its western border.

Now, they say they fear weapons they left behind won’t be there when they return. Pakistan’s military often displays caches of seized guns and ammunition to showcase the apparent success of their operation. The tribesmen suspect many of those weapons came from their properties, not from terrorists.

Before he fled, 66-year-old Gula Khan said soldiers showed up and ransacked his home.

“Three hundred rounds and 12 hand grenades were taken from my home,” Khan said. “And now they are saying: We will protect you and the country when you go back, and you don’t need weapons.”

A military official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media, acknowledged that the army seized some weapons from tribesmen. But, the official added, “the weapons collected from displaced tribesmen are no match to the huge cache of arms and ammunition recovered from militants’ hideouts.”

Whatever the case, Pakistan’s military is battling history as it seeks to clean up the area.

Northwestern Pakistan is dominated by Pashtuns, who for centuries have been resisting foreign invaders along a major trading route linking Asia and Europe. Even as British forces colonized the rest of modern-day Pakistan and neighboring India in the late 1880s, they were never able to fully conquer Pakistan’s tribal areas.

And it was during that era that large quantities of weapons from foreign sources began flowing into northwestern Pakistan, said Nizam Khan Dawar, chairman of the Tribal Development Network.

In the 1930s, local tribal leader Mirza Ali Khan, also known as the Faqir of Ipi, led a rebellion against the British from North Waziristan. Khan received weapons and support from Germany, at the time ruled by Adolf Hitler. To this day, German-made weapons from that era are on display in a local museum, Dawar said.

Following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in1979, the United States also worked with Pakistan to arm and train the Afghan rebels. After the Soviet Army withdrew in 1989, Afghanistan slipped into two successive civil wars. In the 1990s, Pakistan shipped weapons and explosives through tribal areas to help the Taliban seize control of the Afghan government.

More recently, weapons stolen from NATO forces in Afghanistan often ended up on the black marketin northwestern Pakistan. The area is also home to a lucrative bootleg weapons manufacturing industry.

Even the Taliban, which gained effective control over North Waziristan in the mid 2000s, didn’t mess with residents’ guns, the tribesmen said.

“There was no music. No dancing. We weren’t allowed celebrations, or sports or festivals, but we were allowed to carry our guns,” said Sayed Hamid Shah.

Men from both North Waziristan and Khyber Agency admit that, at times, they did turn over some of their guns to militants. Said Nabi, 35, said when the Taliban controlled his village in Khyber Agency he and other shopkeepers were forced to pay them a monthly bounty of either cash or one weapon.

But Nabi said he and other displaced residents are eager to return home to protect the Pakistan army’s gains. Nabi said that won’t be possible if he’s disarmed.

“The government is asking us that, you should not allow any foreigners, like Uzbeks, Tajiks, Chechens and other foreign militants in your areas, but we have already lost many of our tribal elders in opposing them,” Shah said.

Saifullah Mehsud, executive director of the Islamabad-based FATA Research Center, which studies the tribal areas, said it’s unrealistic for Pakistani authorities to expect local residents to disarm.

“If you go out in Waziristan, your mother will ask you, ‘Why are you going out without your weapon on you?’ ” Mehsud said. “The army really needs the tribesmen on their side, and the tribesmen without weapons won’t be much help.”

He noted past efforts by the Pakistani authorities to get a handle on the quantity and types of weapons stockpiled in the tribal areas have largely failed.

In 2005, political officials in the tribal areas banned the possession of “artillery, mortars, machines, and submachine guns, anti-tank rifles and recoil-less guns or rifles and bazookas, nuclear weapons” and grenades and flame throwers, Pakistan’s Dawn newspaper reported at the time.

Officials also launched a weapons buyback program that year, but it was quickly halted due to a lack of interest among residents.