As his 7-year-old son helpfully packages shotgun shells into cardboard boxes, Palawan says his sales of AK-47 assault rifles have mushroomed 75 percent in just a few days. “God willing, our business is getting better and better.”
These are boom times for the 90,000 residents of this hardscrabble frontier town that has been churning out rifles, explosives and ammunition for more than a century. The arms trade here in Dara got its start in 1897 when British colonial rulers decided that allowing local Pashtun tribesmen to make their own substandard weapons was preferable to having them steal top-quality British ones. In return, the tribesmen agreed not to shoot at Britons traveling along main thoroughfares.
Today there are some 2,600 arms-dealers’ storefronts on the dusty main road alone, mostly displaying homemade copies of Kalashnikov assault rifles and shotguns in neat rows along the walls. They’re cheaper than the originals–Kalashnikov knockoffs go for between $33 and $150, compared to $333 for a genuine Chinese-made product–and, with the new war in neighboring Afghanistan, they’re selling faster than the grimy forge-and-tongs workshops in side alleys can churn them out.
Who’s buying? Palawan says he doesn’t ask. But another Dara insider provides an answer that underscores the difficulties facing both the U.S. and Pakistani governments in their fight against terror mastermind Osama bin Laden. “We would never sell to the [anti-Taliban] Northern Alliance,” he confides. “Everyone supports the Taliban here.”
Such views are hardly confined to this Northwest Frontier area. Anti-American sentiment–and opposition to Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf’s decision to cooperate with the United States–are running high throughout the country. On Friday, tensions came to a head when at least four people were killed, dozens injured and many shops and public transport shut down during a national strike called by militant Islamic groups and other opponents of Musharraf’s anti-Taliban policy.
But it may be here in this lawless tribal area–a land of frontier justice and where weapons are easily smuggled across porous borders–that such sympathies could pose a special threat. Dara residents are so solidly behind bin Laden they have donated $10,000 in cash, about 100 ounces of gold and dozens of firearms for the struggle against the United States. Perhaps more importantly, hundreds of Dara warriors and 500 “technicians”–mainly weapons repairmen–have also headed into Afghanistan to fight the Americans. About 250 have returned because the Taliban had insufficient lodgings for the recent influx of thousands of Pakistani volunteers–and because those under 15 were deemed too inexperienced for combat, but others are likely to go in their place.
Not surprisingly, Washington is alarmed by the leaky frontier. Village elders make the rules here in the Khyber Agency, allowing residents of the seven tribal agencies–the federally-administered tribal areas located within the Northwest Frontier province–to turn it into a sort of Taliban logistics and intelligence base. “Even Osama bin Laden can hide in the Pakistani village of Chamkania, just three kilometers [less than two miles] from Peshawar,” claims former mujahedin commander Tuuruuli Hemat, who fought alongside bin Laden against the Soviets. “He still has many friends there.”
The Bush administration is now scrambling to help the Musharraf government control its unruly borders and the Taliban sympathizers inside Pakistan. This month, Washington pressured Islamabad to muzzle Taliban diplomats based in the capital and said it had allocated $73 million in emergency supplemental aid to help Pakistani law-enforcement agencies shore up border security.
The U.S. hopes much of the $73 million–to be administered by the State Department’s Bureau for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement (INL) division–will be spent building bunkers and checkpoints for security personnel along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. Helicopters, vehicles, communications gear, night-vision goggles and training are also part of the American package. The Pakistan government also wants the United States to bankroll a feasibility study for fencing the border. Recently the U.S. ambassador to Pakistan, Wendy Chamberlin, said she had “no doubt” that Musharraf had ended Pakistan’s official military and intelligence support to the Taliban. As for the flow of Pakistan pro-Taliban volunteers over the border, she said Musharraf “has been working hard to stop those [Pakistani] fighters … but it’s a huge border–1,500 miles, very porous, very rugged. Getting control of the border is not easy.” Nor will it be easy persuading Pakistani tribesmen to bend to Islamabad’s wishes. Even Pakistan’s own laws are a bit fuzzy on how intensely to police the autonomous tribal areas, which have made their own laws since the days of the British Raj.
The main reason for the unflinching Taliban support in the region is tribal. Like the Taliban, the tribes people on both sides of the border here are Pashtun. The opposition Northern Alliance, by contrast, comprise non-Pashtun Afghan tribes such as Tajiks, Uzbeks and Hazaras. Musharraf may be accurate when he insists, as he did this week, that Pakistan’s “silent majority” supports his pro-U.S. policies. But pro-Taliban Pashtuns in the Northwest are a very loud minority–and one with many activists armed to the teeth and willing to defy Musharraf’s ban on fighting for Kabul. Worse, some analysts speculate that if Islamabad had to call out the army to put down tribal tumult, rank-and-file soldiers might not all comply. (For the moment, the government has relied on frontier police and the paramilitary frontier constabulary to keep order in border areas.)
Nor do the would-be fighters come only from Dara. As of yesterday, thousands of pro-Taliban Pakistani volunteers had crossed over the border into Afghanistan from Pakistan’s tribal Bajaur Agency in seven groups numbering between 1,000 and 1,500 each. At the Pass Ghakhi border crossing, convoys of dozens of battered vehicles heading westward mingled with long lines of warriors walking on foot, carrying backpacks full of clothing and plastic bags of food or medicine. These pro-Taliban tribesmen–armed with everything from scimitars to grenade-launchers–had flocked to the border from all seven tribal agencies as well as the Northwest Frontier districts of Chitral, Swat, Malakand and Mansehra. Before they left Pakistan, some made poignant farewell phone calls to relatives. “I borrowed 500 rupees from my friend,” said one young recruit to a family member over the telephone. “If I die please pay the loan back to him.”
One 65-year-old from Dir bowed down in the dust of Afghanistan as soon as he crossed over the border in a gesture of supplication. Another equally fervent Pakistani volunteer was so young he hadn’t yet grown a beard, the requisite symbol of Pashtun manhood. “My parents didn’t want me to join the jihad,” said Ghulam Khwaja, also from Dir. “But I’m going anyway because some clerics told me I don’t need my parents’ permission.” Khwaja claimed to know how to shoot a Kalashnikov–even though he’s only 16. Another baby-faced, beardless youth, who looked about 12, was trudging to the front line straight from school, clutching a bag of cucumbers and with a rifle slung over one shoulder.
Authorities in Afghanistan’s Kunar province welcomed the eager Pakistani volunteers. Taliban officials asked the Pakistanis to sign forms guaranteeing they would bear their own personal expenses, then herded them onto vehicles headed for the provincial capital of Assadabad. “We had time and again advised the Pakistani volunteers not to come. But still they come–and we cannot prevent them because it is their religious wish to come,” said Taliban official Qari Ziaur Reham, who helps oversee a section of the Afghan border.
Back in Dara–where enthusiastic arms buyers routinely test their potential purchases for shoddy workmanship by firing them in the town’s main street–not all the dealers claimed to be reaping a windfall from the war next door. A gunmaker called Toorgul insisted that his business remained slow. But that was largely because the weapons he makes by hand, in a dingy workshop with primitive vises and files, are counterfeits of a very specialized sort of weapon: Beretta’s 12-gauge pump-action shotgun, complete with fake serial numbers and the embossed inscription BERETTA–MADE IN ITALY. Such rifles are good for use by security guards but, admits Toorgul, “they aren’t so good for the jihad.” Still, he hastened to add that he was ready to donate any of his weapons to the Taliban. “And I have a Kalashnikov at home–I’m ready to fetch it and fight the Americans,” the Pakistani armsmaker claimed. “If American ground troops come to Afghanistan, the whole town will go fight them.”
