In the days since the United States launched its air strikes, local Islamic groups and Taliban representatives have been touring rural villages and towns in the Peshawar region organizing a recruitment drive through local mosques. Thousands have signed up to fight, according to religious leaders and residents, and some already have left for Afghanistan, slipping across the border using hidden paths through the mountains favored by smugglers and anyone else who wants to avoid the scrutiny of formal border controls.
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Awaiting U.S. ground attack
Among them was Mohammed Sad, 30, an Afghan refugee living in Ambela, who had headed for Afghanistan as soon as he heard the bombardments had started, along with scores of others from the area. He spent three days in Jalalabad and then returned to Pakistan over the weekend after the Taliban told volunteers to wait for the United States to launch its ground offensive before returning to fight.
“The Taliban are waiting for Americans to enter on the ground and then they will begin their offensive,” said Sad. “Wherever they will enter, the people here are anxiously waiting for them to come, and then we can go fight them.”
Pakistan’s border with Afghanistan is officially closed. But those familiar with the mountain routes can easily travel 100 miles in a day, and many Afghans regularly commute between the camps where their families are living and their homes in Afghanistan, said Abdel Ghafoor, 33, an Afghan living in Ambela who says he fought the Soviets and now hopes to fight the Americans.
“There is a Taliban representative in our camp, and you can go there and enter your name,” he said. “I plan to go next week, but only when the ground attacks start.”
Half of the 2 million Afghan refugees in Pakistan live in the Peshawar region, and a majority of those volunteering for duty are Afghans, said Mohammed Amin, a local imam, or religious leader, who is rallying recruits from his mosque in Ambela, a dustbowl of shops parked on a remote stretch of mountain road about 70 miles north of Peshawar. But Pakistanis are volunteering too, he said.
“Every day there are groups of people coming to me and saying, `Please, when can we go?’ ” he said. The Taliban has told him to wait for a call from Mullah Mohammed Omar, the Taliban leader, before sending the volunteers across the border, he said. “Many, many thousands will go,” he predicted.
It seems improbable that these untrained recruits would make much difference to the Taliban’s ability to resist U.S. forces, even if they did turn up in huge numbers. But the ease with which they can slip back and forth across the border underscores the difficulty of isolating the Taliban from the outside world. These routes have been used in the past to smuggle weapons, drugs and other contraband across Afghanistan’s borders.
Widespread rumors
They also can be used to smuggle people out of Afghanistan, and there are widespread rumors, unconfirmed, that Osama bin Laden already has escaped across the border and is hiding in the far north of the province, a notoriously untamed region over which Pakistan has little control.
The prevailing mood in the countryside also highlights the risk in Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf’s support for the U.S.-led coalition against Afghanistan. The mountains of the Northwest Frontier Province have long been regarded as a hotbed of Islamic fundamentalism. These days they are simmering with unrest, fueled by anger at America’s onslaught in Afghanistan, and also at the government of Pakistan.
While most attention has focused on highly visible anti-American demonstrations staged by small but fanatical groups of Islamic demonstrators in Pakistan’s major cities, out of sight of the television cameras these rural areas are in a state of virtual rebellion.
Anti-government demonstrations are being staged on a daily basis in the towns and villages stretching north through the mountains from Peshawar. At one recent rally attended by thousands of people, local businessmen stood up and promised to sponsor mujahedeen, or holy warriors, to fight America.
It is among the rural poor that fundamentalist groups command their strongest support, and that is especially true in this area, where the local Pakistanis belong to the same Pashtun tribe as the Afghans across the border. Most members of the Taliban are drawn from the Pashtun tribe.
Many Pashtun Pakistanis regard the frontier, drawn by the British a century ago, as a colonial mistake and identify more closely with their Pashtun cousins in Afghanistan than with the Pakistani state.
Musharraf’s government has begun clamping down on the extremists’ activities. One of the groups spearheading the recruitment drive is Pakistan’s Jamiaat Ulema-I-Islam, whose leader, Maulana Fazal ur-Rehman, under house arrest since early October, was charged with sedition Tuesday.
The Jamiaat Ulema-I-Islam has been recruiting in Peshawar, where volunteers can sign up and donate money at tables established outside mosques. In the volatile tribal regions, or agencies there have been reports of huge rallies attended by heavily armed men vowing they will go and fight America.
Not all residents seemed enthusiastic about the prospect of fighting the U.S. Gas station attendant Naseer Ali, 24 said he had seen several groups of fighters heading for Afghanistan, in trucks and mini-buses. “I may go later,” he said, sounding doubtful. “But right now, I have many other commitments.”