KOHAT, Dec 11: The political authorities in the tribal belt along the western borders of the country have given farmers 10 days to destroy the poppy crop or troops will destroy not only their fields but their houses, officials said on Wednesday.

The government officials say that the cultivation of the opium had resumed in the North and South Waziristan agencies bordering Afghanistan almost two years after the United Nations declared Pakistan poppy free.

A senior official of the political administration, Syed Anwar Ali Shah, said that the tribesmen had started growing poppies again as a mark of defiance against the pursuit of Taliban and Al Qaeda fugitives in the region by the federal government and the United States.

He said that the farmers had to until December 20 destroy hundreds of acres of poppy fields otherwise paramilitary troops would move in to bulldoze the crops and their houses.

“The tribesmen have taken a very hard line this time,” he said. “They have done so to put pressure on the United States and the government to stop chasing Al Qaeda remnants,” he said.

The remote, semi-autonomous region bordering Afghanistan is governed by tough special laws dating back to British colonial rule, known as the Frontier Crimes Regulation (FCR), under which authorities have powers to destroy and burn houses of those engaged in criminal or anti-state activities. The law also debars a person being arrested by the political authorities from the right to appeal in a court of law.

Last month, at least 33 tribal elders were arrested for violating the poppy ban, which the government receives financial support from the United States to implement.

The ethnic Pashtun tribes are sympathetic to the Taliban and their Al Qaeda allies and many went to Afghanistan to fight in their support after the United States attacked the country last year.

In September, paramilitary troops used rocket-propelled grenades to blow up several homes in a nearby tribal area of people accused of harbouring Al Qaeda suspects.—Reuters