KOHAT: Elders of the Ustarzai and Marai tribes voluntarily surrendered a second huge cache of heavy weapons to police on Thursday.

The submission was part of the de-weaponisation campaign launched by the administration in the area. The two tribes live along Hangu Road and also in Orakzai Agency.

SP operations Tariq Mehmood told a press conference that police and army had earlier given the April 15 deadline to all tribes to surrender arms. Later, the deadline was extended at the request of the tribes because they were not ready to give away their arms unless their reservations were addressed.

Fears expressed

The two tribes had demanded that the Mishti and Bezote tribes should also be forced to surrender arms. They had expressed the fear that in case of unilateral surrender of arms by them, they might be attacked by the rival tribes when they would be unable to respond.

The campaign came to a halt after the first surrender of arms made before the expiry of the deadline.

DPO Javed Iqbal and army officials assured the Ustarzai and Marai tribesmen that their rivals would not be allowed to take up arms against them.

Mr Iqbal told Dawn that he had discussed the matter with the army, which promised to set up check-posts in the areas adjacent to Orakzai Agency.

The arms surrendered by the two tribes included four anti-aircraft guns, two mortar guns, one heavy machine gun, one light machine gun, one 8mm machine gun, two rockets, one RR 75 machine gun, 143 mortar shells, and thousands of 12.7 cartridges.

Sources said that the tribes still possessed a large quantity of heavy weapons bought from Afghanistan from time to time for use in case of sectarian strife. Unless a peace agreement was inked between the rival tribes, complete de-weaponisation was not possible, they said.

The tribal elders, requesting not to be named, said that they did not trust the administration to protect them in case of a fight with rival tribes keeping in view their past experiences.

They said that Taliban were still present in the tribal areas whereas the militant Islamic State group, which was their blood- thirsty enemy, had presence in Afghan areas located across the border.

Published in Dawn, May 5th, 2017