SHABQADAR, Jan 29: Near Pakistan’s border with Afghanistan, pride mixes with grief and anger over dozens of young men lost to a recruiting drive for the Taliban. Like the anti-Soviet rebels of the 1980s and the pre-Sept 11 Taliban, the recruiters of today have turned to this cluster of about 25 ethnic Pakthun villages in search of volunteers.

The father of one dead enlistee says he feels honoured, but with many of Shabqadar’s young men dead or feared missing on the battlefield, mujahiddin recruiters are no longer welcome here.

A shopkeeper says 100 or more young men have gone missing, including his cousin, a high school student, who mysteriously left home during the summer vacation and is believed to have gone to fight.

People here are religious, and recruiters play on that sentiment, “recruiting the youth with raw minds,” he said.

The shopkeeper, like many others interviewed, requested anonymity for his own safety.

Pressure from residents and the shooting and wounding of a local newspaperman who reported about the “martyrs” of Shabqadar compelled authorities in November to shut a local office of Harkatul Mujahideen, an outlawed militant group.

Following the closure, recruiting has dried up, according to one former recruiter.

But Samina Ahmad, an expert with the International Crisis Group think-tank, warns that the upsurge in Taliban attacks on Nato forces is boosting the morale of sympathisers in Pakistani border areas and attracting recruits who are susceptible to militant propaganda and believe the Taliban can regain power.

—AP