SAN FRANCISCO, May 12: Smuggling of Al Qaeda men to Pakistan is a booming business for smugglers who make a living by transporting refugees, drugs and electronic goods, Christian Science Monitor reported on Saturday from South Waziristan.

Young smugglers were quoted as saying that their best customers of late are the armed militants whom they can charge 10 times more than refugees or drug runners.

“We can charge 500 rupees per person if they have guns, but if they don’t have guns, we get 50 rupees a head.

The best money is from the Al Qaeda and Taliban guys, because they pay whatever we say to pay,” one of the smugglers said.

The paper said since the start of Operation Anaconda in March (when the US and its allies battled Al Qaeda forces in the Shah-i-Kot valley) many of the Al Qaeda fighters have shifted quietly into Pakistan’s Pakhtoon tribal areas “where the government of Gen Pervez Musharraf does not exercise full control.”

The war that began with macro-strikes on the Taliban regime last October is now becoming micro-strikes on cells of Al Qaeda and Taliban fighters who have found refuge in Pakistan’s semi-autonomous tribal areas.

Instead of air raids, this is evolving into a war of house-raids and covert, ground operations “the kind of close-up, hands-on offensive that some US and Afghan critics say was lacking last December in Tora Bora, possibly paving the way for Osama bin Laden and his closest comrades to escape.”

The paper said the Pakistani authorities are allowing Pakhtoons to return to Afghanistan, but not Tajiks and other Dari-speakers.

The fugitive Al Qaeda members blended into local community, call themselves “independent Al Qaeda,” because, they say, they are not working in coordination with the Osama bin Laden’s Al Qaeda, the paper further said.