PESHAWAR, Aug 21: Some 4,000 tribal elders in northwestern Pakistan have joined a chorus of protest at US assertions the region has become a safe haven for members of Al Qaeda network, a spokesman told AFP.
A weekend jirga in the remote Barrar Khyber district that represented roughly 700,000 members of the Afridis tribe angrily denied providing protection to Al Qaeda fugitives fleeing Afghanistan, Afridis spokesman Maulana Abdul Hadi told AFP late on Monday.
“We fought and killed the Arab supporters of the Taliban at Teelerin in Khyber district in 1994,” he added.
The US general leading the campaign against Al Qaeda in Afghanistan suggested at the weekend there may now be more of Osama bin Laden’s militants in Pakistan than in the original theatre of war.
Lt Gen Dan McNeill told AFP that while President Pervez Musharraf’s government had been one of the staunchest supporters of the US-led war against terrorism, sympathy for Al Qaeda remained strong in tribal areas of Pakistan.
“I think in Afghanistan they probably still exist, they could number in the hundreds. I think just outside Afghanistan’s borders... their numbers could be in the hundreds, maybe even a thousand,” said McNeill.
Adding that he had no “substantive information” to back up his figures for Pakistan, McNeill said efforts to wipe out Al Qaeda were now more complicated as coalition forces in Afghanistan did not have the right to conduct combat missions in Pakistan.
Hadi said the weekend traditional assembly, held 25km west of Peshawar, had agreed to reward informers whose information led to the apprehension of Al Qaeda members, and would “confiscate” the property of collaborators.
“We by ourselves will punish Al Qaeda if we find them, we do not need America in our territory,” Hadi said of US assistance to Pakistani forces sweeping Pakistan’s northwest for hardcore militants
Pakistan’s military spokesman Maj Gen Rashid Qureshi said the perception that tribal groups in the northwest were sympathetic to the group blamed for last September’s terror attacks in the United States was a simplification of a complex issue.
He said: “There are people, Afghans who live slightly on the Afghan side of the border, who have relatives on this side of the border also.
“So now when such people come across, yes, there is automatic sympathy.
“But when people say (the tribal people) have sympathy for Al Qaeda, it’s not 100 per cent true,” he said. “Frankly we have not been able to determine whether they are Taliban or members of Al Qaeda.”
Qureshi said the arrival of foreigners in local areas was usually reported to local authorities.