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Lakki Marwat: Peace is a rare thing in Pakistan's tribal areas, and Anwar Kamal is determined not to lose it.
To that end, the chief of Lakki Marwat district has told his tribal army to hunt down Taliban "overspill" from the neighbouring badlands of Waziristan.
Kamal has formed a lashkar, or tribal militia, that varies in strength from 2,000 to 10,000 to fight Taliban militants trespassing on to his 200 square miles of mountain-bound territory.
He and other tribal leaders have formed militias along the Pakistani-Afghan border. Their aim is to stop both the Taliban and the Western-backed military who oppose them from making incursions into their fiercely guarded areas.
Last month he met the Taliban in Waziristan, a stronghold of Taliban and Al Qaida fighters who fled the US invasion of Afghanistan in 2001.
Kamal showed The Sunday Telegraph a mobile phone displaying video footage of the bloody remains of a young militant from Waziristan, killed by his men in one of several recent clashes. They claim to have already killed one prominent foreign commander.
Throughout Waziristan, the Pakistani army has fought tough but sporadic campaigns against local tribes allied to the Taliban and Al Qaida.
At present, the military has struck peace agreements with militants much to the annoyance of America, which fears that such deals in effect create havens. Washington has launched a dozen missile strikes there this year, including one last week that killed five suspected militants.
However, in the past month the Pakistani military, which is generally overstretched and ill-equipped for counter-insurgency operations, has launched a heavy bombardment against insurgents operating in the tribal area of Bajaur and the nearby district of Swat. "It is time to give the militants a proper thrashing," said Gulam Qadir Khan, a government bureaucrat in charge of the tribal area's security.
The operation has caused heavy civilian casualties and forced 300,000 to flee their homes. But the intensity of the fighting has sent out a strong message of the military's determination, and made tribal leaders realise that even staying neutral may invite the wrath of the authorities.
Kamal said that at first he was against military operations in the tribal areas. "Previous military operations in the tribal areas were not properly conducted and haphazard," he said.
"But there is no time for double-dealing now. These people are a threat to the country. We have to finish this off."
The dangers and sensitivities of entering the tribal areas were well known to the British colonial administrators during the Raj. At the end of the British Empire, the bulk of imperial forces were stationed on the frontier and engaged in almost permanent conflict with the tribes.
Rogue agents
One administrator noted that purdah, or a veil, over the tribal areas, was the "phrase constantly used by the tribes to emphasise the value they set on the inviolability of their country, to be preserved behind a veil as jealously as the modesty of a woman'".
However, the colonial-era system of governing the tribal leaders loosely through political agents, tribal leaders and their tribal levies, known as khassadars, has broken down in recent years. Aided by drug money and clandestine help from rogue agents in Pakistan's intelligence agencies, armed Islamists have killed 120 tribal leaders in the past two years and imposed their own rough brand of Islamic rule.
In Lakki Marwat, the strict Pashtun code of conduct - known as Pashtunwali and focused on honour and revenge - prevails under the auspices of the khan, or tribal leader. In 2004, Kamal led a lashkar of 3,000 men into the tribal areas to avenge the kidnapping of two tribal girls, killing 70 of his enemy.
"We keep the government away. If we became part of the government they would become an excuse, a liability, a rallying cry against us," he said.
When the Taliban kidnapped a local councillor in July, 500 of Kamal's armed men surrounded the kidnappers before they could escape from Lakki Marwat.
"We fought for four to five hours and blew them up," he said, gesturing nonchalantly to a rocket-propelled grenade launcher propped up against his dining-room wall.
Among those captured in the fighting was an Uzbek, whom Kamal ordered to be passed on to the Pakistani army for questioning.
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