Pakistani Tribes Press Army to Step Up Against Taliban

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan—A large gathering of leaders from Pakistan's embattled tribal regions met Saturday, demanding that the army intensify its war against the Taliban in their homeland.

More than 700 tribal leaders from the border areas with Afghanistan, a mountainous region that has become a battleground between the Pakistan army and the Taliban, said they would make a formal demand to the United Nations to intervene in the conflict area if the army failed to step up its military campaign.

The gathering, known as a jirga in the local Pashtu language, was organized by Amn Tehrik, or Peace Movement, a group of ethnic Pashtun intellectuals and professionals from the tribal belt in the northwest of the country. A number of Pakistan's national political parties also attended.

"We will not rest until we banish the terrorists from the whole tribal region," said Syed Alam Mehsud, a leading member of Amn Tehrik.

Pakistan's army has made progress in the war against the Taliban since 2008, killing scores of Taliban leaders, but has lost thousands of soldiers. U.S. drone strikes have targeted a number of the Taliban's top cadre, including a strike earlier this month that appeared to kill a leader who is believed to have played a key role in the bombing of a U.S. Central Intelligence Agency post in Afghanistan last year.

But the Taliban has been able to continue attacks on the army and local communities from its mountain strongholds and has claimed responsibility for recent bomb attacks on military and police targets across Pakistan.

Since the Taliban overran parts of the region in 2002, more than 200 tribal leaders, those who opposed the Taliban, have been killed. The result has been a dismantling in many areas of traditional tribal power structures and the forced displacement of hundreds of thousands of refugees.

The jirga movement is an attempt by Pashtun leaders to reassert their power and carve out a role for their communities in deciding the fate of the region. In


some areas, tribal groups have fought the Taliban. But most people preferred to leave their homes and their leaders are now calling on the government to do more.

Saturday's meeting, held in the town of Peshawar, the gateway to the tribal regions, is one of the biggest jirgas in recent years. Tribesmen attended from many of the areas most affected by the fighting, including Bajaur, South Waziristan and North Waziristan.

The meeting concluded with an agreement to arrange a larger gathering of 5,000 tribal elders in Islamabad, the capital, to push civilian and military leaders further. The date of the Islamabad meeting has yet to be decided.