Jihad Brews Beyond Afghan Border

A walled religious school served as central headquarters. The men communicated via FM transmitters in three local mosques.

“Somebody hand me a grenade,” said a stocky former soldier who was instructing the rapt volunteers in the art of war.

The preparations for battle were taking place Tuesday not on the front lines of Afghanistan but in Pakistan, the United States’ ally in the war against the Taliban regime.

Here in the lawless Pakistani north, where the Taliban probably has more sway than President Pervez Musharraf, the gathering of armed men--grizzled warriors and fuzzy-cheeked teenagers--demonstrated the complexity of a conflict in which borders have little meaning and tribe and religion count for everything.

Called to a jihad, or holy war, against America and its allies by fundamentalist Pakistani religious leaders, the several thousand ethnic Pushtun volunteers assembled in several villages here share the same anger and commitment as their predominantly Pushtun Taliban counterparts inside Afghanistan.

“The Americans have pushed us to the wall,” said Zaman Mohammed Alam, a senior military commander in the Islamic fundamentalist Movement for the Enforcement of the Laws of Muhammad. “These are not brave men who bomb from the air and kill innocent women and children. Come down to the earth and fight with us. Let us see who will win or lose. God willing, Islam will win.”

Despite the Taliban’s insistence that it doesn’t want help, the Pakistani Pushtuns form a willing and passionate reserve should the Afghan regime need them.

Over the weekend, a Pakistani government official estimated the number of fighters in the region at 8,000. Other estimates put its size at anywhere from 3,500 to 20,000. Until the Taliban called them off, Musharraf’s government--already facing pressure from fundamentalist religious groups for backing the U.S. military campaign--had faced the difficult decision of using force to stop the volunteers from crossing into Afghanistan.

The man who commands these eager volunteers is a charismatic religious leader, Sofi Mohammadi, from the Bajaur tribal area, 140 miles northwest of the capital, Islamabad. Mohammadi, whose strict interpretation of Sharia, or Islamic law, rivals that of the Taliban itself, entered Afghanistan on Monday afternoon with a small troop of deputies.

“We are waiting for directions from our central leadership,” said Alam, a dead ringer for Osama bin Laden whose title is vice leader of the Mohammadi movement. “Our leader and our other district chiefs have gone to Afghanistan. We await their orders.”

When asked whether he could be taped with a video camera, Alam declared that to be haram--forbidden--under Islamic law.

He permitted his voice to be recorded but would allow the camera to videotape only his hand as it rested on a Kalashnikov rifle. When the recording was completed, he reviewed the tape to make sure that his face did not appear.

Initially, the photographer was asked not to take any pictures. But when the photographer retorted, “That is like asking a moujahedeen not to carry a gun,” some of the men relented and allowed themselves to be photographed.

Ragtag Appearance Belies a Discipline

One man, Habib ur Rahman Khan, said he was 80 and had fought for Pakistan in its first war against India more than 50 years ago and again as a jihadi in the 1980s war against the Soviet occupiers of Afghanistan.

When asked how he could fight America if he didn’t carry a gun, he pulled a wood-handled knife from the cloth belt around his waist.

“I’m going to kill Americans like this,” he said, making a sweeping motion with his hand.

Despite the ragtag image they presented when they streamed into this town in a haphazard convoy of 300 minivans and pickup trucks, the volunteers appeared surprisingly well organized. They operated from a central command in an Islamic school here manned by leaders from the Mohammadi movement. The commanders communicated with one another via FM transmitters. Their line of command appeared clear-cut, with levels of rank organized by district.

When an American photographer asked where to find one of the men, the leaders quickly identified his unit and directed the photographer to a nearby village.

The tiny mud-walled village, called Erab, about 10 miles from Lagharay, ordinarily has a population of 400. But more than 900 of the volunteers were billeted in village homes--the men are hailed as heroes by the local population--and in three small mosques that had been converted into barracks and armories.

In one of the modest adobe homes, six men shared a small room, talking late into the night. When a visitor challenged them, suggesting that by making a holy war against America they might be harming Pakistan, the men seemed taken aback. Finally, one of the volunteers responded:

“But Afghanistan is home to our Muslim brothers. How can we allow America to bomb them?”

Meals were taken communally, with villagers providing stacks of unleavened bread and thermoses of hot tea. The evening meal Monday consisted of a fatty mutton stew made from freshly slaughtered sheep.

At prayer time, guns were set aside and stacked against a wall of one mosque. The men gathered around transistor radios to hear the Urdu- and Pushtu-language news broadcast on the BBC. News from the Voice of America was shunned.

At the Ghakhi border crossing about six miles away, there were no jihad volunteers. There were only a few truckloads of refugees coming out of Afghanistan and a pair of refugee boys, who appeared to be about 10 or 11, scooting down a mountainside wearing plastic slippers and carrying cloth knapsacks.

At the border crossing, a Taliban officer who identified himself as Mohammed Rashid had tea with Pakistani soldiers and two civilian visitors. Rashid said he and other Taliban members are “a little angry” at Pakistan for taking the American side in the conflict and allowing U.S. forces to use Pakistani airstrips.

“Pakistan supported us for 22 years through all of our conflicts,” Rashid said. “I don’t understand their new attitude.”

America and its allies, Rashid said, have not fought the Taliban in a ground war.

“When they do,” he said, “we will see what happens.”