US must woo Pashtuns deftly

On the crumbling mountainside that leads up to the Afghan border are three painted words: "Go back America!" Across the gaping gorge that divides the two countries, tiny figures shift in the fading sunlight along the mountain ridge. They are fresh Taliban reinforcements, whose guns and heavy mortars are nearly invisible to the human eye.

Long known as a crucial gateway between the West and the South Asian sub-continent, the peaks and crags of the Khyber Pass - and the people that live there - present one of the greatest obstacles to US military planners now considering how to get foot soldiers on the ground inside Afghanistan.

For some 18 million Pashtun tribesmen, villagers, and refugees on both sides of this border, blood is thicker than politics. Villagers may have been radicalized by two decades of war, but perpetual strife has also strengthened the traditions that bind them. If the US military is to succeed in its apparent mission to find suspected terrorist Osama bin Laden and his associates, it will have to be extremely sensitive to these traditions, Pakistani historians and Pashtun locals caution.

One of the most common concerns, voiced both by Afghan refugees and Pakistani Pashtuns, is the sanctity of their sense of hospitality. "If you want Osama, then you will have to kill us all," says Mohammad Arif, a Pakistani villager strapped with a pistol and standing beside a fruit stand. "If we have a guest in our house, we will keep him in our house. You must give us proof before you get him. We are a free people."

Afghanistan's 10 million Pashtuns are the country's majority, with another 8 million in Pakistan. They have fought among themselves for centuries, but throughout history, nothing has done more to unite them than a common enemy.

During three Anglo-Afghan wars between 1839 and 1919, British troops met some of their fiercest resistance here at the Khyber Pass. In 1878, Afghan fighters sniped at British forces and ambushed them at every turn in the narrow, winding road. The Afghans' superior guerrilla tactics prevented the British from ever gaining full control of Afghanistan.

That fighting was a precursor to what the Russians would face all across the same jagged peaks and valleys 100 years later. Even when they used heavy guns to blast away at the face of a mountain, the Afghans would often pop up again, aiming their homemade rifles from a nearby peak.

Over the weekend, truck drivers - the only humans currently allowed to leave Afghanistan - said the Taliban is distributing guns and warning of an imminent attack by the "infidels." Meanwhile, the villages on the Pakistani side were doing a brisk business in light machine-guns, small mortars, hand grenades, and rocket-propelled grenades.

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