Extremists challenge Pakistan

Here in Shingliballa, the organizer of the blockade is a well-kempt young man who fits the description of Taliban hardliners in neighboring Afghanistan. He is Aman Ullah, a religious scholar. He is also a teacher at the local madrassah and a member of a jihad group known as the Harakat ul Mujahideen, a "terrorist group" that US officials say is closely linked with bin Laden's Al Qaeda network. About a week ago, two dozen members of the Harakat group were killed by a US airstrike in a suburb of Kabul normally used by Afghan military personnel and their families. The group's leaders vowed after the deaths to take 10 US lives for every member that had died.

"We blocked the road so our leaders could cross safely into Afghanistan and make arrangements for our people to fight with the Taliban if and when the US ground invasion begins," says the 20something Mr. Ullah.

Ullah, who was stepping into a cable car on the Silk Road on his way back to Shingliballa, does not pack a firearm. But, it appears that he has plenty of wild-eyed Pashtun rebels in the hills ready to move when he calls.

The blockade's young organizer - who was, himself, present as government negotiators persuaded the rebels to pull back their siege of the highway - warned that blockades and seizures could quickly spill over into other areas, should the government continue with its backing for Washington's attacks.

Despite agreeing to a temporary respite from their siege yesterday, rebels up the road in the small village of Shingliballa are clearly throwing the gauntlet down at the president's feet.

"If the government does not accept our demand that he end all support for the US bombing of our brothers in Afghanistan, our boys will close down the road once and for all," says the elderly Mullah Mohammad Akhbar, the religious and political chief here.

Analysts in Lahore and Islamabad are warning that road blockades, which have also included the seizure of a remote airstrip adjacent to the Silk Road in the town of Chilas, are the start of a broader campaign by the Council for the Defence of Afghanistan to try to destabilize the entire country. The Council is controlled by two senior religious clerics, Maulana Sami ul Haq and Maulana Fazlur Rehman, who had been placed under house arrest at the outset of the US strikes on Afghanistan.

The Shingliballa rebels, like other bands farther north of here, are a motley assortment of former Afghan mujahideen and Kashmir militants. Most are Pashtun peasants aggrieved by the deaths of their fellow tribesmen across the border in western Afghanistan.

Tens of thousands of impoverished Pashtuns from Afghanistan live in thin tents in the Himalayan highlands, subsisting on government handouts or nothing at all.

Crowds of Pakistani Pashtuns from across the nearby mountains gather daily in the valley beneath Shingliballa to trade rumors about what Musharraf's next move would be.

Abdul Rehman, who also claims to be an organizer of the roadblocks says, "We are taking control of northern Pakistan because the American government is slaughtering our fellow Muslims. They blame the Sept. 11 attacks on Osama, but we know it was a Jewish conspiracy."

Mr. Rehman pointed to the steep Himalayan hillsides in all four directions: "We have 4,000 fighters ready to defend this highway. We are demanding that the attacks on Afghanistan end, that Pakistan stop supporting them, that Musharraf release our leaders, and that Pakistan become a country guided by Sharia [Islamic law.]

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