Pakistan gains in Al Qaeda hunt

"When Afghanistan was bombed, mujahideen of Al Qaeda married their daughters to the sons of tribesmen. Dozens of the weddings were arranged in emergency as Al Qaeda men were wary of their uncertain future," he says.

Pakistani authorities are trying to cut off Al Qaeda's local support and supply line by involving tribal elders.

Under pressure to deliver, tribal chiefs have formed a force of 600 armed tribesmen to catch militants and hand over the five most wanted local tribesmen, known as "Men of Al Qaeda."

The clans of the Zakikhel tribe, which formed the tribal posse, will be forced to pay a fine of $870 each day and face house demolitions if they fail to apprehend "foreign terrorists."

This penalty, which began Monday, will be in place for the next five days. As of Monday, the tribal force has caught no one; officials monitoring their performance say that if they fail, Pakistani forces will launch their own operation at "anytime."

"If we support Al Qaeda then our houses are demolished and if we side with the government then we are killed by Al Qaeda and their men," says Malik Behram Khan, an enraged tribal elder.

Since last year, Pakistani forces have launched a number of operations within the tribal belt that have dealt blows to Al Qaeda and Taliban hideouts.

On Oct. 2, hundreds of Pakistani commandos and troops attacked a guerrilla hideout, killing eight Al Qaeda men and capturing 18. Pakistan identified two of the dead as Hasan Masoom, a top leader of a Muslim terrorist movement in China, and Egyptian-born Canadian national, Ahmed Said Khadr, a top Al Qaeda financier.

In January, authorities gave tribal elders a list of more than 100 wanted tribesmen. Around 60 of them were handed over, but the elders failed to surrender the most wanted men suspected of providing shelter to Al Qaeda and the Taliban.

During a Feb. 24 raid in South Waziristan, Pakistani forces captured at least 20 people, including some foreign women, and recovered ammunition and passports of suspected Al Qaeda fighters.

"This is part of our overall strategy to pressure these tribesmen into handing over suspects and expelling foreign terrorists," says Azam Khan, a top government official in South Waziristan.

Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf threw his weight behind the initiative Monday, meeting with over 500 tribal elders in the Pakistani frontier city of Peshawar, seeking their cooperation in the continuing hunt for Al Qaeda and Taliban operatives.

Many tribesmen say they feel "a big and decisive" operation is in the offing and believe that Al Qaeda guerrillas would prefer to die rather than surrender to the US and Pakistan forces.

"They have pledged to blow themselves up rather than surrender. I met a local [Al Qaeda] wanted man in recent days to persuade him to surrender but he said, 'We wish to go to Paradise and not to Guantánamo,' " says a tribal elder. "If the days belong to them then the nights are for us to strike," the tribal elder quoted the wanted man as saying.

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