[Editor's note: A photo in the original version of this article misidentified Qazi Hussain Ahmad as Qari Hussain Ahmad, a Taliban leader. Qazi Hussain Ahmad is a political leader with no affiliation with the Taliban. The Monitor apologizes to Qazi Hussain Ahmad for our error.]

TANK AND ISLAMABAD, PAKISTAN – It's not only the Pakistani military and the occasional US Predator drone that has Pakistan-based Taliban looking over their shoulders these days. As a sharp internal rift emerges over attacks on civilians, some are now turning their guns on each other.

Last month, Qari Hussain Ahmad, a militant leader, launched a series of violent attacks throughout Pakistan's tribal belt that left many innocent civilians dead. On June 1, in retaliation, reigning Pakistani Taliban commander Baitullah Mehsud captured 17 of Mr. Ahmad's men and threatened to kill them.

The incident highlights how the Taliban's ideological frontiers have changed as Pakistani militants have regrouped and realigned their allegiances, leading to internecine violence throughout the tribal belt.

The Taliban's central leadership in Pakistan is weakening, experts say, and some factions have proven themselves all too willing to dispense with the ancient Pashtun codes of mercy and restraint – the kind that saw guests, women, and children as off-limits in war.

Even Mullah Omar, the spiritual founder of the original Taliban movement, lamented this ruthless shift in a letter to field commanders last December, imploring them to do more to avoid civilian deaths.

"In Pakistan, [the Taliban] are not as organized as in Afghanistan. There are too many small groups, and there's no central leadership coming up," says Ijaz Khattak, a professor of international relations at the University of Peshawar.

In the rugged stretch of land abutting Afghanistan known as the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), Pakistan's modern justice and administrative systems are virtually absent – making it an attractive haven for the Taliban and Al Qaeda.

Here, Pashtun customs have for centuries enjoined tribal leaders to represent their tribes before the "political agent," a local government office first promulgated by British authorities to enforce the powers of national courts, police, and the federal government. Until recently, the system of agencies offered the FATA a semblance of federal control in what is otherwise an almost entirely autonomous region.

Now that system is dying as well. Taliban militants have killed roughly 150 tribal elders and targeted political agents throughout FATA in recent years. The purpose, as in Afghanistan, is to clean the slate for the advent of full Islamic law.

In their goals, Pakistan's Taliban seem united, but in method, they sharply disagree.

According to the popular perception among residents in Tank, a town just outside of South Waziristan, Mr. Mehsud and Ahmad represent a new generation of Taliban fighters who conduct their operations in Afghanistan from Pakistan and who are increasingly waging a war of militant Islam on Pakistani soil itself.

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