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Copyright 2003 Religion News Service.  All rights reserved.  No part of this

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Index of Daily Report

Wednesday, October 8, 2003

COMMENTARY: Is Osama bin Laden in Waziristan?

By AKBAR S. AHMED

c. 2003 Religion News Service

   (Professor Akbar S. Ahmed, Ibn Khaldun Chair of Islamic Studies at

American University in Washington, D.C. is author of "Islam Under Siege:

Living Dangerously in a Post-Honor World," published by Polity Press.)

   (UNDATED) On Sept. 11, 2001, when death and destruction visited New York

and Washington, D.C., few Wazirs and Mahsuds living in faraway South

Waziristan Agency imagined they would one day be involved.

   Yet on the second anniversary of Sept. 11, U.S. officials told ABC

television that Osama bin Laden was probably hiding in the Agency territory

situated in the Tribal Areas of Pakistan. As I had once been in charge of

the Agency, I was asked to describe its people and places.

   The Agency is redolent of the British imperial encounter with Asia: The

diplomatic manuevering known as the Great Game, the Durand Line, tough

terrain and tougher tribes -- in this case the Wazirs and Mahsuds, described

as "panthers" and "wolves" by Sir Olaf Caroe in his book, "The Pathans."

   This is quintessential Rudyard Kipling territory.

   One of Kipling's most famous literary creations, Kim, was a child of and

played in The Great Game. Although the title may suggest a friendly sporting

contest, The Great Game was played in deadly earnest. It was played for

power and prestige by the imperial powers -- Russia, China, and the British

-- in the valleys and mountains of Central and South Asia.

   As Kim discovers early on, nothing was as it seemed. Even the so-called

political officers were not political, but drawn from the elite civil

service cadre.

   The South Waziristan Agency and the North Waziristan Agency together

constitute what in the area is called Waziristan -- the land of the Waziris.

The  South Waziristan Agency is about 4,000 square miles with mountains as

high as 11,500 feet. Temperatures go up to 120 degrees in summer and drop

below freezing in winter. The terrain is harsh and mountainous and the

settlements scattered far and few between. With these tribes and this

terrain entire regiments of al-Qaida and the Taliban could move about

without detection. As for Osama, I told ABC News, he could swim like a fish

in an ocean.

Forced to go back 25 years ago to the time when I took charge of the

Agency as political agent -- 1978-1980 -- I was filled with nostalgia.

   I left the hard and difficult but exciting time in the Agency in late

1980 for a year at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton. There was

an air of unreality for me when I arrived. I had left one of the most

turbulent and isolated areas of the world where I had been on duty around

the clock and where I had come close to death on several occasions. I

arrived at a haven where some of the most distinguished scholars of the

world, including several Nobel Prize winners, lived in comfort and security.

   I had held similar key field posts before, but Waziristan was special.

   Inevitably I wrote about my time in the Agency, hoping to provide an

ethnographic account and general principles of what was happening in Muslim

societies. The account eventually became the book "Resistance and Control in

Pakistan."

At the time, I was struck by the rise of religious leadership that was

prepared to challenge established government authority. I was also

fascinated by the case of Mullah Noor Muhammad and his creation of the

madrassah, or religious school, in Wana. Looking back now it seems that the

madrassah was the harbinger of things to come in the region. The Taliban who

would go on to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan and later occupy Kabul would

be products of such madrassahs.

   In order to update myself for the discussion on Waziristan I rang Azam

Khan, the present political agent, a few days before my interview.

   The elders, he said, were ineffective and seriously challenged by the

young generation. People wanted to connect with the rest of the world and

the young in particular were restless for change.

American troops, trying desperately hard to stay on the Afghanistan side

of the international border while pursuing Osama, al-Qaida and the Taliban,

found themselves having to take a crash course on the Great Game.

   Things were never quite what they seemed in this part of the world. The

international border was nonexistent on the ground in many places and was

disputed in others. Not for the first time in history would soldiers from

distant lands with ideas of superiority have to contend with the powerful

tugs and pulls of the currents emanating from Waziristan.

   Informers and those suspected of helping the American or Pakistan army

were swiftly and brutally executed. Religious leaders were already beating

the war drums. If American troops enter Waziristan they will stir a hornets'

nest, which will make Iraq look like a picnic on the lawns of the White

House.

Now with the world media discovering the Agency in the search for Osama

bin Laden and dragging in all the appurtenance of our contemporary

interconnected world such as satellites that can pick up and enlarge photos

of every little scrub in the most remote ravine, I wondered how the

encounters would change Waziristan.

   Their tribalism, I think, has been both a blessing and an affliction. It

provided stability in unstable times but also created complications in

changing times. This theme of continuity and change, of resistance and

control, so apparent in Waziristan, lies at the heart of Muslim society and

partly explains the turmoil in it.

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