Pakistan seeks reform on Afghan border

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ISLAMABAD -- Awash with guns, opium, bands of armed Islamic militants, medieval laws, smugglers, rugged tribesmen and breathtaking mountains, Pakistan's remote Afghan border is one of the wildest places on earth.

But as the hunt intensifies for Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda fighters, pressure is growing to tame the semiautonomous region and impose 21st-century courts on a people who have defied conquest and state authority for centuries.

A raid last month by thousands of Pakistani troops on hundreds of suspected al Qaeda and other militants in the South Waziristan tribal district, where at least 120 persons died, has thrust the issue of reforming the area into national debate.

"What this whole effort has lacked is a political plan as to what this region's future status will be," said Ahmed Rashid, a leading Pakistani author.

Nearly the size of Belgium, the barren, 10,200-square-mile Federally Administered Tribal Area is a haven for al Qaeda and fundamentalist Taliban forces accused of attacks on U.S. troops across the Afghan border, U.S. officials say.

Hundreds of Arab, Afghan, Uzbek, Chechen and other foreign militants, drawn there since the 1980s when the U.S. government funded bands of Islamic fighters to drive the Soviet army out of Afghanistan, are believed to have escaped the recent fighting.

With tens of thousands of troops now in the region, Pakistan's authorities have given tribal elders until April 20 to expel the militants or risk more bloodshed.

"Pakistan has had to pay a high price for tolerating the strange exclusiveness of the area. This is unacceptable," the News daily newspaper said in an editorial.

President Pervez Musharraf said improving living conditions for the area's 6 million poor residents, mostly ethnic Pashtuns, and folding the devout Muslim enclave into the mainstream is a priority.

In a TV interview late last month, he stopped short of forecasting an end to the region's curious self-rule, saying now was not the time. He said development would press ahead, led by army engineers and backed by $54 million from Washington.