http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/1111-09.htmPakistani tribesmen stay fundamentally faithful to Taliban
Farmers Put Down Plows to Take Up
Arms Against US
by Juliette Terzieff
Northwest Frontier province, Pakistan -- Rahimullah's fingers adeptly clean and
reassemble the Kalashnikov rifle on the dusty mud floor of the small village store. A
single bulb swinging from a wire bounces shadows back and forth across him as he
works.
"I am a Taliban. I believe in the movement and in the supreme leader Mullah Omar,"
the 25-year-old says to the approving nods of the 20-odd men gathered round to
hear his discourse with the foreign female reporter.
Like four of the others present -- and thousands of other sympathetic Pakistanis in
the past several years -- Rahimullah has traveled repeatedly to wage part-time jihad
on behalf of the fundamentalist Taliban: in 1996, when they overthrew an earlier
Afghan government; in 2001, as the U.S. military was set to invade; and earlier this
year, to help in the guerrilla warfare against the American occupation.
All three times he crossed the border near the Afghan town of Khost, where al
Qaeda ran its most infamous training camps, and support for the former
government is still very strong.
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