Three major tribes live in North Waziristan, which has become the Taliban's prime stronghold outside of Afghanistan: the Wazirs, the Mehsuds and the Dawar. British soldiers referred to the Wazirs as wolves, and the Mehsuds as panthers of the mountains. The Dawar have traditionally been peace-loving, preferring shopkeeping to guns and towns over mountains. The Mehsud and Wazir tribes, though, have been arch-rivals for centuries. Traditionally, the Mehsuds have been part of the Pakistani establishment, and as recently as the past few years they supported the military's actions against Wazir tribes, who are mostly Taliban.
In today's North Waziristan, though, Maulana Sadiq Noor and Maulana Abdul Khaliq are the unbending leaders of the Taliban-led resistance. They are both Dawar and, even more startling, the Wazirs and the Mehsuds are under their command. The man in charge of launching mujahideen raids into Afghanistan is Maulana Sangeen, an Afghan from neighboring Khost province.
In South Waziristan, Haji Omar, a Wazir, is the leader of the resistance against Pakistani forces, while Afghan operations run from the area are taken care of by Abdullah Mehsud, of the Mehsud tribe. "Nobody has seen such an arrangement in centuries, where the Mehsuds and Wazirs are fighting side-by-side, and more, under the command of the Dawars," said a local bureaucrat in Waziristan who spoke to Asia Times Online on the condition of anonymity.
The revolution that is sweeping across Waziristan is not confined to the region. It is on the march, with the eventual targets being Kabul and Islamabad. The overall command center is in South Waziristan, where al-Qaeda No 2 Ayman al-Zawahiri calls the shots, while Tahir Yaldevish, leader of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan and a key figure in the Afghan resistance, moves around Paktika province in Afghanistan.
Well-placed sources in the Taliban movement who spoke to Asia Times Online claim that the Taliban communicated "final messages" to Afghan and Pakistani officials, warning of direct attacks across both countries against top army and civilian officials. As a result, according to the sources, Pakistan stopped military operations in North and South Waziristan that were aimed at rooting out Taliban and foreign forces.
In Afghanistan, the Taliban strategy is to terrorize Afghan officials and prevent them from cooperating with foreign forces. And once the allied forces are alienated, attacks on them will be intensified. At the same time, the administrations in the capitals of the two countries are becoming increasingly isolated. The US-backed ruling royalists in Kabul are now threatened by Islamists who completely dominate parliament after recent general elections. There is no doubt that radical Islamists, whether those of the Hizb-i-Islami, the Ittehad-i-Islami led by Professor Abdul Rasul Sayyaf, the alliance led by Yunus Qanooni or dozens of independent former Taliban, are now at the helm of political affairs in Kabul. And the US-backed ruling and nominally secular officers of the Pakistani army are more on their own than ever before. A silent alliance of religious elements and religious parties is keeping a sharp eye on developments in the mountains, waiting for its chance to join in the revolution as it rolls off the mountaintops.