Word: pakistanis
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...Pakistani military officers, politicians and diplomats say that Islamabad has a short window of opportunity to improve the lives of the frontier tribesmen. Otherwise, they will turn angrily against Islamabad and wave in the Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters who are now scattered in the mountains. "We need to bring in reforms swiftly," says Shah...
...from siphoning off the funds, and because much of the region has been off-limits to aid workers due to militancy, only a tenth of that amount has been spent. Nor can aid wait: the U.N. reckons that over 1.63 million people fled when bullets started flying between the Pakistani Taliban and the army. Their lives need to be rebuilt before they too start blaming Islamabad, and not the militants, for their misery...
Quietly, U.S. diplomats, aid workers and military trainers have been working in the frontier tribal areas with the army and whatever brave tribal maliks they can find. The idea, say Pakistani military officials, is to identify fast projects - small dams or marble quarries, for example - and get them built and working under the protection of those tribes that will benefit directly. Only this way, say officials, can the tribes turn away from the militant-run enterprises - banditry and running guns and drugs - that earn them money...
...also giving weapons and training to "friendly" tribes so they can keep militants out of their territories. The drawback: some critics argue that if a tribe again becomes disillusioned with Islamabad - and it wouldn't be the first time - these militias will simply swell the ranks of the Pakistani Taliban, taking their new guns with them...
...best solution, says Samina Ahmed, Pakistan director for the International Crisis Group, a global policy-research center, is to ring in political and social reforms that will rid this territory of its antique system from British colonial rule and draw it into mainstream Pakistani life. For now, bringing back the music in the bazaars may not be enough, but it's a start...