Word: tribalized
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Judging from his clothing and his features, locals say, the man was an Afghan from across the border. But nobody in Kaniguram, a mountain hamlet in the Pakistani tribal area of Waziristan, could say why he had been slaughtered just a few weeks ago. The Pakistani police have no jurisdiction; their command in the tribal areas extends only 100 yards off any main road. And tribal authorities have no interest in tangling with the man's killers, whom locals assume are linked to al-Qaeda. Kaniguram, residents say, is a main thoroughfare for al-Qaeda and Taliban militants...
...borderlands following their 2001 rout from Afghanistan, al-Qaeda and Taliban remnants are standing tall again. Besides taking potshots at Americans, they are also going after perceived local enemies. So far this year, 11 people suspected of informing on al-Qaeda have been murdered in the Switzerland-size, semiautonomous tribal land. An agent of Pakistan's much feared secret intelligence agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence, was shot in March as he rode his motorcycle in daylight. A tribal chief's son sitting outside his shop in the marketplace of Wana was mowed down in July by a pair of gunmen...
...Tribal sympathies in Waziristan appear to lie with al-Qaeda. Moreover, it is a sacred duty among Pashtun residents to give sanctuary to Muslims seeking it. With its rugged terrain, its warrior tribes and its centuries-old hostility to authority, Waziristan is a fitting bolt-hole for Islamic militants, possibly even al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden. U.S. intelligence believes he is hiding somewhere near the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, 150 miles of which snake along Waziristan's frontier. Last week the Qatari TV network, al-Jazeera, aired a videotape of bin Laden walking with his lieutenant Ayman al-Zawahiri...
...from time to time and punished with floggings, amputations and beheadings, but usually for quiet crimes like drunkenness, theft and drug smuggling. Police rarely had occasion to flip on their sirens, much less draw their guns. If they sought someone for arrest, they did so discreetly, using family and tribal ties to track down a person rather than put out a wanted poster, which might alarm the public and scandalize the suspect's clan...
Even with the secret police watching, there are always recruiters circling around the madrasahs. An Islamist militant told TIME that teenage volunteers who want to enlist these days in the Taliban are taken first in small groups to Pakistan's lawless tribal lands, where they are given a scant few weeks of weapons training and are assigned to hit U.S. targets inside Afghanistan. Because they are so inexperienced, martyrdom is only a few weeks away; these youngsters are usually the first to be killed...