RAGHAGAN: Toting rocket launchers and Kalashnikovs, the bearded tribesmen say they back the Pakistani government -- yet pledge they will fight to the death against US incursions on their soil.
The Pakistani military took reporters to the Pashtun tribal fighters in the tribal region bordering Afghanistan in a bid to show they have the support of locals for a month-long operation in the area, an Al-Qaeda and Taliban hotspot.
But there was also a strong message for US forces over the border, who have caused anger in Pakistan with a string of alleged territorial violations, including a raid by US ground troops on September 3 that left 15 people dead.
"We will fight against America until the last soul if they come to our country," said Malik Manasib Khan, the leader of a "lashkar", or tribal force, called up to help Pakistan's army expel the militants -- and anyone else.
"For us, the Taliban, NATO and the United States are all equals," the burly tribal chief told journalists in the bazaar at Raghagan, about 12 kilometres (eight miles) northeast of Khar, the main town in Bajaur region.
Fiercely independent, religiously conservative and obsessed by revenge, the tribes along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border have repelled all invaders for centuries and still hold the key to stability in the region.
When thousands of Al-Qaeda and Taliban militants fled the US-led invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, the tribes sheltered them, viewing them as successors of the "mujahedeen" who fought the Soviet occupiers of Afghanistan in the 1980s.
In 2003, Islamabad launched army operations at Washington's behest in the tribal belt, especially the notorious Waziristan area, but civilian deaths helped to radicalize and fire up many more tribesmen against the government.
Pakistani authorities have in recent years made major efforts to win the support of leading tribesmen in a bid to drive out foreign Al-Qaeda militants and isolate the most hardcore Taliban commanders.
Yet that policy -- combined with US and Afghan suspicions that elements in Pakistan's intelligence agencies still back the Taliban -- has caused tensions with Washington, which wants Islamabad to launch an all-out offensive.
Pakistan complied and in August launched a military push in Bajaur, the smallest but increasingly the most dangerous of the country's seven tribal regions. The army said Friday the operation had left 1,000 militants dead.
But the deaths of 11 Pakistani soldiers in a US air strike in June, a series of missile strikes and, on Thursday, an exchange of gunfire after Pakistani troops fired at US helicopters, have raised tensions to boiling point.