A tribal lashkar, an army organized by common people, was formed in Bajaur tribal area close to Afghanistan to oust the Taliban militants, somewhat that the government was failed to do.

There was a one month long military operation in the area as well as many peace deals and negotiations between the security forces and the terrorists, but they resulted only in the killing of hundreds of civilians and forced more than four hundred thousand people to migrate to the settled areas of the country. And the frightening aspect of this was that people believed that the operation was helping the militants to get more strength.

According to reports, the tribal army has started operation against the militants; they have killed several of them and burned down the houses of many Taliban commanders including Mullah Nematullah.

Interestingly, it was not the first uprising of the people against the terrorists; people in District Buner and Matani, near Peshawar, have already started attacking the militants and forcing them to leave the areas, says a report on BBC’s Urdu website.

It reminded me the 90s when a similar extremist outfit called Tehrik e Nifaz e Sahria Mohammadi (TNSM), headed by Mullah Sufi Mohammad who is father-in-law of Mullah Fazlullah, known as Radio Mullah, of Swat’s militant group, seized Bajaur and Malakand agencies and implemented their unacceptable rules like forcing girls not to attend schools, killing people for shaving their beards and listening to music, forcing transport to drive on the right hand, etc.

Like they say in Persian, ‘Tang aamad ba jang aamad’ (you have to fight when you are left with no other option), the people in different areas formed their own armies and started keeping the terrorists away from achieving their evil motives: looting and terrorizing people.

In those days, we were living near Shandey Morr, about three kilometers from Khar, headquarter of Bajaur agency and at the same distant from Sadiq Abad, known then as Phatak, now a stronghold of the militants.

I myself had served as part of the ‘peoples’ army’ of Jahangir Abad Afghan refugee camp. The militants had adopted the strategy of firing rockets at security forces from the residential areas and then fled. In response, the security forces would attack the same area which often caused civilian casualties. The militants then would propagate the civilian casualties in their favor. This same strategy is adopted by the Taliban in Afghanistan too.

When the people united against the militants and kept them away from the residential areas, it brought very good results. Thus, the militants were not able to provoke security forces open fire on civilians on the one hand, and, on the other hand, the security forces would target accurate positions of those evil elements. In just a few months the militants disappeared with their evil motives and black turbans.

So it is expected that this uprising of the people against the militants will help the government to contain the militancy at least to some extent if not completely.