Pakistan gets tough on Al Qaeda

Wonderful news from the NY Times (free reg. required): bq. At the start of the month, Pakistan massed several thousand troops in and around the town of Wana, near the country's mountainous border with Afghanistan. Using a harsh century-old British method, officials handed local tribal elders a list and issued an ultimatum. bq. If 72 men wanted for sheltering Al Qaeda were not produced, they said, the Pakistani Army would punish the tribe as a group, demolishing houses, withdrawing funds and even detaining tribe members. bq. Several days later, several thousand tribal elders held a jirga, or council, and agreed to raise a force of their own to find the wanted men. In the last two weeks, the tribes have handed over 42 of them. Tribal members, meanwhile, have bulldozed and dynamited the homes of eight men who refused to surrender. And more: bq. "There is this age-old system of collective responsibility," said Lt. Gen. Syed Iftikhar Hussain Shah, the governor of Pakistan's North-West Frontier Province and a key supporter of the new approach. "Tribes are supposed to help the government." And more: bq. The governor said he hoped new aid flowing into the area would reduce sympathies for Taliban and Al Qaeda. He said the government had increased the development budget for the tribal areas by 400 percent, to $67 million. If significant increases are made for several years, he said, the tribal areas will finally receive government financing on a par with other parts of the country. bq. There is also international help. Norway is building 350 schools, he said. Japan and the United States are spending $2 million on refurbishing existing primary schools. And the United States is paying $10 million for new roads. This is one of the key weapons in the war on terror - infrastructure. Get clean water, schools, roads, communications into these areas and you will find the people opening up to new ideas and rejecting the terror cults for what they are.