LEADERS of an estimated 500,000 tribesmen who have so far remained largely neutral over the conflict in Afghanistan warned last night they were poised to support al-Qa'ida and the Taliban unless US forces retreated from their strategy of attacking targets inside Pakistan.
In a major jolt to Washington's new policy of allowing cross-border raids in defiance of the Government in Islamabad, key tribal elders were reported to have met and warned that they were also prepared to raise an army to fight coalition forces in Afghanistan.
"If America doesn't stop attacks in the tribal areas, we will prepare a lashkar (army) to attack US forces in Afghanistan," Pashtun tribal chief Malik Nasrullah Khan was reported as saying in Miranshah, the largest town in North Waziristan, which has been the target of repeated US attacks in the past week.
"We will also seek support from the tribal elders in Afghanistan to fight jointly against America."
In the complicated fabric of tribal affiliations along the 1300km Durand Line that nominally separates Afghanistan from Pakistan, Malik Nasrullah is regarded as a powerful figure.
Only last month, he led a group of tribal elders in declaring support for government moves against militancy in the Kurrum Agency - a region beset by sectarian strife involving the Taliban.
In the past, Malik Nasrullah has been regarded as a moderate, but his change of position follows repeated US cross-border raids that, the Government in Islamabad insists, target mainly innocent civilians and are serving to sign up new recruits for al-Qa'ida and the Taliban.
Last night, the cross-border crisis was the subject of talks in London between newly installed Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari and Prime Minister Gordon Brown amid signs that Britain, despite its close alliance with Washington, is concerned that the new US tactic is creating sympathy for the militants.
In Pakistan on an official visit, British Justice Minister and former foreign minister Jack Straw is reported to have reflected London's concern about the US raids.
Yesterday, Mr Zardari summoned Pakistan's security tsar Rehman Malik to join him in his talks with Mr Brown, while officials in Islamabad said the Pakistan President was also planning to confront Mr Bush over the raids when he travelled to New York next week for the annual UN General Assembly session.
Last night, cricketer-turned-politician Imran Khan, leader of Pakistan's Tehrik-i-Insaaf (Justice) party, joined the criticism of the US-led raids, telling reporters it was time to stop "logistic support for the US and allied forces in Afghanistan".
"The best way to compel the allied forces to halt the border violations in the so-called hot pursuit of al-Qa'ida and the Taliban is to stop logistic support," said Mr Khan, referring to NATO's use of Karachi as a supply route for military supplies into Afghanistan.
The supply route is seen as Islamabad's strongest card in an otherwise weak hand.
Meanwhile, the 12-year-old son of a woman long suspected of links to al-Qa'ida and facing charges in a New York court has been returned to his relatives in Pakistan, two months after he was detained with his mother in Afghanistan.
The boy and the woman, Aafia Siddiqui, were detained outside the governor's house in Afghanistan's Ghazni province in July. The US-educated Pakistani was later flown to New York to face charges of assault on US personnel.
The US indictment alleges that during Ms Siddiqui's interrogation in Ghazni, the 36-year-old picked up a soldier's rifle, announced her "desire to kill Americans" and fired at US soldiers and FBI agents. She was wounded by return fire. Her son Ali Hassan was with her at the time of her arrest and had been in Afghan custody ever since.
Pakistan television showed footage of Hassan smiling shyly beneath a white prayer cap as an aunt kissed and embraced him at a house in the capital, Islamabad.
Ms Siddiqui vanished in Pakistan in 2003. In 2004, the FBI identified her as one of seven people wanted for questioning about suspected ties to al-Qa'ida. Her family has denied any link.
