Sinister signs watch over ancient road

1 Nov, 2001 09:49 AM6 mins to read

RICHARD LLOYD PARRY travels down the old silk route, where the rage of tribesmen rumbles in the harsh valleys.

RAIKOT BRIDGE - The Karakoram Highway, one of the world's most ancient and magnificent roads, begins to feel a lot less romantic, and a lot more sinister when you read the road signs.

I started noticing them soon after we left the town - Arabic inscriptions, daubed in white on massive boulders which overhang the road.

"Movement of the Holy Warriors", reads one; "Defenders of the Holy Prophet", says another. These are the names of some of Pakistan's most violent and aggressive Islamic groups, and this is their territory.

The first sign of trouble takes a while to register: on this stretch of the great road, the ancient silk route linking Pakistan and China, ours is almost the only vehicle.

A few kilometres on lies a pile of boulders, heaped to the side of the road, which a day earlier was a road block.

A little further still is the most alarming road sign that I have ever seen. Neatly stencilled in English capitals, it reads, "Ambush Site 500 metres".

So it is no surprise, 48.3km later, to cross the Raikot Bridge and find our way blocked by a lone and nervous Pakistani policeman.

Beyond the bridge is the place which we hoped to make our destination: Chilas, these days the single most troubled spot in a troubled country.

Six days ago, in protest at the bombing of their Taleban brethren in Afghanistan, armed tribesmen in the town blocked the Karakoram Highway, seized the petrol stations, and took over the airfield.

Since then Chilas has effectively functioned as a tiny and independent Islamic republic. Commercial traffic between the northern town of Giligit and the great Pakistani cities of the south has been brought to a standstill.

The local police chief sits at home, pelted with stones when he ventures out, and unable even to fill up the tank of his car without the permission of the local mullah.

Outside the town, a few kilometres from where we stand at the Raikot Bridge, are more than 1000 tribesmen, armed with Kalashnikovs and machineguns, who are profoundly averse to the sight of foreigners.

"The people there are very emotional," says the policeman, who is more than a little excited himself. "They are on the road and also on the mountain above it, pointing their guns down. They are very angry with America and Britain and they will do something to you." With a warning like that it is hard to argue.

Several things make this an exceptionally wild part of the world. Centuries of glaciers and geological upheaval have created a spectacular landscape.

Three great mountain ranges - the Himalayas, the Karakoram, and the Hindu Kush - meet near Chilas at the convergence of the Gilgit and Indus rivers. The closest peak, the 8125m Nanga Parbat or "Wilderness of the Fairies", is the ninth-highest mountain in the world.

Politically, this is part of the territory over which Pakistan and India are in dispute. Three wars have been fought close to here, and Army bases dot the Karakoram Highway. Villagers scrape a little wheat and maize out of fields irrigated by melting snow, but standards of health and education are low.

But it is in the religious character of these harsh valleys that the causes of the present trouble lie. In Chilas and the surrounding villages, most people adhere to the strict form of Sunni Islam practised by the Taleban.

Education is along literalist Koranic lines. Women are scarcely seen outside their homes, and never without their heads covered.

These are Pakistanis, but their less-devout countrymen refer to them as "Taleban-wallahs". When the United States-British airstrikes began, nowhere in the country was the pain and anger felt more deeply than here.

"They are strong Muslims," says Mohib Ullah Khan, a timber merchant from Chilas, who slipped through the road block as we waited by the bridge. "And they believe that the US, Britain, Australia and the rest want to kill Muslims. They say that when they have finished with Afghanistan, then maybe they will come and kill us in Pakistan.

"Life is transitory, and it is better that we die as martyrs fighting for our rights, than die as slaves."

The uprising began last Saturday and quickly spread along the 257.5km stretch of the Karakoram between Besham and the Raikot Bridge. At first there were just the road blocks. Then the tribesmen took over the Chilas airfield - nowadays used only by the occasional helicopter.

This week they took over the petrol stations and sell fuel only to those presenting a permissory chit from one of the local mullahs of Chilas.

Even Chilas' police chief, the unfortunate Superintendent Rashid, had to petition the clerics for a tank of petrol - humiliatingly, they gave him only half a tank.

When Rashid went to view the roadblocks, he was beaten back by stones hurled from the heights.

According to those who have passed through, between 1000 and 2000 tribesmen still man the roadblock closest to the Raikot Bridge, which consists of boulders strewn across the road.

The tribesmen guard it in shifts, and sleep in the caves and overhangs along the highway.

From the loudspeakers mounted on the mosques in Chilas, instructions have been issued to the households to provide them with food.

Last night, the mullahs were meeting to discuss calling off the blockades and giving the police superintendent the other half of his tank of petrol; the hope yesterday was that today the Karakoram Highway would finally reopen.

But they insist that their withdrawal is temporary and that their demands remain: the resignation of the Pakistani President, General Pervez Musharraf, and an immediate end to his policy of making air bases available to the American forces for logistical support.

The Taleban-wallahs of Chilas are a rabble compared to the well-armed soldiers who live in nearby barracks.

But the security forces here and in Islamabad know that the use of force would be the worst thing in these circumstances and that tribal rage is a genie difficult to coax back into its bottle.

- INDEPENDENT

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