The Pashtun tribes are already armed with RPG’s, DaShKas, AK’s, SKS’s, Lee-Enfields, and all kind of artisanal knock offs banged out in home workshops in places like Dara Adam Khel. Arming supportive groups with higher quality, serial-number recorded arms would have been an encouragement to join.

The Pakistanis are using a technique used by the Indians across their borders in doing this. The Indian government sets up Village Defence Committees in what are declared as “disturbed areas” and it actually arms and trains those whom it regards as loyal to the Indian state and who are vulnerable to either terrorists in the Kashmir region or to Naxalite Communists in other parts of the country. The policy has actually worked quite well in containing terrorism and human rights groups, (surprise, surprise!) have complained bitterly about the arming of law abiding citizens in India.

I am not very sure that this method would work to the same degree in Pakistan, though, because India has very restrictive gun ownership laws. The access that terrorist groups have to guns is itself limited to what is smuggled from other countries, notably Nepal which has a Naxalite government and Pakistan or Bangladesh, putting the Village Defence Committees on a more or less even keel with the terrorists.

In Pakistan all governments have allowed the freedom of owning guns (including full auto firearms) since that country became independent of British rule. If Pakistani citizens actually wanted to fight the Taliban, they probably could do this even without being armed by the government. In fact, pro government tribes in Pakistan have been very effective in bashing the Taliban wherever the two have clashed. This will be interesting to watch – I hope that the Pakistani government succeeds because it would be a message to the rest of the world that arming decent people is a good thing in this dangerous age.

This is a most excellent thing the Pakistanis are doing, but it would be naive to believe that none of those captured arms won’t end up back in the hands of the Taliban. But at least this way, there is a paper trail.

1) the northwest of the country wants to establish sharia law, the east doesn’t necessarily share their fervor; so are they arming the more moderate citizens against the more radical ones? that sounds like the beginning of a civil war in a nuclear state. not a thrilling prospect.

2) who determines who gets the weapons? the elected government, who’d like to think they were in charge of the country? the military leadership, who frequently feel they know better than the elected gov’t (two military coups in 30 yrs, remember)? the pakistani intelligence service, isi, who is known for a fact to have supported al qaeda and taliban against americans in the past (we killed one during an attack on our fob, had an id card and everything)? the pashtun tribal leadership, the only authority a lot of the pashtun recognize, who also support the taliban?

3) finally and most obviously, what if they give these folks these guns, and they turn against the pakistanis?

anyway you cut it, to me, it sounds like the beginning of a disaster.