PESHAWAR, PAKISTAN — For weeks, there had been whispers that Akhtar Usmani, a young teacher at a Muslim religious school, was speaking out against the growing presence of Islamic militants in his home in the tribal area of Waziristan.
Then one day last week, the schoolteacher's corpse, with the head severed from the torso, was found in a bloody sack dumped beside a desolate road. A note on his mutilated body called him a spy for America.
Such grisly reprisal killings have become a recurring feature of life in Waziristan, a rugged border zone that is in the global spotlight because of U.S. intelligence claims that elements of Al Qaeda are regrouping there
A little-noted corollary of the area's notoriety as a militant haven is the suffering of civilians who live and work there, say human rights groups, political analysts and Pakistani law enforcement officials. The killings are part of an atmosphere of terror enveloping many of the 4 million or so people living in North and South Waziristan and the other "tribal agencies," seven federally administered but essentially ungoverned areas adjoining the Pakistan-Afghanistan frontier.
Civilians there are increasingly subject to the stringent Islamic prohibitions and punishments of Taliban insurgents, foreign militants and members of radical Pakistani organizations, whose influence is breaking down traditional tribal leadership, people in the area say.
Barbers get warnings
In some locales, barbers are being warned against trimming beards. Singing and dancing are discouraged, and music has been banned. Motorists who play their car radios face fines or beatings. Schools, particularly those educating girls, operate under constant threat. Movie theaters have been ordered to close.
"With this phenomenon of 'Talibanization,' or militant religiosity, the first victims are always the local populations," said Ali Dayan Hasan, a researcher for New York-based Human Rights Watch.
"These people have absolutely no protection, and their most fundamental rights are violated daily."
In a report last month, the group urged that independent monitors be allowed to visit the tribal areas and document abuses. Most of the region, populated almost exclusively by Pashtun tribes, is a no-go zone for any outsider, even fellow Pakistanis.
