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CNN Live At Daybreak
Pakistani Tribes Watching Flight of Taliban
Aired November 13, 2001 - 06:49 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
LEON HARRIS, CNN ANCHOR: We take another look at what's happening in Pakistan, a country that is right next to Afghanistan, and it also has quite a few interesting layers of life happening there. Pakistan's cities, as we know, are mostly modern. They have utilities and businesses and courtrooms where disputes are settled, but in the rural areas there, there are no police, no judges. All they have there are tribal justice.
And as CNN's Carol Lin reports this morning, to their people, the tribal chiefs are the first and last authority on everything.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
CAROL LIN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Dera Bugti can inspire terror when the Bugti tribes people watch their legendary chief take a stroll.
"What's the price?" he demands, as he pokes around. Wearing a straw hat and designer sunglasses, Nawab Akbar Khan Bugti looks more like Sean Connery than tribal war lord, but he is a legend and the law to his people.
"Nawab is our father," these tribesmen tell us. "We would give our souls for him."
And legend has it that he killed his first man when he was only 12, and that he killed another 100 men to avenge the murder of his favorite son.
Tribal law reigns in the vast Bugti territory, where murder is not a capital crime.
NAWAB AKBAR KHAN BUGTI, BUGTI TRIBAL CHIEF: Killing is part of life, life and death, they go side by side.
LIN: Nawab Bugti's modern, and tribal worlds have long lived side by side. He was educated at Oxford, but he lives by laws more than a thousand years old. Honor and family are sacred. Yet, he has fond memories of a lap dancer in a Berlin nightclub.
It's not his values, but his authority over a well-armed tribe of 187,000 people in Pakistan's Baluchistan Province that worries the government.
Lately, Nawab Bugti has openly condemned Pakistan's support for the United States airstrikes over Afghanistan.
BUGTI: We are being used. Our land is being used, whether it is all overflight, whether it is rescue, now we resent that. And we resent that government of Pakistan has sold us off.
LIN: Sold off Baluchistan for foreign aid, promised by the United States, says the tribal chief. Nawab Bugti says he cannot explain to his people why Pakistan supports western bombs that he says are killing fellow Muslims in Afghanistan.
Would his tribesmen retaliate against American troops now basing in Baluchistan?
BUGTI: Everybody is watching events and seeing how things doll up (ph), and as they doll up (ph), people will take decisions and on that -- for their own safety and security, naturally.
LIN: And that is all the tribal chief of Baluchistan's largest, best-armed tribe of independent warriors would guarantee.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
LIN: And, Leon, this morning I spoke with Nawab Akbar Bugti, who has been watching the changing events in Afghanistan all morning long on CNN, and he is very concerned about the events. His primary concern is now that as the Taliban gets pressured in Afghanistan to move to the south, that there is a likelihood that Taliban forces might spill over the border into the Baluchistan Province.
He is calling a major meeting with other tribal chiefs, all very powerful, including the ones along the border, and they are considering several options as to how to respond to the latest events in Afghanistan. And, Leon, one of those responses, he told me, was an armed response. He said that his people have the right to defend themselves.
HARRIS: Yes, Carol, you're talking about an armed response. How much of an armed response is it possible for them to even mount from there?
LIN: Leon, the numbers that we're talking about, in terms of the people who live in these tribal societies, are in the hundreds of thousands of people who are well armed, heavily armed. The Bugtis alone, one single tribe, close to 200,000 people. The second largest tribe, the Maris (ph), equal to that number. Two major tribes, nearly a half a million people, and there are 53 other tribes that need to be factored into this equation.
So this is a force to be reckoned with. Back in the 1970s, when the tribes went to war against the Pakistani army, tens of thousands of people died, and these are people who are willing to use their weapons.
But it has to be stated that there is a sort of law and order culture. Nawab Bugti said that he is not about to take on the Taliban or the world' s only superpower lightly. He said that they would be defensive maneuvers. They are watching events very closely and definitely hoping for the best.
HARRIS: Very interesting, Carol. So as things get wrapped up there in the north, perhaps we see a new and different kind of front forming there in the southern part of Afghanistan, and in Pakistan as well. Carol Lin reporting live for us this morning -- thank you very much -- good to see you. We'll talk to you later on.
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