The notorious Somali pirates who are engaged in sea robbery in the Horn of Africa and other parts of the Indian Ocean have Muslim "accomplices" in the Khyber Gorge. It is located in the so-called Tribal Area (PO) between the Pakistan North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) and Afghanistan. It is also sometimes referred to as the Free Pashtun Tribal Area, but it is officially referred to as the Federally Administered Tribal Area. Formally, this territory is subject to the federal authorities of Pakistan, but here the powers of the police end and Pakistani laws do not apply. Order in the Tribal Area is maintained by Pashtun paramilitary formations of Khasadars (tribal fighters). All Pashtuns - Afghan and Pakistani, plains and mountain - adhere to the Pashtunwali code of honor, an unwritten set of rules and regulations of customary law. But the most zealous worshippers of this code, along with the Koran, are the mountaineers of the PO, who do not recognize any authorities other than their elders and jirgas, the council of tribal or tribal elders. The ZP Pashtuns defended their independence in bloody battles with the British Colonial Corps in the 19th and early 20th centuries. At the end of the 19th century, the British created a special zone here, in which the mountain Pashtun tribes maintained self-government. When in 1947 Pakistan gained independence, but the Pakistani authorities did not consider it necessary to change this system. The land of free Pashtun tribes is a product of contradictory historical circumstances - the traditions of freedom-loving mountaineers, the legacy of British colonial policy and the penetration of Islamic extremism ideas and their guides - international terrorists. By and large, the Pashtuns of the PO were drawn into wars, geopolitical games, and subversive activities of international Islamist terrorists against their will. They don't like the Taliban, because they think they have no sense of self-respect, one of the main precepts of Pashtunw ... Читать далее