This seems to me to be a bit of a "good news" article.
quote:
Reporting from Kanju, Pakistan - Members of the 40-day-old tribal militia in this Swat Valley village come in all shapes, from all walks of life.
Some struggle to fasten bandoleers around pot bellies; some haven't finished high school. They are doctors and teachers, wealthy landowners and dirt-poor wheat farmers.
Some make their way with Kalashnikov rifles slung over their shoulders, others with only a wooden stick in hand.
What unites them is the memory of the Taliban's brutality, a time when the militant organization took over Kanju and the rest of the Swat Valley. Taliban militants beheaded perceived enemies, flogged women and bombed school buildings.
With most of Swat back in the hands of the government after a military operation that drove the Taliban into hiding, thousands of Pakistanis in towns like Kanju have been banding together to form lashkars, or tribal militias, to help keep trouble from coming back.
While this article is about Pakistan, if I understand correctly, similar tribal militias are a significant component of McChrystal's long term COIN strategy for Afghanistan.
There has been much complaining that the only war news published/posted is "negative news". This is "positive news" ... albeit in Pakistan. It IS the sort of tribal militia (Arbakai) that McChrystal would like to exploit in Afghanistan against the Taliban and that is discussed in One Tribe At A Time (A Strategy for Success in Afghanistan) by Major Jim Gant found here:
