The village that stood up to the Taliban

The people of Shah Hassan Khel want revenge for attack on volleyball game that caused 97 deaths

Volleyball might seem an odd sport of choice in Lakki Marwat, a scrubby district of bearded rifle-wielding tribesmen on the border between Pakistan's "settled" areas and its lawless tribal belt.

But it makes perfect sense. Volleyball requires little equipment or land, which suits the poverty-stricken players, and games can be played in small courtyards ringed by mud-walled farmhouses – ideal in a tribal society where blood feuds are common.

Unfortunately that also makes it a perfect target for a Taliban massacre.

On 1 January, a suicide bomber rammed his truck into a crowd watching a volleyball game in Shah Hassan Khel, a village on the edge of Lakki Marwat. The blast caused one of the highest death tolls of recent years – 97 dead and 40 injured, or about half of those present.

"It was a very horrible scene," said Muhammad Ayyub, the local police chief who evacuated survivors by torchlight.

The atrocity was an act of vengeance: six months earlier the people of Shah Hassan Khel had ejected the Taliban from their village, turning 24 militants over to the army.

But revenge runs in both directions in this rough, tribal land. Now that the traditional 40 days of mourning are coming to an end, the villagers are striking back. Local elders have formed a "peace committee" that is stocking up on weapons and ammunition. Armed patrols have started in the village and surrounding hills. And the villagers have vowed to hunt down those responsible for the carnage and kill them.

"We will track them down. We will capture them, one by one. Then we will kill them, one by one," said Mushtaq Ahmed, an elderly farmer with a wispy black beardwho heads the committee. He cradled an AK-47 as he spoke in a closely guarded compound in the district capital, Lakki Marwat. Police have warned him that a second suicide bomber is on the loose, possibly targeting him. "I'm a wanted man," he said wryly.

The vengeance-driven backlash is not unique. Tribal militias, known as lashkars, are operating in other corners of North West Frontier province and the tribal belt – in Swat, Buner and the Khyber agency. Some work well, others less so, but most analysts agree they can offer powerful resistance to the Taliban advance.

But the proliferation of such private militias, rooted in traditional Pashtun concepts of revenge, also highlight a more worrisome flaw: the failure of the weak Pakistani state to keep the extremists out in the first place.

The example of Shah Hasan Khel highlights the problem. For several years this hardscrabble place, pushed up against a ridge of dry hills, was known locally as a hub of Taliban sympathisers led by Maulvi Ashraf Ali, a charismatic local cleric.

Initially the villagers supported the Taliban, believing the rhetoric about sharia law. But the appeal crumbled after the militants funded themselves by smuggling, car theft and kidnapping. Girls were prevented from attending school, villagers stopped watchingtelevision; Ali cultivated links with the Taliban godfather, Baitullah Mehsud.

"He claimed to be enforcing sharia. What he really wanted was power," said Rehim Dil Khan, a tribal elder with a black beard and bloodshot eye in thevillage, who is also a member of the peace committee.

Last summer, under pressure from the army, the villagers evacuated Shah Hassan Khel to facilitate an army attack on the Taliban. Helicopter gunships and artillery hit their houses, many of which were damaged. The Taliban fled, with an injured Ali escaping on a donkey cart.

Months later the Taliban tried to come back, but the villagers, tired of fighting, rebuffed them. The Taliban assassinated a member of the peace committee as he tended his goats. The villagers chased the militants through the mountains. Tension rose.

On New Year's Day the volleyball bomber struck. Shockingly, he turned out be a local teenager, Obaidullah, who had fallen under the extremists' spell; his own step-brother was among the dead at the volleyball match.

Now the villagers are searching for Ali and his followers, who they believe are hiding in North Waziristan, in the nearby tribal belt.

They are backed by Anwar Kamal, an influential chieftain who embodies the contradictions of local governance. A qualified lawyer and pilot, he sleeps with a rocket launcher under his bed and once led his own lashkars against a rival tribe to "teach them a lesson" – all the while holding down a seat in the provincial parliament.

Now, he is helping the Shah Hassan Khel villagers to hunt down the Taliban. "Around here, might is right," he said.

Still, it might not be easy. Tariq Hayat Khan, the government's senior official in the tribal belt, said the process of flushing out Ali would involve complex tribal negotiations. "It's not a matter of sending in mercenaries," he said.

And back in Shah Hassan Khel, the Taliban have already notched up one small victory. Volleyball, a game they openly disdained, is no longer played, because most of the players are dead.