It all started last Monday. Supporters of Mufti Shakir, a cleric, tried to knock down a house that belonged to a supporter of his rival Afghan cleric Pir Saifullah Rehman. The fighting led to the killing of five people, most of them supporters of Shakir, whose group calls itself Lashkar-e-Islamia. This prompted the supporters of Shakir to attack the house of another Rehman supporter, Badshah Gul, on Tuesday, killing 19 people, including 16 Afghans.This is not a scenario from some film but a violent reality that has been simmering in the area for more than a year. While the government claims to have extended its writ to much of the tribal area, the two rivals clerics defied its authority right in the Khyber Agency, merely a few kilometers away from the provincial capital, Peshawar.
Trouble began with two lethal radio stations, one run by Mufti Munir ShakirÂ’s Lashkar-e-Islami and the other by Pir Saifur Rehman, an Afghan cleric based in the Soordand area of the Bara Tehsil of Khyber Agency. Both clerics defied the government writ and continued to spit venom against each other through their illegal radio broadcasts. They continued to mock both the administration and the tribal jirga after they were told to shut down their radio stations. In February, this year, the tribal jirga had also ordered Pir Saifur Rehman, a non-local to leave the area to ease the tensions but the move did not really help since Saifur Rehman returned shortly. In his absence, his supporters kept the rivalry aflame through their radio station.