Nous sommes a Peshawar, la vraie frontiere ouest du Pakistan, car plus a louest, cest encore le Paksitan sur la carte, mais en pratique, cest le free-for-all...

Lawless country, larmee Pakistannaise, encore moins la police ne peuvent y aller. Ce sont les tribus qui administrent. Elles ont chacune leurs territoires, et un emissaire soccupe de linteraction avec letat. Cest drole dimaginer les consequences... Il ny a pas de loi officielle, ce sont les vieux (ou disons les seniors) qui decident de tout, ds leurs reunions de vieux. Si tu as un probleme avec un voisin, tu nappelles pas la police, tu le regles toi-meme jimagine...

On decide de se louer une jeep avec un guide chauffeur local qui connait les tribus et daller faire un tour ds ces tribus jusqua la frontiere de LAfghanistan. Ce fut une journee assez exceptionnelle, on sentait que...

En meme temps, au detour du coin de marche, un vieux grand pere nous souri et nous porte son verre de the, les yeux bien rougis..

Retour en arriere...nous quittons le matin tot avec notre chauffeur qui baragouine un peu langlais... On sort de la ville, par louest, en passant dimmenses camps de refugies Afghan. Triste.

A la frontiere de la ville, nous traversons le "smugglers bazaar", un marche de patantes electronique, apparamment du marche noir, mais sommes toutes, que lon trouverait chez La Baie. Nous arrivons un peu plus loin a une barricade, cest la fin du Pakistan officiel. On cueille un garde armee des tribus (on doit etre accompagne par ce dernier en tout temps ds les tribus, ordre des tribus. Ce garde est un membre de la tribu, donc on est correct avec lui.
Le changement de part et dautre de la barricade fut tres impressionnant. Aussitot traverse, il ny a que deux type de magasins: Mitraillettes (fierement affichees ds la vitrine) ou Hashish (les briques sont en vues, la balance est prete. Combien de kilos?) Rien nest illegal ici, il ny a pas de lois. Vraiment special.

Quelques minutes apres ce marche, la route et le paysage desert setend vers lAfghanistan. On se dirige vers le Khyber pass, une celebre passe ds les montagne ou seulemetn un chameau de large pouvait passer ds le temps. Maintenant, ils ont elargi pour les 18 roues. Mais cest impressionnant de penser que tous les grands explorateurs, ou armees invasives sont passees par ici.

Ca pas pris beaucoup de temps a notre garde armee de nous demander si on etait opportune par la fumee (de cigarette on simagine...) mais non, il sallume un gros joint apres avoir depose sa mitraillette entre ses jambes. Et notre chauffeur y va gaiement aussi...on se sent en securite :)

On croise des immenses maisons, ou bunkers, ou compound, ou je ne sais pas comment on appelle un mur de 10 metres de haut en brique gros comme un terrain de soccer. Apparamment, ce sont des "drug lords" qui sont installes la avec leur 4 femmes (maximum prevu par la loi islamique) et leur 38 enfants. Les enfants et les femmes ne sortent jamais. Les enfants eventuellement, mais les femmes y entre au mariage et finissent leur vie entre ces murs.

On se rend a la frontiere de lAfghanistan. Il y a beaucoup de traffic de camion. La contrebande doit etre immense...On en a assez pour linstant des mitraillettes et du desert, on rebrousse chemin. Une visite de Michel a Kabul (ami de Mckinsey qui est labas en ce moment) sera pour une autre fois :)

Dynamite pas cher:

On arrete au retour ds un petit marche tout pres de la frontiere. On debarque de la jeep avec beaucoup de regards autour, surtout pour Audrey qui est la seule femme visible. On marche un peu ds les allees labyrinthes du marches. Cest rempli de monde, des mini-boutiques vendent le the, on fabrique le hashish partout, et les piles de briquettes brunes sont partout sur les copmtoirs. Encore une fois magasins darmes et de mitraillettes.
On est surpris par une nouveaute cette fois-ci, on peu acheter des batons de dynamites...cest toujours pratique. Assez incroyable.

Avant de retraverser la frontiere de la loi, nous sommes arretes pour un bon snack de kabuli pilau, notre riz prefere (mode Afghane, raisins et fruit seches, mouton) et a une petite boutique de hash. Un homme etait en train de petrir un grande quantite. Jai sorti ma camera pour lui faire signe de ma question (puis-je prendre une photo?) Sa reaction explosive ma repondu clairement....vaut mieux pas insister....

Fabrique de mitraillettes:

Pour finir notre epopee Peshawar, on desirait visiter Darra, une ville un peu au sud, ds les tribus sans lois aussi. Cest a Darra que lon fabrique toutes les armes du coin. Des centaines de micro boutiques fabriquent des replique de toutes les armes connues. AK-47, Kalashnikov, uzi, etc. Cest malheureusement interdit aux etrangers, mais on peu apparamment soudoyer le garde de la tribu et il nous fait visiter et essayer les armes. On peut voir aussi les palettes de 1 tonne dopium en attente de contrebande, ou des usines ou on la transforme en heroine.

Audrey et moi etions sur notre depart, sac au dos, mais pas trop certain de notre affaire. Un ami a lhotel ou nous etions nous accroche avant que lon parte et nous montre le journal. Un missile americain (ou pakistannais selon la version officielle) avait detruit une ecole musulmane ds la tribu la veille tuant 80 personnes, dont la plupart des enfants. Ce netait donc pas tres bien vu de se pointer la en tant que representant des pays etrangers. On a pris ca comme un signe et nous avons quitte immediatement vers lest en direction de Islamabad...pour voir le Prince Charles!

Article interessant sur les tribus pakistannaises:

Pakistan's tribal areas
The frontier spirit

Dec 13th 2006 | ISLAMABAD AND PESHAWAR
From The Economist print edition
The softly-softly approach of Pakistan's government to its lawless tribal areas is accused of destabilising Afghanistan
AFP

PERVEZ MUSHARRAF, Pakistan's president, likes to have it both ways. Earlier this month he pleased the West by urging Pakistanis to reject “hypocrites” and “extremists”. One of those he probably meant, Fazlur Rehman, head of the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA), Pakistan's powerful coalition of Islamic parties, was peeved. He had recently extricated Pakistan's army from an unpopular military campaign by arranging peace with pro-Taliban militants. In return, he grumbles, “Musharraf labels us dangerous.”

In America General Musharraf's willingness to make peace with militants has caused alarm. Its five-year-old policy in Afghanistan is foundering on the country's lawless border. Since 2001 Pakistan's army has lost around 750 soldiers hunting “terrorists” in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA). Now America is very concerned that Pakistan, where it is due to spend $1.5 billion in military aid from 2005 to 2009, is no longer ready to mount big military operations there.

This follows a deal General Musharraf's government signed on September 5th with militants in North Waziristan. Ali Jan Orakzai, the governor of North-West Frontier Province (NWFP), had promoted the deal, arguing that the campaign “threatened the stability of the rest of the country”. When General Musharraf visited Washington, DC, in September, he won George Bush's endorsement for it. But American military commanders say that since the deal more insurgents have been crossing the border, and are not so sure.

Just before a similar deal was to be signed last month in Bajaur, an air strike levelled a madrassa killing 80 people. The Pakistan army said it was responsible. But many blamed an unmanned American drone. The response—a suicide-bomb attack that killed 42 army recruits at Dargai—was a reminder of the pressures on General Musharraf. Violence in the tribal agencies has seeped into the “settled” areas of NWFP, which are dominated, like the FATA and much of Afghanistan, by ethnic Pushtuns. It has been linked to plots on the general's own life.

Yet in the 27,220 square kilometres (10,510 square miles) of FATA, divided into seven tribal agencies, not much seems to have changed since the deal. Arbab Arif, the civil servant in charge of security, says it is “business as usual”. For the government this means freeing captured militants and continuing to lavish money on the relatives of those killed in operations in Waziristan. For the militants it means imposing Islamic law, beheading “American spies” and pro-government clerics, occasionally abducting government employees, and rocketing paramilitary troops and even General Orakzai himself.

The colonial-era model of governance, based on maliks, tribal leaders, who mediate with the central administration through an (often corrupt) political agent, has been usurped by militant rule. Mr Arbab admits that his interlocutors are now ulema, religious scholars—in this case a euphemism for militants. But he says they are not running a “parallel administration”. The government would like to ink further deals in Bajaur and South Waziristan. General Musharraf recently dismissed the majority of the tribal troublemakers as charasi (“hashish-smoking”) Taliban, ie, thugs using the Taliban's mantle.

A new report suggests that the government likes it that way. The International Crisis Group (ICG), a research and lobbying outfit, argues that the government's “ambivalent approach” is destabilising Afghanistan and that the FATA is “tenuously governed” to keep it as a buffer zone. The report claims that ham-fisted military action combined with appeasement has strengthened the militants' hand.

There are growing calls within the impoverished, mostly illiterate tribal areas for democratic reform. Political activity is forbidden among their 3.5m inhabitants. The entry of secular politicians into FATA is practically banned, “whereas the mullahs enjoy free entry,” says Afrasiab Khattak, a leader from the Awami National Party (ANP), a Pushtun-nationalist group.

Under Western pressure, several government committees have proposed reforms. But none has gone through. The government will bestow cash, medical facilities, schools and roads, says Mr Arbab, but “it is no time for half-baked reforms.”

Nobody understands the frontier better than does the portly Mr Rehman. His coalition runs the NWFP government and is part of a ruling coalition in Baluchistan, the other province abutting the colonial-era border, the Durand Line. The shrewd cleric's own party, the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam runs hundreds of madrassas across the frontier. The ICG thinks they are Taliban recruitment centres.

Mr Rehman says the solution is to talk to the Taliban—a view shared by General Musharraf. Declaring that the enemy is no longer al-Qaeda but the Pushtun-dominated Taliban, he has called for reconciliation. But the Pushtuns are divided. The ANP recently convened a Pushtun jirga, or tribal assembly, in an attempt at unity. “The Taliban are not the creation of Pushtun society, but the creation of the Pakistan army,” Asfandyar Wali, the ANP's head, told it. There is much talk of a grand cross-border jirga early next year, hosted by Afghanistan's president, Hamid Karzai, himself a Pushtun. But Mr Rehman is unimpressed: without the warring parties—the Afghan government and the Taliban—“it will be just gupshup [chat]”.