$750m earmarked for tribal women

ISLAMABAD: Stung by fresh US criticism of its ability to defeat the Taliban on the Afghan border, Pakistan is turning to women in its latest bid to quell the terror threat and reduce poverty.

The government's Benazir Income Support Programme is designating $750 million, nearly half from US coffers, to create jobs and alleviate poverty by providing women with funds for food, health and training in the tribal belt.

The region is the world's premier breeding ground for Taliban and Al-Qaeda militants and where Western governments believe the majority of terror plots are hatched. It is also home to some of the lowest social indicators in the world.

Unemployment is rife, education abysmal. With 70 percent of men illiterate and more than 50 percent unemployed, the path to militancy is an easy one.

"Poverty is the main reason for extremism and terrorism," said Farzana Raja, head of the Income Support Programme.

"We will provide these people with skills instead of Kalashnikovs."

Despite women's marginal position in tribal society, the Benazir fund insists women are better beneficiaries of aid than men, who may be more inclined to waste handouts.

Although the programme has already registered 3.5 million women elsewhere in Pakistan since October 2010, Raja told AFP that the tribal belt is the main concern.

"We need to solve the problems of these people and eliminate poverty from these sensitive districts more rapidly than in other parts of the country."

"If we are instrumental in providing jobs, employment and money to our men in the family, we are in better position to stop them joining the Taliban," said 30-year-old housewife Minhas Bibi in Bajaur's main town of Khar.

Azakhela, 70, is married to a bedridden 80-year-old who has been unable to work for years. Their three sons are unskilled and have no vocational training -- precisely the kind of disaffected men that can be lured by militants.

Analysts predict real change in the tribal belt will take a generation to cascade through its deeply conservative society, and will occur only with the help of proper education.