Fueling feuds

One major downside of globalization: plenty of local Hatfield-McCoy tiffs become global affairs...

They wear their hair and beards long, Taliban style, and support attacks on U.S. and NATO troops in Afghanistan. Yet the fighters are tolerated and — many believe — backed by Pakistan because they share a common enemy: the country's most deadly terror network.
Pro-government militias like this one on the border of the country's lawless tribal regions are an important plank in the campaign against the Pakistani Taliban following the slaying of its chief, Baitullah Mehshud, in a CIA missile strike last month. They know the enemy and the terrain, need no motivation and their willingness to fight means fewer army casualties. And with the Pakistani Taliban ranks said to be in disarray following the death of their leader, some of their fighters could be persuaded to change sides and join them.
But critics say Pakistan risks creating a monster by linking up with them and other militias. While tribal feuding ensures they are enemies of Baitullah's men for now, they are cut from the same militant cloth he was. Any alliance with the state could be temporary, and one day authorities could find themselves fighting their former proxies...
The United States, which gives millions of dollars in civilian and military aid to Pakistan each year, will be particularly concerned with the militia in Dera Ismail Khan because it still espouses militant Islam. The group's logo proclaims the need for war in the name of God. The confusion is apparently reflected in the name that some in the town have given the group: "the government Taliban."

The book I'm currently reading makes a good (and jarring) point: much of the "terrorist infrastructure" being targeted in recent years along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border was developed by the Pakistan Inter-Services Intelligence (with significant help from the CIA and Saudi intelligence) during the proxy war against the Soviet Union. Given the AP story quoted above, one wonders when we're going to learn to stop making deals with the "lesser devils" that let them grow into full sized ones.