Taliban’s involvement in criminal activities and disrespect for local customs forced villagers in Upper Dir of northwest Pakistan to rise against the Islamic extremists, a report has said.

When the militants arrived in their mountainous corner of northwestern Pakistan in February the locals cautiously welcomed them, thinking they were waging ‘jihad’ against foreign troops in neighbouring Afghanistan.

Some even joined them, attracted by the five or six pounds a day they paid. Over the next three months, however, Upper Dir’s residents were increasingly angered by the Taliban’s criminal activities. The last straw was when Taliban demanded to take the women they had widowed.

The elders immediately summoned men from 30 surrounding villages and told them to fetch their weapons and launched a “lashkar” — or tribal militia — of more than 1,000 people to drive out the Taliban.

They shot dead the local Taliban leader, who went by the name of Champo, burnt several more to death in the houses that they had occupied and surrounded the remaining 150 in a mountainside village, where they were still under siege till Monday, The Times reported.