Excellent article.
One sentence caught my eye: “Unfortunately, a people who petitions by sniper fire seems poorly suited to democratic citizenship.”
You can get some sense of these people by reading novelists who have written about British India.
Kipling, of course.
And I have always gotten a kick out of Talbot Mundy. “King of the Khyber Rifles” is his best known romance. And they are romantic, in the H. Rider Haggard vein. But lots of fun.
More serious as a historian is John Masters, who wrote a whole series of novels on the history of British India, from the earliest days through the great revolt to the end of colonial rule. I had a cousin, long since deceased, who knew him, and who put me onto his books.
The Waziristan fuzzy wuzzies and their ignorant mullahs are up against Indus Valley folks who own nuclear weapons this time around and a bit more distant America which has those and some serious robotics to lay on them.
I don't see Waziristan conquering anybody, but I do see a pitiful remnant of them fleeing as refugees into rough Indian aid stations for food and water.