Unlike in Swat, in Dir they swat 'em back

Rico says it's an encouraging sign; hopefully we'll see more of it. Sabrina Tavernise and Irfan Ashraf have the story in The New York Times:

Villagers are rising up against the Taliban in a remote area in northern Pakistan, a grass roots rebellion that underscores the shift in the public mood in Pakistan against the militants and a growing confidence to confront them. Several thousand villagers from the district of Dir have been fighting Taliban militants since Friday, when a Taliban suicide bomber detonated his payload in a mosque at prayer time, killing at least forty villagers. Enraged by the bombing, men from surrounding villages gathered and began looking for Taliban militants and their supporters. According to accounts from five local residents and an official, people went door-to-door, burning houses and killing at least eleven men they identified as Taliban fighters. The uprising is not the first time that local people have formed their own militias to take on the Taliban, and previous efforts have often collapsed in the absence of strong support from the government and military. Some have ended in mass killings of local people by Taliban strong men. But the latest attempt is significant, revealing the determination of the people of Dir to keep out both the Taliban and the military and to prevent their area from turning into another war zone, like the nearby Swat Valley, where millions have fled fighting already.
The Dir uprising may also prove strategically important, as the insurgents come under increasing pressure from the Pakistani military in places like Swat and seek to preserve the havens they still possess. Close to the border with Afghanistan, Dir is used by the Taliban as a vital passageway to the fight against American forces in southern Afghanistan, local people said. The district is yet another in Pakistan’s North West Frontier Province where the Taliban have infiltrated in recent months from the lawless tribal areas on the Afghan border. The other districts are Swat and Buner, sixty miles from the capital.
In March, the deepening Taliban advance startled Pakistanis, and it finally spurred Pakistan’s military and political leaders to take on a full scale military operation to push the Taliban back, under strong pressure from the United States.
Some three million Pakistani civilians have now fled that offensive. While many blame the Taliban for their troubles, people remain wary of the blunt tactics used by the Pakistani military, and support for the campaign is fragile. On Tuesday, the Pakistani military sent helicopters to aid the uprising in Dir, residents said. But they complained that the military was firing from the helicopters into villages where there were still civilians.
One man in the village of Dog Payeen, who asked not to be identified, said the military had hit a government school and several other buildings, instead of the mountain hideout where locals say the Taliban is holed up. “We are surprised at what is happening, because the main Taliban people are at the top of the mountain,” the man said. He said that villagers had begun to evacuate the area. The accounts in Dir could not be verified firsthand, as the area is not accessible to journalists.
At the same time, it was clear the military’s new seriousness in taking on the Taliban had emboldened people in Dir. Local people said the militants were supported by only about five villages, out of 25 that make up the population of the area. Militants were paying locals to use their houses, they said. But, after the bombing on Friday, simmering resentment among others boiled over into action, with even some of those who had supported the Taliban, joining the hunt. “This bomb blast proved the last straw,” said Jamil Roghani, a man from the area who is providing medicine to the wounded. “This made the people violent.”

Rico says you can't keep fucking with people forever (and killing them in the mosque was particularly dumb); eventually they'll turn on you...