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forces over the border in southern Afghanistan, and against Pakistani
forces =97 police, army and intelligence officials =97 in major Pakistani
cities.

The quarry operation here in the Mohmand tribal district,
strategically situated between the city of Peshawar and the Afghan
border, is a new effort by the Taliban to harness the abundant natural
resources of a region where there are plenty of other mining
operations for coal, gold, copper and chromate.

Of all the minerals in the tribal areas, the marble from Ziarat is one
of the most highly prized for use in expensive floors and walls in
Pakistan, and in limited quantities abroad.

A government body, the FATA Development Authority, failed over the
last several years to mediate a dispute between the Masaud and Gurbaz
subtribes over how the mining rights to the marble should be
allocated, according to Pakistani government officials familiar with
the quarry who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the
effort's failure.

A new government mining corporation, Pakistan Stone Development
Company, offered last year to invest in modern mining machinery, but
even with the lure of added value, the development authority could not
sort out the feud.

The arguments were fierce because the tribes knew that the Ziarat
marble was of particularly fine texture and purity, comparable to
Italian Carrara marble, according to an assessment done for the FATA
Development Authority.

The Taliban came eager for a share of the business. Their reputation
for brutality and the weakness of the local government authorities
allowed the Taliban to settle the dispute in short order.

The Taliban decided that one mountain in the Ziarat area belonged to
the Masaud division of the main Safi tribe, and said that the Gurbaz
subtribe would be rewarded with another mountain, Mr. Zaman, the
contractor, said.

The mountain assigned to the Masauds was divided into 30 portions, he
said, and each of six villages in the area was assigned five of the 30
portions. Mr. Zaman said the Taliban demanded about $1,500 commission
upfront for each portions, giving the insurgents a quick $45,000.

The Taliban also demanded a tax of about $7 on each truckload of
marble, he said. With a constant flow of trucks out of the quarry, the
Taliban are now collecting up to $500 a day, Mr. Zaman said.

A senior Pakistani official and a Pakistani businessman who works in
the marble industry, neither of whom wanted to be identified for fear
of retaliation from the Taliban, confirmed the account.

Today the quarry runs as a relatively rudimentary affair using
dynamite, which harms the marble and renders production extremely
inefficient. Antiquated trucks grind their way up the steep, tiered
roadways carved in the mountainside to ferry the rock away. But the
quarry's reopening has given something to everyone.

The local tribes are profiting along with the Taliban. Once the trucks
reach the processing plants, the government, too, collects a hefty
tax, nearly double that of the Taliban, Mr. Zaman said, though there
was no way to verify the claim. The Taliban appeared to have no
problem with the government taking a share, he said.

So far, he said, the Taliban were overseeing the operation with a
light hand: a single armed Taliban fighter sat at a checkpoint not far
from Mr. Zaman's hut to ensure that the tax was paid.

The Taliban are today a loose organization of mostly ethnic Pashtuns
divided in two wings, one on each side of the border. Their leader in
Mohmand goes by the name Abdul Wali, a guerrilla fighter in his 30s
who rose to prominence last year when his group occupied a famous
shrine in the village of Ghazi Abad in Mohmand.

He is affiliated with the overall leader of the Pakistani Taliban,
Baitullah Mehsud, a powerful ally of Al Qaeda who keeps his base in
South Waziristan, another part of the tribal areas.

Working with Al Qaeda, the Taliban have steadily tightened their grip
over much of the tribal areas in the last several years by cowing or
killing hundreds of local tribal chiefs who were the area's
traditional authorities.

In Mohmand, the Taliban have speedily consolidated control in the last
year. They have filled a vacuum left by a vacillating government,
unable and unwilling to assert its authority, said Munir Orekzei, a
member of Parliament from Kurram, southwest of Mohmand, one of the
seven districts, or agencies, in the tribal areas.

"In every agency the most powerful man is the Taliban," Mr. Orekzei
said. "Because if someone says, 'I'm in favor of the government,' he
will be killed."

At the same time, people in the tribal areas believe some branches of
the Pakistani government are encouraging the Taliban in their route to
power, he said.

Mr. Orekzei said he recently attended a meeting with Rehman Malik, the
Pakistani interior minister, and tribal leaders in Peshawar, capital
of the nearby North-West Frontier Province.

"Rehman Malik asked why the people in the tribal areas were not
fighting back against the Taliban," Mr. Orekzei said. "I told him the
people believe the government is behind the Taliban. I said, you tell
the public what you are doing, and if they believe the government is
not behind the Taliban, they will fight."

The Taliban's authority had become so firm in the last two months, it
was too dangerous for legislators from the tribal areas to return to
their constituencies, Mr. Orekzei said.

Only the capital of Mohmand, the small town of Ghalanai, remains
unequivocally in government hands. There, the political agent, the
representative of the governor of North-West Frontier Province, keeps
a house and offices. But his power barely extends beyond the town's
limits, and he is unable to offer government services to ease the
region's poverty, local people say.

Next door to his compound, a public hospital remains underused because
doctors, put off by poor salaries and insecurity, refuse to work
there. Health conditions are appalling.

The weakness of the government has left people helpless before the
Taliban threat, Mr. Orekzei and other local officials said. Most
families had given a man to the Taliban cause, often as a measure of
protection against the militants.

The territory has become a magnet for other militants from farther
afield as well. More and more of them are coming from abroad, American
officials say. But Taliban fighters encountered in Mohmand said they
had come from all over Pakistan, revealing the Taliban's reach into
the heart of the country.

Some Taliban fighters said that they had come for the summer from
cities like Karachi and Rawalpindi, where they run food stalls or work
in hotels, and that they would return home at the start of winter when
freezing weather envelops the mountains.

The government security force, a paramilitary group called the
Frontier Corps, which serves under the command of the Pakistani Army,
does little to challenge the Taliban in the tribal areas, despite
occasional skirmishes. On the road north of Ghalanai, there were no
Frontier Corps patrols, and 25 miles from Ghalanai the Taliban were in
firm control.

With the government so weak, the Taliban are accepted as the ruling
power in many places in the tribal areas, local officials say. They
wield an unflinching hand, to the point of conducting public
executions, against the lawlessness that prevails in the region.

In Mohmand, they have imposed extra restrictions on women in the
already conservative society, forbidding them to venture into fields
and ordering their heads shaved if they flout the edict, according to
the handful of legislators who represent the tribal areas in
Parliament.

In a place called Chinarai, a two-hour drive from the Afghan border,
the Taliban maintain a prison, where the reporter and photographer
were held. On a recent day, there were about a dozen people in the
compound, all of them manacled and kept in dark small rooms.

In a sign that the internal workings of the Taliban were not entirely
smooth, several of the detainees were Taliban, and one of the
prisoners was a relative of top Taliban commanders.

Life for the prisoners was spare at best. They were denied cellphones,
the most valued possession among the Taliban. Prison food consisted of
poorly cooked rice and vegetables. Soap appeared to be used only for
body washing, not for cleaning of cooking pots and utensils.

Taliban officials reviewing the prisoners' cases spent much time
debating how they should be punished under the Shariah, or Islamic
law, imposed by the Taliban. One of the prisoners was suspected of
working with the Afghan Army; another was accused of tearing down a
Taliban notice.

One man accused of kidnapping was taken out of the prison and beaten
into confessing.

Recently, Mohmand has become a center of kidnapping for ransom, a new
activity that appears to be another important source of revenue for
the Taliban. But the Ziarat quarry will be far more profitable, many
people here say.

Even in its current rough condition, the quarry is such a good deal
for the Taliban that one tribesman, known as Bahadar, who works there,
predicted, "If this continues for two more years, they will take on
America itself."

Pir Zubair Shar reported from Ziarat, and Jane Perlez from Peshawar.