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U.S. steps up pressure, as Pak
dodders towards complete anarchy
Priyaleen K
Renuka
 Pakistan
is teetering on the edge of a total collapse. Last week the country
was rocked by a series of bomb blasts and a U.S. drone attack. In
all these attacks cost nearly 50 lives. Quick on the heels of these
attacks came the dire assessment by David Kilcullen, an American
specialist in guerrilla warfare, that
Pakistan
could be facing internal collapse within six months.
Kilcullen
advised the
U.S. army chief
-- General Petraeus when he was the American commander in Iraq. In a
Congressional testimony last week, General Petraeus termed
Pakistan’s insurgency one that could “take down” the country.
That seems
ironical since the same week a pilot less
U.S. drone
aircraft fired a missile in Pakistan's North Waziristan region near
the Afghan border which killed 13 innocent people. To justify the
attacks, security officials claimed that the casualties included
some foreign militants.
While the
United States’
estimation of the current situation in
Pakistan
does merit concern, it wouldn’t be wrong to say that the reason
Pakistan is slowly stumbling into this chaos of gargantuan
proportions is its chequered history with the United States and its
stark failure to rectify its past mistakes and put its house in
order.
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American
drones are causing inhuman misery, blowing Pak's sovereignty to
smithreens yet there is a tacit acceptance in
Islamabad.
But is this the medicine meant for the disease?
Islamabad
needs to look within, ditto Washington. And worse will be the
guys in beards and turbans who have long forgotten to look
within. |
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American
drone attacks on the border between
Afghanistan and
Pakistan are causing a massive humanitarian emergency in the area.
And it’s a widely known truth that they do not take place without
Pakistan’s
sanction and covert support.
As many as one
million people have fled their homes in the tribal areas on the
Pak-Afghan border to escape these sudden and vicious attacks by
unmanned
U.S. spy planes as well as bombings by the Pakistani army. In Bajaur
agency entire villages have been flattened by Pakistani troops under
growing American pressure to act against Al-Qaeda militants and the
Taliban, who have made the area their base.
So far 546,000
refugees have been registered as internally displaced people (IDPs)
according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and
the Commission for Afghan Refugees.
These figures
have failed to make a dent into the occupationist
U.S.
foreign policy with more drone attacks planned in the future. An
ineffective Pakistani government headed by the clueless Asif Ali
Zardari has been reduced to being a mere pawn in America’s larger
scheme of things.
Increasing
military aggression by the
United States
has also amplified an equally bloody response from the Taliban
militia which had earlier gained control over Pakistan’s Swat valley
in a dubious peace treaty with the Pakistani government.
Taliban
militants attacked a transport terminal near
Peshawar on
Saturday and set ablaze two Humvee patrol vehicles and two fire
engines bound for Western forces stationed in
Afghanistan.
On the same day, a lone suicide bomber attacked a paramilitary
security post in Islamabad, killing 8 soldiers.
The next day a
suicide bomber blew himself up at a gathering of the minority
Shi'ite Muslims in Chakwal killing 22 people.
Meanwhile, the
public flogging of a 17-year-old girl by Taliban militants in the
troubled Swat valley and the murder of two female Pakistani
teachers, a female aid worker and their driver by Taliban militants
in a separate incident has only strengthened the case for additional
international intervention in
Pakistan’s
affairs.
However, despite
the condemnation of the incident, the Taliban are getting some
support in the country, particularly in defence of some of their
actions as acts of retribution in response to drone attacks by the
United
States.
The attacks have
targeted Taliban and Al Qa’eda militants but are unpopular
throughout the country. Politicians from both the opposition and the
ruling party have condemned them as a, “violation of the country’s
sovereignty”. Ordinary Pakistanis feel the drone attacks have mostly
resulted in the deaths of civilians.
Even as
Pakistan
desperately tries to dodge the dubious recognition of being labeled
a rogue state, it has to first deal with the siege from within.
Ordinary Pakistanis are fast losing faith in the inept Zardari
government and the U.S. attacks on the country have only polarized
the Pakistani establishment from its populace further.
8 April 2009
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