Drones and Displacement in Swat

Pakistan's military is pushing ground troops into cities in northwest Pakistan's Swat Valley in an attempt to rid the area of Pakistani Taliban that have had virtual control over the area for over a year. The nation's Prime Minister even went so far as to call it a "war for the country's survival."

Pakistan's army began shelling the area with mortars and aircraft fire last week to try and weaken strongholds and supply lines held by the Taliban, which seems to have proven somewhat effective as ground troops are now in place to go in to weed out the pockets of Taliban fighters.

After a mid-week meeting between Pakistan's president Asif Ali Zadari and Afghanistan's Hamid Karzai in Washington with both US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and President Barack Obama, Zadari has so far made good on his promise to "eliminate" the Taliban in his country. At the meetings in Washington, both presidents spoke extensively about the threats of terrorism in their countries, and, evidently, the Taliban too.

US drone strikes in Pakistan have not been the most supported actions by any means of the people of Pakistan, and have put further pressure on President Zardari because of his ties with the USS. Strikes have killed dozens, if not hundreds, of civilians, and at least two confirmed strikes in the past week are said to have killed more.

Because of the nature of the fighting in Pakistan, where precision is needed but not easily available in order to get to the pockets of Taliban that often live and hide in neighborhoods and amongst civilians, many of the civilians occupants of the Swat Valley have opted to pack up and leave rather than risk being caught up in the crossfire or fighting the Taliban, as was urged by Pakistan's military.

This latest exodus from Swat could lead up to 1 million people being displaced from fighting in Pakistan. Over 500,000 have left since August, and another half a million could leave due to the current situtation. There are several international aid organizations in place to help the displaced people, but there is concern that there will not be enough supplies and cooperation to feed, water, and shelter such a massive number of people.

As most of the refugee camps lie just on the outskirts of the Swat Valley, there is also concern that fighting could spread there, creating a situation where civilians would be highly at risk, and also the concern that local governments in the area, which had a three-month stading truce with the Taliban, will be of little help in providing for the displaced citizens because of pressure from the Taliban, who are thought to be in control of some of the local governments and who many in the Swat Valley local governments are said to fear.

There is a real sense that this situation could quickly turn into an international crisis. Pakistan has about 15,000 troops fighting the Pakistani Taliban, who are said to number in the thousands. But one has to wonder if Pakistan's forces are substantial enough to take down the Taliban, something the US-led coalition in Afghanistan still hasn't done in over five years with military technology superior to that of Pakistan's. Adding to that is the concern that the hundreds of thousands of refugees will not be provided for by Pakistan's government and that NGO's and IGO's might also not be able to get as involved, which could create a major humanitarian crisis in Pakistan. Finally, in such an unstable area, the thought of another coalition to fight the Taliban, whom the US is already fighting in neighboring Afghanistan, comes to mind. US-Pakistani relations have become stronger in recent years, so might Pakistan reach out for help from the Taliban's common enemies should they run into a wall in fighting the Taliban?

The possibilities of the situation in Pakistan are many, but Pakistan's offensive against its nation's Taliban, often said to be harboring Public Enemy Number One Osama bin Laden, has to be a step in the right direction in the eyes of the United States and its war on terror. Should Zardari's troops prevail, it would be a major win for the west as well as for Pakistan, but should things fall apart, a serious crisis could be at hand.

Is The West Losing The War On Terror?

I just finished up a thesis for an International Relations course titled "Politics and War" in which I researched the so-called "war on terror" and how terrorism has affected the western allied states of the United States, United Kingdom, and Israel and the Middle Eastern states of Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, and the Palestinian territories. My basic conclusion, which is stated in the last selected paragraph, was that it is a possibility the western allies may be losing this war against terrorism. A few selections:

"The “war on terror” came to be under the guise of a war against anti-American Muslim extremists, propagated by George W. Bush and his cabinet and (some say hesitantly) supported by the United Kingdom’s Prime Minister Tony Blair and other western allies in order to theoretically protect their state’s sovereignty and national security. However, nearly eight years later, it could be argued that the terrorists are winning. The Global Future defines terrorism as “the premeditated use or threat of violence perpetrated against noncombatants, usually intended to induce fear in a wider audience.” (Kegley, Raymond 2007, G-7) It is arguable that there have been few times in the history of America and the United Kingdom when such widespread fear of something or someone has been as far reaching and extensive as the “threat of terrorism”, and the fear-mongering is only fueled by the governments that say they seek so badly to quell it. The only example that immediately comes to mind of a situation even close to what has happened in the wake of terrorism in the west is the Red Scare and McCarthyism that happened in the 1950s in America, when anti-Communism sentiments washed over the United States and struck fear in a majority of Americans, propagated by the government, and for a while, unchecked by any other government body. Could the war terrorism go down as this generation’s Red Scare?"

"The United States saw one day of terrorist attacks on its soil when hijackers crashed two planes into the World Trade Center, one into the Pentagon, and one, misguidedly, into a field in Pennsylvania. Not by any means a minor ordeal, but the actions that came in the wake of September 11, all done in the name of “national security” seem to have done more to make the nation insecure; not physically perhaps, but mentally at the very least. There was the anthrax scare, but other aside from that, there has been very little physical presence of any form of terrorism in the United States. Yet the government opened Guantanamo Bay, which allowed it throw in jail without probable cause other than the supposed threat of terrorism any person it wished, even if that person lay outside its normal jurisdiction. FISA has been strengthened since 2001 and the Patriot Act, which allows for wiretapping, search and seizure, and other surveillance not normally allowed under American law was widely used by the Bush administration and is now being used by the Obama administration (Thomas, Scraton 2002, 94-9). And while there have been no terrorist attacks on US soil since September 11 and the anthrax scares, American citizens still fear another terrorist attack (Associated Press 2006). Could the government be the root cause of this? In a July 2007 report by the National Intelligence Council titled “The Terrorist Threat To The US Homeland”, the Council states numerous times that “the US will face a…terrorist threat…from Islamic terrorist groups and cells.” (National Intelligence Council 2007) The report goes on to talk about the numerous threats facing the United States: “al-Qa’ida in Iraq,” “chemical, biological, radiological, or nuclear [weapons],” and “other non-Muslim terrorist groups.” The report goes on to say that despite any real action by most terrorist groups in recent time, that the NIC perceives there to be a “heightened threat” of terrorism and that “[terrorists] would not hesitate to attack the Homeland.” The whole document reads almost as a propaganda statement by the Council, using vocabulary and rhetoric that strike up anti-terrorist sentiment and patriotism just as President Bush did following 9/11. But the most important thing documents like this and hundreds of others do is fuel the fear. The general masses of Americans tend to believe whatever the government says, frankly, because they do not have a choice. However, like any other large entity, it has an agenda and works as a giant public relations machine. And the American people have proven that they will largely follow that machine without much question, living on the fear and giving the government more leeway to do what it wishes."

"It is also this support of Israel by the two largest western powers that has fueled much of the anti-western sentiments that have led to the Muslim extremist uprising in the Middle East. Since the disputed lands of Jerusalem, Gaza, and the West Bank have been such a flash point and rallying cause for the Muslim communities in the Middle East, for Israel to be supplied by the US and UK in its fight against what Muslims see as the Muslim community, it has made the two western states an easy and common target for Muslim extremists and a major recruiting tool used by terrorist organizations in what they see as a war against Islam. The United States’ assistance in helping develop nuclear capabilities and anti-ballistic shields in Israel have only furthered anti-American sentiments in Muslim states. And while the UK has not been as large of an arms supplier to Israel, their close inter-governmental ties have also formed many enemies amongst the Muslim community."

"Since 2001, the relations between the three aforementioned western states (the US, UK, and Israel) and its largely-Muslim Middle Eastern counterparts (Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and the Palestinian territories) have worked in a cyclical nature as terrorism has built itself to be a great asset for Muslim extremists in the Middle East for use against the west. Since conventional tactics in combating terrorism were tried, but failed by these western states, the less-powerful terrorist community has often found itself with the upper hand and with its targets constantly on their heels in an attempt to guess what is coming next. They have also succeeded in using terrorism in the theoretical sense that they have struck a genuine fear in the western communities that a terrorist attack on domestic soil is a real and legitimate threat, which has only been propagated by the governments and media of the western states. And while these western governments attempt to find ways to combat terrorism in new ways using hybrids of classical and guerilla warfare, their secondary goals of establishing democracy and dominance in the mentioned Middle Eastern states has only fueled anti-Western sentiments among Muslim extremists and created a new pool of young Jihadists and other fighters who are also at the same time adapting their methods just as quickly as is the West. And because of the nature of the cell structure of terrorist groups, winning the so-called “war on terror” has proved much more difficult than any Western premier may have thought. And while they have perhaps quelled certain potential terrorist acts from damaging their national security and infrastructure, because of the fear of terrorism instilled in the people of the US and UK, especially by their own governments and media, it is quite unlikely that future terrorist actions will subside, and quite possible that the tensions and rifts between the West and Middle East could grow and deepen as a result, and that terrorists may end up winning this “war on terror”."