INTERNALLY DISPLACED REFUGEES

Internal migration, such as the movement to Northern Cities from the South by Blacks in the face of Jim Crow is one thing, but it seems to me that the deliberate creation of internal refugees is a wrong-headed, short sighted policy.

The depopulation of the Swat Valley, and other areas is likely to create more problems than it solves. I have no idea how to deal with religious fundamentalists of any kind, although I notice that it was Puritans that crossed the Atlantic in the Mayflower, who had earlier drew their religious inspiration from preachers and perhaps religious schools along the Rhine Valley and around the lake shore at Geneva.

The drone attacks in the mountainous Pashtun country of the North West, it seems to me possible that the driving force pushing the “Taliban” deeper into the more Sufi areas. Poverty and social inequality are other factors that stimulate appeals to religious fundamentalism in Pakistan as elsewhere, and are by some accounts evidence of the failure of government. The military dictatorships of Pakistan have received notable support from American Governments, as do the long lasting dictatorships of Egypt and Saudi Arabia.

It bears mentioning, if only in passing, that the 911 attacks of 2001 were led and staffed predominantly by Egyptians and Saudis, and not Palestinians or Iraqis, and that most of the operational planning took place in Germany. It might be noted for one that the President of Pakistan does not believe that Osama bin Laden is still alive. While it is true that al Qaeda, the Arab Muslim brothers, were allies of the Taliban Afghan Government, they were also armed and supported by the American Government in the “great game” to force the Soviets out of Kabul and supporting the tend central government of Afghanistan. In those days, American policy was overtly anti-communist, as had been in Vietnam, rather than anti-religious fundamentalist, which ironically is supported by domestic American religious fundamentalists.

It is passing strange in the permanent atmosphere of perpetual global political alarm that the implications and ramifications of the twists and turns of American foreign policy are never given account. No lessons need be learned, because the rightness, even righteousness, of the policy are taken for granted. After all the consequences always happen to other people – Vietnamese, Cambodians, Iraqis and now in particular Afghanis and Pakistanis.

The talk of existential threat has morphed from Rice to Clinton. The mushroom cloud has reared it ugly rhetorical head again, with a short step from the unfinished business in Baghdad to the new grand plan in Islamabad, tied incongruously at the hip, we are told, to Kabul. Manan Ahmed spoke about these matters at Democracy Now. He said that it is foolish to compare Pakistan and Afghanistan, although it seems to me that the North West territories could be so compared as been tribal Pashtun lands.

While it is alluded to reports that speak of American approval for the actions of the Pakistan Army in the Swat Valley, it is seldom stated that the depopulation policy is an American policy as part of counter-insurgency doctrine. The American treasury that is paradoxical, being both empty and endless, as pointed out by Eric Margolis,(via AntiWar.com) funds the Pakistan Army and directs policy.

While the intrigue and lies of grand geo-political strategy unfold, the people suffer, and unfortunately their suffering has only just begun. Streams of refugees as the behest of cruel imperial design is not new occurrence on the Indian sub continent. There are now at least eleven refugee camps holding up to one million people, who seemed to have been forced to leave their ancestral homes.

The analogy with the Native Americans comes to mind. Tom Hayden has also notice the similarity, specially with reference to an article written by Robert Kaplan, “Indian County” (Wall Street Journal, 21 September 2004). Tom Hayden notes:

Kaplan is obsessed with the anarchy loosed on the world by post-colonial, tribal-based societies, and emphasizes the need for small wars carried on “off camera,” so to speak. Kaplan approvingly quotes one US officer as opining that “you want to whack bad guys quietly and cover your tracks with humanitarian aid projects.” The comparison Kaplan makes between today’s Long War and our previous Indian wars is that the “enemies” were highly decentralized tribal nations who had to be defeated in one campaign after another. He realizes that conventional war against the Plains and western tribes was an unsustainable strategy and that the native people were overwhelmed by an inexhaustible supply of white settlers and superior technology like the railroad. Fighting the new Indian wars today, he advises, means “the smaller the American footprint and the less notice it draws from the international media, the more effective is the operation.”

The media, in the time honored way of journalism, simultaneously notices and not notices, perhaps because the journals can no longer afford to keep journalists on the various beats, except when embedded as in the Iraq invasion. Phew! journalism still happens.Al Jazeera reports:

Residents fleeing the Pakistani military’s offensive against Taliban fighters in the Swat valley have told Al Jazeera of their sense of abandonment at the hands of both sides.

The government said on Monday it would continue its campaign against the Taliban in the North West Frontier Province, while thousands of people continued to arrive in refugee camps in nearby Mardan.

The exodus is said to be the largest movement of people in Pakistan for 60 years. An estimated 500,000 people are running away from the fighting with the few belongings they can carry.

Abdur Rahman, one of the displaced who fled to Mardan, told Al Jazeera: “People from all over – from Matta, Mingora and from everywhere – [are fleeing] on foot. Women and children and even old women and old men.

“Some of them died on the road, but no one was willing to offer us any help – neither the army nor the Taliban.

“They are both committing atrocities and cruelty against the ordinary people.”

. . .

The army lifted its curfew on the area briefly on Sunday to allow residents to flee, before imposing it again with a “shoot on sight” order for anyone who violated it.

. . .
Reporting from Islamabad, the capital, Al Jazeera’s Sohail Rahman said: “That exodus of civilians continues … it’s a desperate situation.

“Those that have managed to escape the Swat valley during that curfew period on Sunday are certainly making thier way to those camps in and around the southern part of the region, and outside Peshawar, the provincial capital.”

What I fear (and what do I know?) is that many of these people will, like the Palestinians lose their land and be cast into impoverishment into cities such as Karachi with attendant ethnic stresses and conflicts. In the meantime. there is an economic loss, as reported by Al Jazeera:

The offensive has been praised by the US, which wants Pakistan to root out havens where Taliban fighters are said to plan attacks on American and Nato forces fighting in Afghanistan.

But analysts warn that the military’s campaign will have severe knock-on effects in terms of the local economy, which in Swat has become dominated by agriculture in the years since its position as a tourist destination faded.

“They [those fleeing] will be losing their agriculture, their livestock … in addition to that, their houses and their family networks,” Zafar Jaspal, a professor at Islamabad’s Quaid-i-Azam university, told Al Jazeera.

“When we look at Swat and these areas’ agriculture, number one is fruit – and fruit trees need care. If no one is there, how can they care [for] them? Number two is that it is the harvest season for the wheat crop and who will go for harvesting?

“It has not only a short-term implication but a long-term implication in the economic sector.”

As Imran Khan observed, governments do not bomb their own people. When they do it is weird, despite the democratic progress that Pakistan has made recently.

The context for all of this, is reference to the link I made earlier, to Tom Hayden’s analysis, “Understanding the Long War” in The Nation.

ELSEWHERE:

At Truthdig, Chris Hedges reminds his readers of the situation context that incrementally and epochally lead to the situation, in which American policy had a hand.

Matt Wade reports from the ground for The Sydney Morning Herald. The balance of the report has the refugees blaming the Taliban for their situation, not the Government.

I notice, despite all the ballyhoo about reporters versus opinionated bloggers, the line between critical thinking and propaganda seems often to be blurred, if not non existent.

Elizabeth Bumiller and Thom Shanker report for The New York Times that there has been a change in the US Military Command in Afghanistan. Out with David McKiernan, in with Stanley McChrystal. Thanks but get lost David. The mission: kill the Taliban, but not civilians:

Forces under General McChrystal’s command were credited with finding and capturing Saddam Hussein and with tracking and killing Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia. His success in using intelligence and firepower to track and kill insurgents, and his training in unconventional warfare that emphasizes the need to protect the population, made him the best choice for the command in Afghanistan, Defense Department officials said.

Joe Klein at Time sees great significance in the firing of David McKiernan. I think it is a very poor way to treat a person myself. Morale must be high. Klein notes:

This is further evidence–as if the ascension of David Petraeus and Gates’s Defense Budget weren’t enough–that the Army has undergone a seismic change, from a emphasis on conventional to unconventional warfare.

ELSEWHERE:

Juan Cole has some public opinion data on the attitude to the “militant religious fundamentalists” by people in the various provinces of Pakistan and in aggregate. It appears to be encouraging, but I worry about a government that attacks its own citizens at the behest of a foreign power.

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