Pakistani military officials have said that the number of civilians who have fled fighting in Pakistan has reached 1.3 million. A figure of more than half a million who have been registered has been confirmed by the U.N.
The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) announced on Tuesday that the number of people registered as refugees as a result of Pakistan’s ongoing conflict against militants had surpassed 500,000.
Most of the registered refugees have found temporary homes among family and friends, or with others who have offered to help accommodate those who have fled the fighting. More than 70,000 others are staying at displaced person camps that have been set up in an effort to help mitigate the humanitarian crisis.
The Pakistan military began waging offensive operations against militants in the Swat district last week just prior to a trip by President Asif Ali Zardari to Washington, D.C. to meet with U.S. President Barack Obama and Afghan President Hamid Karzai.
The Swat Valley, located in Pakistan’s North-West Frontier Province (NWFP)region, in recent years has been taken over by militants, but was previously a popular tourist destination sometimes referred to as the “Switzerland of Pakistan” for its mountain scenery.
The Pakistan military operation is largely targeted against the forces of Maulana Fazlullah, the head of Tehreek-e-Nafaz-e-Shariat-e-Mohammadi (TNSM), who took over the group’s leadership from his father-in-law and the group’s founder, Maulana Sufi Muhammad.
Fazlullah’s forces, allied with Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), or Pakistan Taliban, led by Baitullah Mehsud, have terrorized Swat, enforcing harsh rule considered by many Swat residents to be un-Islamic, such as burning schools and beheading police officers.
Sources told the Daily Telegraph that a second offensive is being planned to combat militants in the Waziristan regions of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA).
Baitullah Mehsud has his stronghold in South Waziristan, and according to the U.S. State Department is a “key al-Qaeda facilitator”. The U.S. has also accused him of the assassination of one time Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, the late wife of the current president, Mr. Zardari.
Also this week, a U.S. missile attack by a drone aircraft killed 15 people in the village of Sra Khawra on the border of North and South Waziristan.
U.S. officials told the Los Angeles Times that drone attacks are now being carried out under a new arrangement with the government of Pakistan “that for the first time gives Pakistani officers significant control over routes, targets and decisions to fire weapons”.
Drone attacks have been the cause of a bitter controversy as the U.S. insists on continuing them while the Pakistani government has repeatedly objected to their use and has decried the U.S. actions as a violation of their sovereignty.
The drone attacks have mostly been CIA operations, but under the new agreement, the Department of Defense will operate a separate fleet of drones and allow Pakistani military officials direction over their use within Pakistan.
The CIA has reportedly carried out at least 55 drone attacks in Pakistan since August.
The Pakistan army’s chief spokesman, Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas, said that 751 militants have been killed so far in the ongoing operation, and 29 security force members. He said he had no specific information about civilian casualties, but that the government was “taking all possible measures to avoid collateral damage”.
As the fighting continues, independent observers have expressed concern over the dangers to civilians.
“Our view is that the Pakistani military’s previous record of counter-terrorism operations does not inspire confidence in its ability to safeguard civilian life,” Ali Dayan Hasan of Human Rights Watch said. “We would ask the military and its patrons – particularly in the U.S. – to urge the utmost care in regard to civilians.”
The U.S. said it would provide $5 million to assist with the humanitarian situation. Ian Kelly, a spokesman for the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), said “This is primarily to provide tents, provide shelter and emergency relief supplies, food and medicine to the affected populations.”
Meanwhile, a bill to provide Pakistan with billions in military and economic assistance is being debated in Congress. Senator Bob Corker said at a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on Tuesday that the vote should be delayed. “We are going to be engaged there for many, many, many years,” he said. “Many men and women will lose their lives. We’re doubling down, and we haven’t debated this yet.”
The Obama administration has come under criticism for not having a clear strategy in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Senator Jim Risch said at the hearing, “It is just breathtaking the amount of money, the American lives we’ve spent there, and you have a government that has control maybe to the outskirts of the capital. I’d love to see an endgame, but I don’t know who’s smart enough to – to develop and endgame for us in that country. It’s very depressing.”
Senator Russell Feingold expressed concern that Obama’s plan to increase the number of troops in Afghanistan might force militants into Pakistan and “could end up creating a pressure in Pakistan, which would add to the instability.”
Graham E. Fuller, a former CIA station chief in Kabul, Afghanistan, and author of The Future of Political Islam, wrote in an op-ed earlier this week arguing that military force is not the solution. The occupation creates hatred and military force has only made matters worse.
“Indeed, one can debate whether it might have been possible – with sustained pressure from Pakistan, Iran, Saudi Arabia and almost all other Muslim countries that viewed the Taliban as primitives – to force the Taliban to yield up al-Qaeda over time without war,” he wrote, referring to a Taliban offer to hand over Osama bin Laden, accused of masterminding the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, if the U.S. provided evidence of his guilt.
The current U.S. demanded Pakistan army war on Taliban is not really what it is portrayed in the Western media to be. Pakistani Taliban were never a threat to the U.S., nor were they a threat to Pakistan’s nuclear weapons.
The truth is that Pakistani Taliban provide help to thei fellow Pashtun tribal leaders in Afghanistan and that has frustrated U.S. efforts to control Afghanistan. The U.S. has realized that it cannot win the war in Afghanistan unless that help is cut off.
The U.S. has tried to stem the flow of aid from Pakisran with secret bombings inside Pakistan [similar to U.S. secret bombing in Laos and Cambodia during the Vietnam war], and Predator drones attacks, but it has not only failed, but also raised the hostility of the Pakistanis. How do you then cut off the
Pakistan Pashtun from helping the Afghan Pashtun against the U.S.? Money !
Upon taking over the presidency by default of his wife’s assassination, Zardari
realized that Pakistan was broke, and was living on U.S. handouts arranged by
Pervez Musharraf and George Bush. He tried to get IMF loans, but failed (surely the U.S. wanted to keep him begging); he visited China and asked for
loans, but he was turned down. Then, the U.S. turn on the propaganda that the Taliban were a threat to Pakistan’s nuclear weapons, and turned on the screw on Zardari to wipe them off if he wanted a plum aid package. And the Pakistani army which has been getting from the U.S. a monthly check of
$20 millions for counterinsurgency operations agree because that keeps the army afloat in a financially broke state. And, of course, if the army agreed to wipe out the Taliban, another $ 7.5 billion will be coming. If not, Pakistan may turn into another Somalia-like state, and with the Indian threat always looming [a psychotic Pakistani fear], declaring war on the Taliban became a Pakistani financial necessity.
Is really a war against the Taliban, or against the Pashtun tribes? Chicago Tribune corresponded Mark Magnier reported on May 11, 2009 from Pakistan
that: “Taliban means Everything and Nothing,” and most Pakistanis cannot really comprehend what is going on. A headline on Tiles Online on May 5, 2009 also read: “Mistrust of the West is stronger in Pakistan than fear of the Taliban.” And a Taliban spokesman told the PBS “Frontline” reporter on April 14, 2009: “We have never fought the army before, but we do now because the
Pakistani army and government have adopted U.S. policies.” And, finally, a Pakistan Dawn newspaper editorial on May 6, 2009 called Obama’s supposed Taliban threat to nuclear weapons “journalistic garbage,” said ” the $ 7.5 billion U.S. aid will line only a few pockets in Pakistan and the U.S. [ Pakistani lobbyists], but it won’t trickle down to the common people.” The paper suggested that the government “stop the U.S. meddling, reject the U.S. aid, and resolve the internal differences by itself.”
After the February 2008 Pakistani elections, U.S. Undersecretary of State John
Negreponte went to Pakistan and told the newly elected leaders: No negotiations with the Taliban -if you want U.S. aid to continue.” The global financial crisis hit Pakistan really hard, and the only option to stay afloat was more U.S. aid. But Obama offered it with a condition: “Wipe out the Pashtuns –
under the Taliban logo- to help us control Afghanistan. And Pakistan complied because the salaries of its politicians and the army generals were at stake. Now, many here celebrating the chopping up of Pashtuns as the last
hurdle that will lead us to victory in Afghanistan. But the catastrophic effects, and the cataclysm of refugees caused by the U.S. demanded civil war,
would be the U.S. undoing in Central Asia in the long term. The adage: “Be careful what you wish; you might get,” may come back to haunt us if history is the measuring stick of success. Nikos Retsos, retired professor