[Peace-discuss] Pakistan: The Rotten Fruits of War

[C. G. Estabrook]

[AWARE has associated itself with the Peaceable Assembly Campaign of 
Voices for Creative Nonviolence. Here two VCNV activists explain why the 
Campaign is necessary -- and, by implication, why resiting escalation in 
Afghanistan while necessary is hardly enough.  We cannot wish for the 
Obama administration's success in AfPak; their policy must be 
reversed.--CGE]

	October 22 2009
	Pakistan: The Rotten Fruits of War
	By Dan Pearson and Kathy Kelly
	Voices for Creative Non-Violence

Five months ago, shortly after the Pakistani government had begun a 
military offensive against suspected Taliban fighters in the 
northernmost area of the country, we arrived in Islamabad, the capital, 
as part of a small delegation organized by Voices for Creative 
Nonviolence (www.vcnv.org). Our initial travel plans had focused on 
learning more about civilian suffering caused by U.S. drone attacks.
But, over the course of our three-week visit, close to 3 million people 
had become uprooted by violence in the Swat Valley and neighboring 
districts. Visiting tent encampments and abandoned buildings to which 
people had fled, we spoke with people who identified themselves as poor 
people, with meager resources, who were anxious to return to their homes 
as soon as possible. They were also alarmed because they feared that 
their crops, animals, shops and stores were already destroyed.

Now that the military offensive in Swat has wound down, Pakistan’s 
government officials have labeled the operation a success. They claim to 
have cleared the area of Taliban fighters and have commenced a new 
military offensive in South Waziristan.

A closer look reveals a very different story.

Many families from Swat and surrounding districts returned to find that 
their homes, crops and other means of survival have been damaged or 
destroyed. Such circumstances force many to rely heavily on food aid.

According to Amjad Jamal, a spokesperson for the World Food Program 
(WFP), “around 2.4 million displaced people received aid from the WFP 
food hubs last month.”

The WFP announced today that they are temporarily closing 20 food hubs 
in the North West Frontier Province citing concerns of worsening security.

Reporting from a Pakistani field hospital run by the International 
Committee of the Red Cross, the BBC met with scores of victims wounded 
by land mine explosions. The father of a 14 year old boy whose hands 
were blown off while he was playing with a piece of unexploded ordnance 
expressed anger over the government’s failure to remove the land mines 
before telling people it was safe to return. The father worked as a 
jeweler before the military offensive began, but after he and his family 
fled the fighting, his shop was looted; now he has no income, and his 
home was damaged in the shelling.

The BBC also reported that more than 200 corpses, believed to be bodies 
of suspected Taliban, have been found across the valley in recent weeks.

Pakistan's independent Human Rights Commission has called for an 
investigation into reports of numerous extra-judicial killings and 
reprisals carried out by security forces.

Dr. Aasim Sajjad, a professor at the Lahore University of Management 
Sciences, believes that the Taliban’s numbers will grow as a result of 
Pakistan’s military offensives. “The hundreds of thousands languishing 
in refugee camps talk of the mortar shells that have destroyed their 
homes and killed their relatives,” says Dr. Sajjad. “They seethe with 
anger and warn the government that most Taliban fighters hail from the 
local population. The longer the war continues -- and it has only just 
begun in this region -- the better the chances that the Taliban will be 
able to recruit from the refugees.” (Monthly Review “War, Islamists and 
the Left,” July 7, 2009)

Yesterday’s deadly suicide bombing at the Islamic University in 
Islamabad was the latest in a series of the Taliban’s recent reprisal 
attacks against the Pakistani government that have claimed the lives of 
over 150 people.

Military offensives that promise to smash or eradicate “the bad guys” 
may accomplish short-term “successes” by locking up or killing armed 
resisters and promising that the military will provide peace and 
security. But military establishments aren’t set up to address the 
long-term, desperate grievances that afflict impoverished people and 
give rise to support for militant groups of resisters.

According to conservative estimates, 75% of Pakistan's population of 170 
million lives on less than $2 a day. The majority of Pakistanis yearn 
for food security, clean water, a livelihood that can sustain their 
families and education that will help their children break out of 
impoverishment. Young men who are jobless, shut out of education are 
resentful of social structures that favor wealthy landowners and other 
elites and they are drawn to Taliban groups that promise a Robin Hood 
sort of redistribution. These Taliban groups have been dealt a temporary 
setback by the military offensive, but the fundamental problems of 
hunger, lack of clean water, illiteracy and joblessness haven’t been 
tackled.

Meanwhile, U.S. drone attacks continue, in both Pakistan and 
Afghanistan. Using “eyes in the skies” by piloting Unmanned Aerial 
Vehicles, (UAVs or drones), the U.S. analysts can see and attack 
suspected Taliban or Al Qaida fighters, along with anyone else who might 
happen to be in the vicinity. But the UAVs won’t help us understand the 
acute need for humanitarian relief, diplomacy, negotiation and dialogue 
in a region already overwhelmed by attacks, counter-attacks, bloodshed 
and death.

Whether it is in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq or even in the U.S., as 
we've seen in recent years, war takes its heaviest toll on the poorest.
It is a profound mistake to believe that military force is a solid 
foundation for peace.

[Kathy Kelly (Kathy at vcnv.org) and Dan Pearson (dan at vcnv.org) are 
co-coordinators of Voices for Creative Nonviolence. With colleagues in 
Chicago, they are organizing the Peaceable Assembly Campaign to 
nonviolently resist U.S. wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, as well 
as military support for the Israeli military.]