Kicking a Hornet's Nest in Pakistan

Pakistan's once beautiful Swat Valley has been turned into a battlefield. Last week, Pakistan finally bowed to Washington's angry demands to unleash its military against rebellious Pashtun tribesmen of Northwest Frontier Province (NWFP).

Islamabad's army and air force claimed to have killed 1,000 "terrorists" (read: mostly civilians) and almost emptied the valley of its inhabitants. UN sources now say the operation has created a staggering 1.5-2 million refugees. When Serbs did this to Albanians in Kosovo, Washington rightly called it a war crime.

Since many Pashtun men routinely carry weapons and congregate, Islamabad's claims its strike aircraft, helicopter gunships and heavy artillery can differentiate between civilians and militants is as untruthful as similar claims by the CIA and US military when targeting Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Dead civilians inevitably become "suspected Taliban terrorists."

The US keeps kicking hornet's nests around the globe and wondering why it continues getting stung.

These Pashtun tribes that were attacked are collectively mislabeled "Taliban" in the west. While Pashtun tribesmen, they are not the Afghan Taliban. But it's convenient for western media and Pentagon to slap this convenient label on them, just as a wide assortment of anti-American groups in Iraq, Afghanistan and Somalia that have nothing to do with Isama bin Laden are branded "al-Qaida." Now, add Pakistani "Taliban" to Washington's "bad guys" list.

The Obama administration had threatened to stop $1.2 billion annual cash payments to bankrupt Pakistan's political and military leadership, and block $5.5 billion future aid, unless Islamabad sent its soldiers into Pakistan's turbulent NWFP along the Afghan frontier and crushed attempts to re-establish Islamic Law and autonomy.

The unpopular, isolated government of Pakistan's president, Asif Ali Zardari, which many Pakistanis call American puppets, was understandably reluctant to unleash its armed forces against Pakistani citizens, but Washington's angry demands became irresistible.

Washington further demanded that Islamabad crush the reinstatement of Islamic law in Swat. Many people in the Northwest Frontier region and other parts of Pakistan want Islamic law because in utterly corrupt Pakistan it represents the only honest and swift justice. The only other "law," government civil courts and administration, are bought by the highest bidders and held in contempt.

Pakistan's armed forces, who are being paid by the US to fight Pashtun tribes, have scored a brilliant victory against their own people. Too bad Pakistan's military does not manage to do as well in wars against India. Blasting civilians at home, however, is much safer and more profitable.

Unable to pacify Afghanistan's Pashtun tribes (again, lumped together as "Taliban"), a deeply frustrated Washington has begun tearing Pakistan apart in an effort to end Pashtun resistance in both nations. CIA drone aircraft have so far killed over 700 Pakistani Pashtun. Only 6% were militants, according to Pakistan's media investigations, the rest civilians.

Pashtun, also called Pathan by outsiders, are the world's largest tribal people. Fifteen million live in Afghanistan, forming half its population. Twenty-six million live right across the border in Pakistan.

Up to three millions Afghan Pashtun are refugees in Pakistan. US policy in Afghanistan has excluded the majority Pashtun from power, handing it instead to their blood enemies, the minority Tajiks and Uzbeks.

True to their strategy of divide and rule, Britain's imperialists split the Pashtun by an artificial border, the Durand Line (which became today's Afghan-Pak border). Pashtun reject this artificial colonial border.

Many Pashtun tribes agreed to join Pakistan in 1947 provided much of their homeland remain autonomous and free of government troops. The princely Pashtun state of Swat, where Islamic Sharia law was in force, only fully joined Pakistan in 1969 after assurances of autonomy and religious freedom.

As Pakistan's Pashtun increasingly aided Pashtun resistance in Afghanistan, US "Predator" drones began attacking them. Washington forced Islamabad to violate its own constitution by sending troops into Pashtun lands. The result was the current explosion of Pashtun anger.

I have been to war with Pashtun and have seen their legendary courage, strong sense of honor, and fierce determination. They are also hugely quarrelsome, feuding, prickly, and notorious for seeking revenge. One learns never to threaten a Pashtun or give him ultimatums. These mountain warriors defied the US by refusing to hand over Osama bin Laden because he was a hero of the anti-Soviet war and their guest. Doing would have violated their ancient code of "Pashtunwali" that still guides them.

Now, Washington's ham-handed policies and last week's Swat atrocity threaten to ignite Pakistan's second worst nightmare after invasion by India: that its 26 million Pashtun will secede and join Afghanistan's Pashtun to form an independent Pashtun state, Pashtunistan.

This would rend Pakistan asunder, probably provoke its restive Baluchi tribes to secede, and might tempt mighty India to intervene military, risking nuclear war with beleaguered Pakistan.

The Pashtun of Northwest Frontier have no intention or capability of moving into Pakistan's other provinces, Punjab, Sindh and Baluchistan. They just want to be left alone. Alarms of a "Taliban takeover of Pakistan" are driven by ignorance or propaganda.

Lowland Pakistanis have repeatedly rejected militant Islamic parties. Many have little love for Pashtun, whom they regard as mountain rustics best avoided. Pakistan's Islamist parties have traditionally won less than 10% of the national vote.

Nor are Pakistan's well-guarded nuclear weapons a danger -- at least not yet. False alarms about Pakistan's nukes come from neoconservative fabricators with a hidden Mideast agenda.

The real danger is in the US acting like an enraged mastodon, trampling Pakistan under foot, and forcing Islamabad's military to make war on its own people. Having wrecked Iraq, Washington now seems bent on doing the same to fragile Pakistan.

At some point nationalistic Pakistani soldiers may rebel against the corrupt generals and politicians on Washington's payroll and overthrow the government. That is what happened in Iraq in 1957 and Iran in 1979.

Equally ominous, a poor people's uprising spreading across feudal Pakistan -- also mislabeled "Taliban" -- threatens a radical national rebellion similar to India's spreading Maoist Naxalite rebellion.

As in Iraq, ignorance and military arrogance continue to drive US Afghan policy. President Obama's people have no more understanding what they are getting into in "Afpak" than did the Bush administration. Obama is getting extremely bad advice from his so-called Afghanistan "experts" and the Pentagon's gung-ho, would-be crusaders.

Comments

[Irsa Hussain]

A five minute internet surfing will reveal the difference between the use of Unmanned Air Vehicles (UAVs) commonly known are drones by the US to mop out congregations without actually looking at them with a human eye, as opposed to well planned operations undertaken by the Pak Army backed by the government and the people across the country, with facilitation of Swat's pukhtoon natives (who have welcomed the Pak Army and have helped them in identifying militant installations and their hideouts as substantiated by a number of sources and independent analysts as well as research teams sent in Swat) Your observation of persistent heavy civilian losses and no difference between US bombing the territory versus Pak Army's operation actually has zero substantiation in the news, analytical verdicts or any reports published in this time and space.

[Irsa Hussain]

Lastly, Pakistani government, despite US pressure has waited for the vote of confidence from the newly elected democratic government before the war. Pakistan resorting to the ill-fated peace deal, (to the alarm of Obama' administration) is testimony to the this observation that, atleast people of Pakistan do not see the country fighting solely under US pressure. Not to mention, the so called Pakistani Talibans on the frontier are actually turning out to be foreigner: Arabs, Libyans, Uzbeks and Gorakhs evident from those arrested in the ongoing operation as can be seen on this link:
http://www.dawn.com/wps/wcm/connect/dawn-content-library/dawn/news/pakistan/provinces/13+five+burqa-clad+arabs+arrested+in+mohmand--za-08

[Irsa Hussain]

contd:
Trust me, when I say this: Pakistan Army is as far away from an internal revolt as the skies are from the center of the earth. They are glorified and widely celebrated for being the most disciplined and the strongest institution in the country. True, there have been over protective Generals and those aspiring greater authority in their overwhelming vision to fix things up for Pakistan (however flawed that vision be;), but there is a difference between being a De facto dictator and corrupt ruler ( I hope you know the difference between being corrupt as opposed to being the wrong person in the wrong place). Lets tell the black apart from the red instead of calling the whole thing black. The General, have wrong to have surpassed constitution still.

[Irsa Hussain]

Eric:

You surely have some Steven Spielberg imagination over here. The account you gave of the situation in Pakistan is infuriatingly absurd to say the least, and quite frankly it is difficult for any Pakistani to read the entire article without losing their calm.

I am a punjabi residing in Lahore and I have many highly educated pukhtoon friends from my time spent in Quaid-e-Azam University of Islamabad, where, if you come at this time of the earth, you will find an abundance of bright and well to do pukhtoon students and teachers. (This university happens to be the top ranked university of the country (Higher Education Commission of Pakistan ranks) and the best one in the capital of Pakistan, Islamabad, for post graduate study).

From my personal experience, (my closest friends including my roommates have been pukhtoon and Baloch as well) I can assure you that terms between punjabis and pukhtoons maybe politically stressed but on urban social level where they interact, the case is far FARRR from comparable to the communal strife of the Dalits of India. We live together, make friends, inter-marry, attend common social gatherings, go to the same prayer rooms; We try to learn each other's language, enjoy each other's cultural events and cuisine. Especially in Islamabad, because of it being the federal capital, where the most exotic mix of communities living in the country very, very peacefully can be witnessed unmistakably.

[jaysan]

I strongly disagree with Eric Margolis. It is the Punjabi-dominated Pakistani military establishment which fears Pashtun nationalism so much that it has created the Taliban, in order to brainwash Pashtuns with religious fanaticism and submerge their ethnic identity, or at least subordinated it to fighting wars of conquest and expansionism as a diversion to keep them from breaking away from Pakistan.

The first use of Pashtuns in foreign wars of conquest was in attacking Kashmir in 1948. But the latest exploitation of Pashtuns for conquest was in the creation of Taliban to bring Afghanistan under Islamabad's control and make it into a client state. Since the Pakistani-backed Taliban's futile military campaigns were unable to conquer the determined non-Pashtuns of Northern Afghanistan, the Taliban then became attracted to AlQaeda in obtaining help to reach their unattainable goal of conquering the north. Since Pakistan cannot control the Pashtuns without sending them on foreign campaigns of conquest, and since the Pashtuns/Taliban cannot win such wars over non-Pashtuns without help from even deadlier organizations like AlQaeda, then this has led to a cycle of escalating international conflict and terrorism.

Eric Margolis fails to recognize any of this.

[SaulZ]

Eric:

I agree with your assertion, "Nor are Pakistan's well-guarded nuclear weapons a danger -- at least not yet. False alarms about Pakistan's nukes come from neoconservative fabricators with a hidden Mideast agenda."

However, I disagree with your take on Pushtoons or Pukhtoons as we are known as in Pakistan, hence the new name of the NWFP - Pakhtoonkhwa. You tend to live in the 80s when you visited the region, stayed there, and covered Afghan war. Pakhtoons of today are very different from 30 years ago. Clanism has come down. Pakhtoons have gotten education and have moved on. For example, Pakhtoon girl of tribal areas and Swat have migrated to Peshawar to get university education and Pakhtoons of Swat district want peace so that tourism could return to them. Pakistani Talibans are far from Pakhtoons. They are terrorists and have wreck havoc on us. These terrorists are getting money and arms from some outside source. However, they are no match for the military. Pakhtoons blamed military for not taking action sooner. Army cites two reasons in defending late action - suicide bombs on masses and lack of confidence that it had support for the army action.

[shmoos]

Pakistan is fighting a bloody battle against its own people, killing scores from the relative comfort of fighter jets and helicopter gunships. It is appalling to see the tragedy unfold. But why are you compelled to pull India into the equation. There are 2 scenarios. One, the pak army might snap under the strain of arm twisting by the U.S and truly become a rogue state. Or, the pak army will continue the slaughter at America's behest, which might start a civil war and secession. Neither scenario involves a role for India. The new gov in India has a lot of sane people and the last thing we want is to get pulled into Pakistan's civil conflict. It is America's war and you have to sort it out on your own. Please don't pull us into the swamp of war.