- The Swat valley peace deal is over, which is exactly what President Obama wanted. The U.S. and its allies opposed the deal from the beginning, applied immense pressure to the Pakistani state to overturn it, and finally offered another massive bribe to get them to resume war…. So, the Obama administration is now driving a regional apocalypse, using much the same propaganda tactics as the Bush administration to galvanise a sceptical public.
The above blog post is brief, but it contains no less than thirteen links for those seeking more information.
It’s true that in recent days, the Pakistani Taliban managed to capture the district of Buner, some 100 kilometers from Islamabad, provoking well-publicized panic among American officials and now, a heavy-handed response from the Pakistani military. This has caused even progressives to react with alarm, calling on the Obama administration to do something before Pakistan’s nukes fall into the hands of extremists. A cynic might wonder, as Lenin’s Tomb does above, whether the scare tactics are deliberate on the part of the Obama team, to justify the wider regional war Obama signaled during his campaign; or even, as some Pakistani elites fear, a spiriting away of Pakistan’s nukes by American special forces.
In the U.S. we’re hearing only one side of the story. We don’t a thoughful discussion of how the drone attacks begun under Bush and continued by Obama, intended to target Al Qaeda operatives but which inevitably kill women and children, are themselves a major cause of the instability we’re reading about. There are now up to one million refugees in Pakistan due to the fighting, and drone attacks have killed nearly 700 civilians but only 14 confirmed militants, a ratio of 50:1.
Just as in Iraq in 2004 and 2005, it might be time to ask whether U.S. tactics are part of the problem, and stop the provocative drone attacks. Concrete gestures of cooperation with the Pakistani governing class would also help, to allay fears that Washington is preparing for another military coup. This could start with U.S. officials taking Pakistani democracy more seriously than ever before, and engaging in a public, transparent discussion with Pakistani politicians, journalists and civil society. Scaremongering by the U.S. won’t help build trust on either side.