Pakistan: Losing the peace

Four weeks in, the battle between the Pakistan army and Taliban for the Swat Valley has reached a "decisive stage", says the government. Commandos have been dropped near the guerrillas' urban citadel of Mingora. The army has imposed a blanket curfew while the Taliban are reportedly salting approach roads with mines. With fewer than 10,000 civilians left, mostly the old, infirm and hostage, the army is readying for a hand-to-hand, street-to-street, combat. The Taliban -- dug in, armed to the teeth -- "will fight to the last breath," vows spokesman Muslim Khan.

Much will depend on the outcome of this war, and not only for Swat and Pakistan. Already cracks are appearing in Pakistan's political and religious opinion over the scale and severity of an action that has caused the displacement of two million people. Those cracks are bound to widen the longer the conflict lasts, the more punitive it becomes, and the more civilian casualties it costs.

For now, however, the rare political consensus forged by the government's turn against the Taliban is holding. At an all-party conference in Islamabad on 18 May it won majority endorsement for the counterinsurgency, though some opposition leaders -- like the popular (and populist) ex-premier Nawaz Sharif -- balked at conferring a "positive role" on the army.

Similarly while local help for the refugees has been tremendous -- with villagers next to Swat giving food, water, lands, even their homes -- the sight of a ragged people on foot has yet to trigger the same national solidarity as after the 2005 Kashmir earthquake. In fact local politicians from Sindh want curbs put on "Swatis" entering their province, lest they bring "Talibanisation".

And while President Asif Zardari's recent trips to New York, London and Paris stumped up some cash for the displaced, it was only a third of the amount required, said the United Nations.

You can see the same varying levels of commitment among the victims of the fighting.

At a military hospital in Peshawar casualties from the front-line are ferried in on stretchers, ambulances and helicopters. Nadir Khan is one of them. Young, zealous, hypertense, he was hit in the back by sniper fire hours after being parachuted behind Taliban lines in the Swat mountains. He is a "guerrilla commando", he says, and eager to return to the front.

"This is not America's war," he said, in answer to the inevitable question. "It's our war. It was imposed on us. The Taliban said they wanted Islamic law. The government implemented Islamic law. So why are the Taliban fighting? It shows they have another agenda."

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http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2009/948/in4.htm