TW: New Yorker writer George Packer has been traveling through some Taliban infested parts of Pakistan including areas where the Pakistani military has counter-attacked the Taliban generating many refugees. His observations frame why "solving" the challenges emanating from their are so difficult. The observations sound quite familiar to similar observations made over the years in places like Vietnam etc.
The Taliban wish to sow dissension, sowing dissension is much easier than creating economic opportunity and personal security. The locals probably do not really care who provides the security and opportunity just that they are created. Liberty is probably very low on their list as well. It gets circular quickly.
From George Packer at New Yorker:
"...During numerous interviews in the school, a mosque, one of the official camps, and on the streets, I heard nothing but antipathy toward the Taliban, whose spreading influence and well-publicized violence finally prompted Pakistan’s army to take the fight to Swat and Buner. The refugees I spoke with from Swat all told stories of girls’ schools shut down, policemen beheaded, terror and intimidation spread through radio broadcasts and public displays of violence. But I heard little praise for the government either. A number of refugees and residents of Mardan questioned how serious it was about cleaning out the militants. “We can’t say if the fighting is real or a drama,” Hoti, the lawyer, told me. “Drama” was a word I often heard—it meant essentially a show. A civil servant sitting on a bench by Hoti’s desk said, “They’re shelling on innocent people, not Taliban. Every day you hear ninety militants are killed. Out of these ninety, eighty are innocent. Or maybe ninety are innocent.”
The government’s presence on the streets of Mardan was harder to detect than that of the militants. The forty-one-year-old mayor, Hamayatullah Mayar, told me that international aid wasn’t reaching the hundreds of thousands of hidden refugees. “The government has provided nothing, nothing, nothing,” he said. “People here are supporting the operation—they say the terrorists must be rooted out. They blame the Taliban.” I asked if their sympathies might switch if the tide of refugees continued to pour into Mardan and more help did not arrive. “People will not sympathize with the Taliban,” he said, “but they will turn against the government.” Then the mayor led a crowd of local councilmen in a protest march out on the main road: the government demonstrating against the government.
Also curiously absent was the United States. Four years ago, when an earthquake struck the high mountains of northern Pakistan, the American military used its tremendous logistical resources to ferry aid and shelter to the victims, and for a time the tarnished image of the United States gained a lustrous new sheen in Pakistan. This time, the proximity to a war zone and the extreme sensitivity of the Pakistani army have prevented American aid in the form of heavy-lift helicopters and medical personnel. Instead, as Holbrooke said today in Islamabad, the U.S. has provided half the total funding for the relief effort, and President Obama is asking Congress to commit another two hundred million dollars.
But Pakistani politics makes it difficult for the U.S. to claim credit, and for vital American assets to be used to help what has become the world’s largest group of displaced people. So this time, with the political stakes incredibly high, our help is almost invisible. Refugees are easily radicalized, and if the Pakistani army, which carries out counterinsurgency with a bludgeon, continues to create thousands of new ones, with no government plan for their return to Swat and the reconstruction of their homes, it’s quite possible that the long-bearded men under the black-and-white flags at the traffic circle will find a receptive audience for their message."
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/georgepacker/2009/06/postcard-from-mardan.html
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