Pankaj Mishra: Obama's bulldozer risks turning the Taliban into Pakistan's Khmer Rouge
[Pankaj Mishra is an Indian author and writer of literary and political essays.]
Last month Richard Holbrooke, the US state department's special representative, met students from Pakistan's north-west tribal areas. They were enraged by drone attacks, which – according to David Kilcullen, counterinsurgency adviser to General Petraeus – have eliminated only about 14 terrorist leaders while killing 700 civilians. One young man told Holbrooke that he knew someone killed in a Predator drone strike. "You killed 10 members of his family," he said. Another claimed that the strikes had unleashed a fresh wave of refugees. "Are many of them Taliban?" Holbrooke asked. "We are all Taliban," he replied.
Describing this scene in Time, Joe Klein said he was shocked by the declaration, though he recognised it as one "of solidarity, not affiliation". He was also bewildered by the "mixed loyalties and deep resentments [that] make Pakistan so difficult to handle". One wishes Klein had paused to wonder if people anywhere else would wholeheartedly support a foreign power that "collaterally" murders 50 relatives and friends from the air for every militant killed.
Much has been made of Pakistan's "denial" about the threat posed by the Taliban rather than India; correspondingly, western politicians and commentators have applauded the Pakistani military operation in Swat valley that has exposed 3 million people to what Human Rights Watch calls a humanitarian catastrophe. Relatively little attention has been given to America's more damaging evasion of the fact that most people in Pakistan, a "frontline" country in the war on terror, are unsympathetic, if not actively hostile, to it.
Political bitterness rather than racial or religious supremacism fuels this variant of anti-Americanism. Twice in three decades the US has enlisted military dictators in Pakistan to fight its battles – most damagingly in the cold war when, as Barack Obama conceded recently in Cairo, the US heedlessly deployed Muslims as proxies against Soviet communism. Many Pakistanis remember how the blowback from the CIA's anti-Soviet jihad in Afghanistan (millions of Afghan refugees, a rampant Kalashnikov "culture", and the rise of Islamic fundamentalism) ravaged their country, years before it crashed into the US itself on 11 September 2001. Pakistanis now accuse the US, again not unreasonably, for pursuing its failed war on terror in Afghanistan into Pakistan, reinvigorating the extremists it had helped to spawn.
Though beholden to American aid, Pakistan's civilian-military elite has been naturally reluctant to fight too hard to redeem the blunders of an overweening and unreliable ally; covertly supporting extremist groups, elements in the army and intelligence have tried to maintain their room for manoeuvre in both Afghanistan and Kashmir. Occasionally, as in Swat and now again in Waziristan, intense American pressure yields a military assault. It can even attract a degree of public support, as most Pakistanis are appalled by the brutality of Talibanised Pashtuns.
But this does not amount to popular endorsement of drone attacks. Last month Fareed Zakaria informed Jon Stewart on the Daily Show that Pakistan is emerging from its state of denial since his Pakistani friends, who previously opposed the drone attacks, now tell him: "You know what? If that's the only thing that will work, kill those guys." Some members of Pakistan's tiny elite, where Zakaria's native informants come from, may long to exterminate the brutes: they fear, often correctly, Islamic extremists as embodying the rage and frustration of the country's underprivileged majority. But as the suffering of civilians in Swat becomes known, the highly qualified public support for military action will wane quickly...
Read entire article at Guardian (UK)
Last month Richard Holbrooke, the US state department's special representative, met students from Pakistan's north-west tribal areas. They were enraged by drone attacks, which – according to David Kilcullen, counterinsurgency adviser to General Petraeus – have eliminated only about 14 terrorist leaders while killing 700 civilians. One young man told Holbrooke that he knew someone killed in a Predator drone strike. "You killed 10 members of his family," he said. Another claimed that the strikes had unleashed a fresh wave of refugees. "Are many of them Taliban?" Holbrooke asked. "We are all Taliban," he replied.
Describing this scene in Time, Joe Klein said he was shocked by the declaration, though he recognised it as one "of solidarity, not affiliation". He was also bewildered by the "mixed loyalties and deep resentments [that] make Pakistan so difficult to handle". One wishes Klein had paused to wonder if people anywhere else would wholeheartedly support a foreign power that "collaterally" murders 50 relatives and friends from the air for every militant killed.
Much has been made of Pakistan's "denial" about the threat posed by the Taliban rather than India; correspondingly, western politicians and commentators have applauded the Pakistani military operation in Swat valley that has exposed 3 million people to what Human Rights Watch calls a humanitarian catastrophe. Relatively little attention has been given to America's more damaging evasion of the fact that most people in Pakistan, a "frontline" country in the war on terror, are unsympathetic, if not actively hostile, to it.
Political bitterness rather than racial or religious supremacism fuels this variant of anti-Americanism. Twice in three decades the US has enlisted military dictators in Pakistan to fight its battles – most damagingly in the cold war when, as Barack Obama conceded recently in Cairo, the US heedlessly deployed Muslims as proxies against Soviet communism. Many Pakistanis remember how the blowback from the CIA's anti-Soviet jihad in Afghanistan (millions of Afghan refugees, a rampant Kalashnikov "culture", and the rise of Islamic fundamentalism) ravaged their country, years before it crashed into the US itself on 11 September 2001. Pakistanis now accuse the US, again not unreasonably, for pursuing its failed war on terror in Afghanistan into Pakistan, reinvigorating the extremists it had helped to spawn.
Though beholden to American aid, Pakistan's civilian-military elite has been naturally reluctant to fight too hard to redeem the blunders of an overweening and unreliable ally; covertly supporting extremist groups, elements in the army and intelligence have tried to maintain their room for manoeuvre in both Afghanistan and Kashmir. Occasionally, as in Swat and now again in Waziristan, intense American pressure yields a military assault. It can even attract a degree of public support, as most Pakistanis are appalled by the brutality of Talibanised Pashtuns.
But this does not amount to popular endorsement of drone attacks. Last month Fareed Zakaria informed Jon Stewart on the Daily Show that Pakistan is emerging from its state of denial since his Pakistani friends, who previously opposed the drone attacks, now tell him: "You know what? If that's the only thing that will work, kill those guys." Some members of Pakistan's tiny elite, where Zakaria's native informants come from, may long to exterminate the brutes: they fear, often correctly, Islamic extremists as embodying the rage and frustration of the country's underprivileged majority. But as the suffering of civilians in Swat becomes known, the highly qualified public support for military action will wane quickly...