U.S. forces war on Pakistan, creates huge refugee crisis

By Deirdre Griswold

May 20, 2009

There is not a shred of doubt about it: The terrible humanitarian crisis now occurring in the area of northwest Pakistan bordering Afghanistan—described by the U.N. High Commission for Refugees as the worst refugee crisis since Rwanda in 1994—was caused directly by the U.S. government and the Pentagon.

More than 2 million people were forced to flee their homes when the Pakistani Army, financed and equipped by the Pentagon, moved into the Swat Valley after a week of intense bombardment by bombers, jet fighters and helicopter gunships.

“Almost 1.5 million people have registered for assistance since fighting erupted three weeks ago, the UNHCR said, bringing the total number of war-displaced in North West Frontier province to more than 2 million, not including 300,000 the provincial government believes have not registered.” (The Guardian/UK, March 19)

The suffering is shared by a large part of the population in the area. “According to the U.N. just 130,000 people are being accommodated in the sprawling, hot camps in Mardan and Swabi districts, while most are squeezed into the homes of friends or relatives, with as many as 85 people in one house,” continues The Guardian’s report.

There is no count given of the killed and wounded. News media are not being allowed into the area.

Washington has been demanding this offensive for years. Even when Gen. Pervez Musharraf was still the “elected” dictator of Pakistan, articles in the New York Times and Washington Post expressed the frustrations of the U.S. foreign policy and military establishments over his reluctance to move forcefully against the semi-autonomous regions along the border.

Musharraf had to relinquish his seat when a huge mass movement swept the opposition party into office a year ago, even after its presidential candidate, Benazir Bhutto, was assassinated right after returning home from exile. Her place was taken by her husband, Asif Ali Zardari.

Zardari, now the president of Pakistan, has yielded to the enormous pressures from Washington and launched the long-demanded offensive against areas the U.S. claims are controlled by the Taliban—a religious/political group the U.S. was supporting not that long ago, when it wanted to overthrow a progressive government in Afghanistan that was close to the Soviet Union.

The offensive started just as Zardari was on his way to Washington to meet with President Barack Obama and top representatives of the State Department and Pentagon.

An ominous command switch

At the same time, U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates replaced the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, Gen. David McKiernan, with Lt. Gen. Stanley McChrystal. As bad as McKiernan was, it appears that McChrystal will be even worse news for the people of that beleaguered country.

McChrystal’s resume includes years in charge of Joint Special Operations Command—“special ops” soldiers who are trained to disregard conventional laws of war and have been described as the “snake-eating, slit-their-throat” guys—in other words, they are specialists in the most vicious forms of killing.

The Obama administration is also sending thousands more U.S. troops to Afghanistan, despite the obvious mandate it got from the people to end the wars there and in Iraq and bring the troops home.

All this bloodshed and threats of much more cannot wipe away the fact that the U.S. war in Afghanistan is in deep trouble. It is being admitted more and more openly in the Western media that the population is openly against the war and occupation. Demonstrations occur with regularity, especially when yet another village has been bombed and scores of people are incinerated or blown to bits by U.S. bombs.

And so, in typical fashion, the imperialists are escalating the war in order to save it. They have unleashed a whole new chain of circumstances in Pakistan, hoping to pit militant Muslims there against those who want a secular country. They are also banking on using the Pakistani military against the people, as they have done so successfully before with a whole string of U.S.-supported military dictators.

The British Empire was built on divide and conquer. It would behoove the warhawks in the Pentagon to remember what happened to the British when they once again tried to conquer Afghanistan in the 1890s.

British destroyed but did not conquer

Despite their scorched earth policies and their use of mercenaries from India, the British could not conquer Malakand, the same area now under bombardment, in their 1897 campaign against the Pashtun people. Winston Churchill himself took part in that campaign and wrote a vilely racist book about it.

The British had repeating rifles and could mow down the heroic Pashtun defenders, yet they never could conquer them.

Today, Amnesty International’s Asia-Pacific director, Sam Zarifi, says the Pakistani army “seems to be pursuing a scorched earth policy” in Malakand. The military has imposed a “shoot on sight” policy for anyone violating an indefinite curfew imposed there. (Washington Post, May 14)

But the spirit of resistance to imperial/colonial domination that defeated the British in 1897 continues to run strong throughout the Swat Valley and the whole area of the North West Frontier. These latest atrocities will only burn it that much deeper into the hearts of the people for generations to come.