Vol. 73/No. 20      May 25, 2009

Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani announced May 7 that regular army units would be deployed to join paramilitary forces in an escalation of operations that began April 26.

Pakistan’s major political parties, with the exception of the Jamaat-e-Islami, backed the offensive.

The day of Gilani’s announcement, U.S. president Barack Obama said the United States would send $400 million in emergency economic aid to Pakistan. Washington has also budgeted $700 million to train and equip Pakistan’s military in the next fiscal year, beginning September 30, up from the current $400 million.

Pakistani military spokesman Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas said between 12,000 and 15,000 army troops were taking part in the operation against an estimated 4,000 Taliban fighters.

The Pakistani capitalist rulers have stationed the great majority of the country’s 550,000-strong regular army in the eastern provinces and Kashmir, facing its rivals in bordering India. Washington has pressed Islamabad to commit more of its regular army to fighting Taliban forces in the northwest, without much success—6,000 were relocated in late April for the offensive.

The Pakistani military is razing homes to the ground and employing tanks and artillery backed by fighter jets and helicopter gunships in its assault in the Swat district as well as parts of neighboring Dir, and Buner. Paratroopers were dropped in Swat and Dir May 12.

Pakistan’s interior minister, Rehman Malik, said more than 700 Islamist fighters were killed by Pakistani forces in the first four days of the army offensive. The military has not released any estimates of civilian casualties, but they are high, according to press accounts.

Fighting between the government and Taliban forces over the last nine months has made more than 1 million Pakistanis homeless. An estimated 600,000 people fled Swat and the surrounding area in the last four days, joining 550,000 internal refugees who fled battlegrounds since last August. Only some are “lucky” enough to make their way into crowded refugee camps set up by the government.

Many residents have been trapped by government air strikes and shoot-on-sight curfews on one hand and roadblocks set up by Taliban on the other. All electricity, water, and gas has been cut throughout Swat. Communications, including cell phone service, have been disconnected in many areas. “I want to pick up a gun and fight the Taliban and the army,” Said Quraysh told the daily Dawn, as he set up a tent in a refugee camp.

The Pakistani military has accompanied its offensive with propaganda. The Taliban “are the same as Jewish forces who are against the existence and security of the country,” one military pamphlet said, according to Dawn. The pamphlet added that the government had allowed Taliban into the area to prosper and obtain a source of income, but that the Taliban violated its agreement by refusing to lay down their arms, taking over land, extorting money, and forcing marriages.

The Pakistani government helped establish the Taliban movement in the 1990s, in large part to gain influence and “stability” in Afghanistan amid the chaos following the Soviet withdrawal in 1989. One of the consequences of Islamabad’s alliance with Washington following the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 was a souring of relations between Islamabad and sections of the Taliban in Pakistan that increasingly began to challenge the Pakistani government.

The Pakistani military has been at war with the Swat Taliban off and on over the last two years.

In mid-February the Taliban agreed to lay down their arms in exchange for a withdrawal of Pakistani forces and the implementation of sharia, Islamic law, in Swat and several surrounding districts comprising some one-third of the country’s North West Frontier Province. Islamabad then signed a peace agreement with Taliban forces in Bajur, in the country’s Federal Administered Tribal Areas.

The Swat Taliban did not lay down their arms, but instead used the reprieve to expand their military operations and control, including an advance into Buner, some 60 miles from Islamabad. They established a base of support among a layer of landless peasants by expropriating some of the largest landlords in the region. They took over emerald mines, extorted businesses, and kidnapped wealthy individuals for ransom.

In addition, the Obama administration became increasingly opposed to the Swat peace deal and pressured Islamabad to respond.
 
 
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U.S. troops out of Afghanistan!  
 
 
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