Masopher's Mind

With fresh funding from foreign financiers mostly the United States, Islamabad has gone to war with the SWAT. Last years very successful “spring offensive” covered by Masopher.com has finally been answered with a government spring offensive of its own.

The infighting civilian government gave the go-ahead to the military to start ramping up violence in the recently overrun western provinces of the beleaguered semi-nation. Taliban and local militia forces have come under attack along with more than 1/2 of a million civilians.

The SWAT valley was once an idyllic enclave of gentle ski slopes and smiling locals nicking your valuables when you were out enjoying said slopes. The turmoil of invaded Afganistan has done more than stir up the locals since fleeing Pashtuns, Taliban and Al Qaeda have started setting up shop. Having prohibited Americas “intervention” on their “Muslim” lands, Pakistan is faced with the task of both calming the jihadists, restraining the military and remaining dire enough to dissuade another NATO-US “excursion”.

Pakistan is one of the few places in the world where a few thugs with soviet era AKs can threaten what passes for world peace. The mix of poverty, religion, revolutionary fervour and nuclear weapons makes for a disastrous escalation of the slightest grievance, of which Pakistan has many.

The only reason why this situation in Pakistan cannot be considered civil war is because Pakistan barely can be considered a single entity. With the Balochs aloof in the south, snobbish Punjab in the west and Kashmir still heavily disputed with India Islamabad can claim to kill 700 militants without questions to how 700 militants exist in the first place being asked. 700 militants are a lot of people for a rag tag band of cold war equipped Bedouins. It is possible that half of the “militants” were actually the women and children of the militants but it could mean that there is a considerable army existing that does threaten the civilian establishment.

The suffering continues and escalates. Islamabad’s violent gesture towards its own people for the sake of US loans and grants exacerbates its problems. Poverty, religion and justifiable resentment towards corrupt local and foreign governments. Get rid of these and you get rid of the pain in Pakistan.