The strategy of the islamist insurgency in the suicide attack in Lahore was to create sectarian strife and to intimidate any other clerics who did not support the islamist point of view - what was the point of the Peshawar attack on the Pearl Continental?
We earlier highlighted that the insurgency and the counter-insurgency depends on the on populace - which ever, the state of Pakistan or Islamist insurgency, has to win over or coerse the loyalty of the populace.
Pakistan are now facing a huge problem with IDP -- the UN officials dealing with the IDP issue in Pakistan were staying where???
That's right, the pearl continental in peshawar --- And they were all killed. Will that put more pressure on the Pakistani state??
Refugees will decide Pakistan's fate
Gulfnews: Refugees will decide Pakistan's fate
06/12/2009 11:40 PM | By Basim Usmani, Guardian News & Media Ltd
At 7am on Tuesday, Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari gave assurances from his headquarters in Islamabad that the government was committed to helping internally displaced people (internal refugees) survive, since military operations to drive the Taliban out of the country have left millions homeless.
The Taliban responded by blowing up another five-star hotel, this time in Peshawar, in what seems to be a deliberate attempt to shut down the United Nations World Food Programme efforts in the refugee tent communities in Malakand. The Taliban succeeded in killing all three World Food Programme personnel in Pakistan, prompting the UN to halt all its humanitarian efforts in the country.
Just last week, 60 Taliban posing as civilians were rounded up from internally displace people camps in the North-West Frontier Province and Malakand. It seems these camps will be the last place for extremists to hole up in as the military continues its campaign up through Swat, and neighbouring villages are holding witch-hunts to kill hiding Taliban. The aim of blowing up the hotel was probably to buy time for uprooted Taliban to regroup.
Even two weeks ago, employees of banned sister organisations Jamat-ud Dawa and Falah-i-Insaniat were reported to be combing the refugee camps for young, disaffected men to fight in Kashmir. Meanwhile, the tented community has grown exponentially, with 20 refugees sharing a single outhouse with no access to clean drinking water.
Symbolically located between the subcontinent's Indus and Afghanistan's Kabul rivers, the Swabi tent colony of mostly displaced women and children have no home to return to. The military levelled their villages in Swat, and now they are subsisting in sweltering heat, in packed and diseased conditions. A team of doctors from Islamabad fear the children may contract cholera if clean water and food are not provided for them soon.
Recent money pledged by Obama for the camps, exceeding $200 million (Dh735 million), will have an interesting application now the UN is pulling its activities (and infrastructure) out of the country. America's last Mobile Army Surgical Hospital tents were pitched in Kashmir after the 2005 earthquake, it seems that the mobile army hospitals should be pitched again.
The refugee situation speaks volumes about the unique relationship between Pakistan and the US. The Pakistani government's writ has been steadily waning since the country's inception, with development often stopping short of its major cities Lahore, Karachi and Islamabad.
Despite 62 years to build schools and hospitals in its rural areas, the government has never been able to pull most of its population out from under feudalism and under-development. The government has failed to adequately respond to earthquakes in Kashmir, floods in Balochistan (geographically the largest province of the country) and even famine in Sindh, much less the continuing refugee crises, which have spiralled out of control since late 2006 - when the war on terror heated up in the northwest frontier of Waziristan.
Between 2006 and 2007, mini-exoduses of thousands of people took place on an almost monthly basis from the mountains of north Waziristan. Now makeshift shanty towns and tent colonies have been pitched from the North-Western Frontier all the way down to the outskirts of major cities in Balochistan and Punjab. If too many refugees perish as a result of negligence, the operation against the Taliban will be called off - effectively ceding major territory to the militants.
America's use of drones, being launched illegally from within Pakistan, will not hinder the Taliban. Militants are said to be hiding in Afghan refugee camps in Quetta, just kilometres from the base where the drones are launched.
Thus
the fate of the country rests on whether Obama's goodwill aid and Pakistan's resources can nurse the refugees back to health. If it fails to win their confidence, the US will lose the 'war on terror'. And Pakistanis will lose their country.
An ocean away from Obama's lofty gestures to the Muslim world in Cairo, people in Lahore's streets remain uninterested, and consumed with life as it is. Journalists have been out amassing public opinion when there is still none, with most Pakistanis treating the speech with dismissive words. One truck driver told me, "A new America compassionate to Muslims? I'll believe it when I see it".
More than all the aid, and territory won back from the Taliban, the greatest asset Obama and Pakistan have is the life that could be provided to those who have lost their homes in the 'war on terror'. If Obama can promise refugees a new relationship with Pakistan and the US then he will be hitting the Taliban, and Al Qaida, where it really hurts.
