Ahmed Rashid, Lahore-based, journalist writing for the BBC:Pakistan & Afghanistan Crisis: Pakistan In 2010, Pakistan faces a triple crisis:
- Acute political instability - President Asif Ali Zardari may be forced to resign, which could trigger long-term political unrest
- An ever-worsening economic crisis that is creating vast armies of jobless youth who are being attracted to the message of extremism
- The army's success rate in dealing with its own indigenous Taliban problem
The latter has been partially successful, but consider the figures reported by the Dawn Media Group:Peshawar: Of the 44 predator strikes carried out by US drones in the tribal areas of Pakistan over the past 12 months, only five were able to hit their actual targets, killing five key Al-Qaeda and Taliban leaders, but at the cost of over
700 innocent civilians. According to the statistics compiled by Pakistani authorities, the Afghanistan-based US drones killed 708 people in 44 predator attacks targeting the tribal areas between
January 1 and December 31, 2009.
For each Al Qaeda and Taliban terrorist killed by US drones, 140 innocent people also had to die.
Over 90 per cent of those killed in the deadly missile strikes were civilians, claim authorities. The success percentage for the drone hits during 2009 was hardly 11 per cent. On average, 58 civilians were killed in these attacks every month, 12 persons every week and almost two people every day.
Ahmed Rashid continues:Pakistan & Afghanistan Crisis: AfghanistanThe
Pakistan military, which effectively controls policy towards
India and
Afghanistan, shows no signs of giving up on the sanctuaries that the Afghan Taliban have acquired in Pakistan. US success in Afghanistan is unlikely without eliminating these sanctuaries or forcing the Afghan Taliban leadership into talks with Kabul.
For the moment the army is hedging its bets with the Afghan Taliban, as it is fearful about a potential power vacuum in Afghanistan once the Americans start to leave in 2011. Other neighbouring countries -
India, Iran, Russia and the
Central Asian republics - may start thinking along the same lines and prepare their own Afghan proxies to oppose the Afghan Taliban, which could result in a return to a brutal civil war similar to that of the 1990s.
Is History about to repeat itself?
In response to a reader letter to his publication Harijan in 1939, Ghandi wrote this reponse. Readers of this blog will be able to figure the political position posed by the writer of the letter, but here I admire how Gandhi clearly understood the universality of people. His answers take the form of questions and the message - from any perspective - Hindu or Muslim - remains relevant today, over 62 years after Gandhi's death on 30th January 1948.
