Naeem's Blog

Something bad is going to happen in Pakistan.

No, I’m not talking about the current martial law. Pakistanis have ‘been there, done that’ with most of Pakistan’s national existence occurring under military rule.

I’m talking about the Northwestern tribal areas. For years, the US and Afghanistan have complained about those areas being sanctuaries for Taliban and Al-Qaeda. The Pakistani military has had catastrophic failures in their attempts to control the lawless frontier.

I just saw an ABC news piece on the Swat valley having transformed into a Taliban-run region. This specific report showed pictures of a closed down police station and then a sign saying ‘Taliban station’ in Urdu, concluding that the Taliban closed down the former in order to replace it with the latter. They showed a rundown school with broken windows and desks, describing it as a girls school closed down by the Taliban. Scores of stores have closed down with only a single shop (wasn’t even a shop, it was a guy selling CD’s on a table) selling Islamic videos. They showed a caravan of cars and vans explaining that tens of thousands are escaping the Taliban violence.

Finally, with the reporter standing in a garden, she points to the ‘Taliban headquarters’ in the backdrop and concludes her report by describing the garden as having once been a popular social spot for families, but now the Taliban have closed it down.

So besides the obvious demonization of the Taliban, what is so noteworthy of this report?

This sort of propaganda is eerily reminiscent of the invasion of Afghanistan.

Girls schools being closed down. Video stores closed down. Strict Islamic law being implemented. Muslim extremists blowing up Buddha statues.

This sorta stuff is so 2001.

But this time, its happening in Pakistan.

And America’s cavalier attitude with the imposition of martial law is very revealing. Besides their hopes in Musharraf cracking down with an iron fist on the Northern areas, this may be their only chance to carry out cross border attacks from Afghanistan into Pakistan – maybe even carry out serious military incursions into the area.

They used similar justifications to invade an entire country. What’s to prevent them from invading an area sparsely populated by lawless bandits and Islamic extremists?