Since the Pakistani military began operations in the Swat Valley, only an estimated 40,000 people remain, with some 2.4 million others now displaced according to the International Red Cross – and that’s only within just a little over a month’s time. To claim the situation a humanitarian calamity would be a massive understatement.

June 10, 2009

Events in Pakistan’s Swat Valley continue to produce dire humanitarian results…

“As the Pakistani military’s offensive against the Swat Valley continues, around 1.45 million are reported to have successfully fled. For several families today attempting to leave their homes, that trek ended in disaster as the Pakistani military attacked and killed several of them, and wounded an unknown number of others. Women and children were among the slain.

Witnesses who managed to escape the attack and reach a town in Upper Dir say the party of civilian families were crossing a mountain path after leaving their homes in the town of Matta, when they were attacked by the military’s helicopter gunships. Matta was the latest Swati town to be targeted in the ongoing offensive.”

Since the offensive in the Swat Valley began on the 5th of this month, some 1.45 million people have been displaced. Put into perspective, since the invasion of Iraq over 4 million Iraqis have been displaced, both internally and as refugees in neighbouring countries. So, in fifteen days, the number of Pakistanis that have been displaced is equal to one fourth of those Iraqis displaced in six years.

May 19, 2009 42 Comments

Half a million Pakistanis have been displaced by recent fighting in the north-west where militants have seized a number of districts that are a mere sixty miles from the country’s capital after a three month ceasefire in the Swat Valley fell apart. As one might expect, Pakistani military sources are claiming Taliban casualties to be significant, though there is absolutely no way of verifying such assertions being that journalists have been banned from the area. One thing is for certain, the largest internal displacement of Pakistanis is currently underway since Pakistani independence, with the United Nations claiming that 200,000 Pakistanis have fled the Swat Valley’s most populace town, Mingora, in the past few days alone. Given reports by locals that the destruction of property in the conflict zone is significant, many are abandoning hope that returning will ever be a possibility given the destruction and the impact that it will have on their futures.

That said, something ironic occurred yesterday. Pakistan’s President, Asif Ali Zardari, the widower of Benazir Bhutto, and a man widely known for his corruption with regards to money laundering, said something extremely interesting during an interview with NBC…

“President Asif Ali Zardari Sunday said Pakistan is fighting militant insurgency for its survival but the world powers including the United States must back Islamabad’s anti-terror effort as they also bear a collective responsibility for the current turmoil in the region. “It’s a war of our existence. We have been fighting this war much before 9/11. They (militants) are a kind of a cancer created by both of us, Pakistan and America, and the world.”

“We got together, we created this cancer to fight the super power (Soviet Union that occupied Afghanistan in 1979) and then you went away without finding a cure for it. And now we have come together to find a cure for it,” he told NBC channels Meet the Press Program.”

Despite my view of Zardari, his statement was refreshingly honest, even if it stopped short of going into detail.

The involvement of his wife’s government in aiding in the rise of the Taliban and attempting to use it as a Pakistani proxy to increase Pakistani influence in Afghanistan is something that is rarely touched upon since her assassination and ascendency to sainthood. But it’s the truth. The Taliban received significant training and financial support from the ISI in the 90’s and Bhutto’s government was well aware of it. That would be why of the three nations on earth that actually recognized the Taliban as the legitimate government of Afghanistan prior to the 2001 invasion, Pakistan was one of them (along with Saudi Arabia and The United Arab Emirates).

May 11, 2009 1 Comment

I came across the following comment left in response to an article on the Tyee regarding homelessness in British Columbia, particularly Vancouver…

“An avalanche of stories on the homeless and the left is bankrupt of any practical ideas. The left calls for housing and treating them in Vancouver, perpetuating the slum we know as the DTES. We in the real world know that Vancouver real estate is far too expensive to justify the economic cost of housing them. Don’t even talk about the NIMBY’s who’ll kill any zoning proposal.

Yet the real solution is housing, rehab, treatment and for those who cannot fend for themselves permanent institutionalization.

So the best solution is to find the cheapest land- maybe out past Fort St. John, way up north, and house them up there. Any objections?

I mean, giving them free housing in Vancouver is an insult to all the working people who struggle to pay for their own places isn’t it?”

Matthewgood.org contributor, Pivot Legal Society’s David Eby, makes some excellent points in the piece, but I want to focus on the sentiment of the comment quoted above.

You might not think that sort of ignorance prevalent in the Lower Mainland, but you’d be surprised. People’s understanding of the Lower Eastside in general is, for the most part, rather ignorant. In fact, much of that ignorance is based on the perception of a problem that has, in truth, remained largely out of sight and out of mind for decades. Only now, when the value of real estate is at an all time high, is the ‘problem’ being delved into by those that hadn’t considered it prior.

For most, their exposure to the Downtown Eastside is limited to driving down East Hastings on their way into the city and little else. They get held up at the lights at Main and Hastings and from the few minutes that they observe their surroundings come to harsh conclusions about those that inhabit this neighbourhood

We do not want to hear their stories. We do not want to delve into the fact that over the last twenty years the Downtown Eastside has become the number one destination of those turned out of mental institutions. We do not want to hear horrific tales of childhood sexual abuse, rape, violence, and Aboriginal disparity. Such things humanize the problem, and that is the last thing in the world that anyone wants to do. Because it is far easier on the conscience to simply categorize everyone down here as a druggy or a drunk who are solely responsible for where they have ended up.

Not all Vancouverites suffer from this phenomenon, but many do, including many who live in other parts of the downtown core who aren’t comfortable with the fact that their urban paradise is only minutes away from the country’s poorest urban neighbourhood. Many of them are, of course, transplants that have come to Vancouver to live the urban West Coast dream and have never been exposed to a neighbourhood like the Lower Eastside or the problems that it presents. Were there a solution that could, in a matter of weeks, transform it into the new Yaletown, many of this city’s residents would be all for it. In truth, that process has already begun.

The homelessness that is prevalent in this neighbourhood has become front-page news not because it was only a matter of time, but for three very specific reasons.

The first is that Vancouver has seen an influx of wealth over the last decade, both foreign and domestic, which has driven property prices through the roof. Given that the downtown core is situated on a peninsula, and developing Stanley Park is out of the question, the Lower Eastside remains the last truly exploitable section of the downtown core.

The second is that Vancouver has seen immense growth in the tourism sector, and many view the Lower Eastside as an embarrassment. Given that every cruise ship that docks in Vancouver is anchored at Canada Place, those that venture off the ships and decide to take a hard left and venture East find themselves confronted with something that certainly does not reflect what they’ve no doubt heard about the city. It is not uncommon to come across tourists down here in the summer that are simply aghast, many of them asking locals that don’t seem too ‘dangerous’ where the park is located or how to get uptown. It is such a concern, in fact, that the Gastown Business Association employs private security personnel to patrol the streets, pushing the homeless and dispossessed out of sight, commonly harassing them even though they possess absolutely no legal authority to do so.

The third is, of course, the 2010 games. Not only have the Olympics contributed to the increase in property prices throughout Vancouver, but have forced both local and Provincial government to address the issue of what to do about the Lower Eastside when the world shows up. Despite the fact that the World Exposition in 1986 lasted for months, laying new carpet and slapping a new coat of paint on walls in hotels on the Lower Eastside was good enough. But in the case of the Olympics, Vancouver is destined to see far more people cram the downtown core, making the problem of the Lower Eastside all the more worrisome. Therefore, the real issue isn’t so much how to actually, and realistically, address the problems that need to be address, but rather how to dislodge them and have them moved elsewhere while throwing advocates a bone.

One of the goals is to obviously see the neighbourhood gentrified like Yaletown was, which has ultimately led to the gentrification of everything from Granville Street to the banks of False Creek. Sure, there are a few rough patches here and there, but nothing to compare with East Hastings. The more that this neighbourhood can be gentrified and attract a new class of resident, the easier it will be to push the dispossessed further down the Hastings corridor.

The truth is, those problems that need solving cannot be realistically overcome in two years while still placating the concerns of those that view the Lower Eastside as a blemish on an otherwise picturesque city. Sure, housing initiatives can be discussed, hotels can be transformed, but they will not meet the needs of all those that require help. Thus, where will those who aren’t lucky enough to qualify go? Because if anti-terror maneuvers are already taking place in the skies over the city, you can bet your life that the mandate of private security firms will be extended well beyond Gastown in 2010.

February 17, 2008 16 Comments