Pakistani military operations in the Swat Valley, which the government claims are coming to an end, have produced one of the most significant humanitarian crises in recent memory – and one that is going largely unnoticed.

After just the second week of the offensive, some 95% of the region’s 3 million inhabitants were displaced. During the first week of operations, 1 million people were displaced, a figure that is roughly equal to one fourth of those displaced during the entire Iraq war.

The Pakistani government isn’t known for its forethought with regards to the displacement of civilians, as was demonstrated during last year’s much smaller offensive in the Bajaur Agency during which it carried out operations against a very small insurgent force. Those Bajauri that fled the fighting ended up in many of the same refugee camps that are now populated by Swatis that have fled.

To put the immensity of the crisis into context, it is the worst of its kind since the Rwandan crisis in the 90’s. But unlike Rwanda, the speed at which it has occurred is unprecedented.

The United Nations has issued a warning that those displaced are facing a situation that could result in significant deaths if the international community does not begin to take the situation seriously. At present, only 35% of the funding requested by the United Nations to deal with the problem has been met.

Not to be a skeptic, but I wouldn’t hold your breath. We are, after all, talking about The War on Terror. As far as the West is concerned, the specter of 9/11 still casts a pall over almost everything to do with it, which is most likely why the crisis in Pakistan has been so overlooked.

The Pakistani military is currently gearing up for another offensive in South Waziristan, which many believe will rival the scope of the Swat Valley operation. That said, thousands have already begun to flee the region fearing what is to come, most into areas that are completely unable to deal with an influx of refugees.

Unfortunately, it looks as though the problem is likely to get much worse.

June 23, 2009

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

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