Horror amid the hills

Vaguely, all of us know of the conflict raging in Swat. It is uncertain if the true extent of the horror that reigns there has dawned on us. The situation appears to resemble Afghanistan during its worst days under the Taliban. An ultimatum has been issued by the local extremists imposing a ban on education for girls. They have threatened force to impose it. Dozens of schools have closed doors. Pupils who had studied for years for their matriculation exams sit at home, in despair. There are reports that, much like what happened in Afghanistan, some daring local women have set up 'secret' schools within homes to educate girls, who drift in, in twos and threes, to avoid attracting attention. Only some stories are emerging of the terrors unfolding in the area. One tells the tale of a woman, condemned by militants and then killed as a prostitute only because she insisted on continuing work at a local school in Mingora. The woman, a mother of three, had little option than to do so anywhere given that her husband had died some years ago. A local cleric who tried to help her was punished himself, and ordered by militants to leave Swat. The fate of the children who their mother was supporting is unknown.

In the area, people talk of a daily litany of atrocities. People who dare speak out against the militants have been accused of being spies for the US and the government. This accusation can bring with it death or severe beatings. People also face oppression at the hands of security forces, which have, in some cases, been known to harass residents of villages. Those who can do so have fled. Many who remain either have nowhere else to go, or, like a few brave political leaders who oppose militancy, have chosen to stay on because of their commitment to a cause they believe in and their refusal to abandon their homes.

The situation in Swat is grotesque. It is shameful that we have allowed this to happen in our midst; that in Islamabad the government keeps up pretence of normalcy and claims it is succeeding against militancy. The situation in Swat receives sporadic media attention; occasionally human rights activists speak out against it. Far more urgent action is needed. There is not time any longer to watch and wait. The federal government needs to intervene to stop the atrocities in Swat. The abuse of rights must be ended. Girls and young women must be able to claim their place in society as equal citizens who enjoy constitutional protections. The killing of innocent people caught up in a conflict that has destroyed hundreds of homes and devastated a far greater number of lives must be ended. The ANP government has expressed displeasure over what is happening and questioned the central government policy. Clearly some at least in its ranks believe there is a lack of genuine effort directed against militants. All those in a position to make decisions or to influence policy must play a more active part in ending the Talibanisation of Swat and saving its people from a situation in which security and all sense of safety has been completely shattered.


Somewhere in the bloody rubble of Iraq and Gaza there is a tattered American flag that bears the legend: 'Well, we can't be right all the time.' America is neither infallible nor omnipotent. It can get things badly wrong; make mistakes and errors of judgment; and nowhere those errors are more obvious than in the wars and foreign policy decisions and strategies of the Bush presidency. With less than a week to go before a changing of the guard in the White House, the vaunted doctrine of neo-conservatism and its practitioners, the Neocons, are disappearing from the scene, their power and influence waning or dissipating. Beyond the American failure in Iraq (and we have yet to feel the full effect of that failure, its echoes will reverberate for generations) and something considerably less than success in Afghanistan, there lies a deeper and more fundamental failure. The Iraq project was intended to have wider consequence, to transform the entire Middle East and to act as a template for a new grand policy concept in the twenty-first century. The Bush doctrine, as it became known, had neo-conservatism at its heart. It held that America was truly all-powerful and could do 'anything' and that it was in possession of a universally desirable set of values and institutions which were universally applicable. In the post 9/11 world this paradigm of America Imperial was required to exercise its power – unilaterally if necessary – to reshape the world in its own image. The neocons had a name for their vision; they called it – perhaps somewhat prematurely – the new American century. We may now come to understand that the neocons belonged to the last century, and that the new American century is going to be shaped by Obama.

Neo-conservatism has had its obituary written before, at the end of the Reagan years, but it re-emerged in the mid-90s. America again began to see the world in terms of 'good' and 'evil', a view consolidated by 9/11. There was - is – a readiness to use unilateral force or blatant arm-twisting and contempt for multilateral institutions such as the UN which, for all its many faults, has its negatives outweighed by its positives. Neocon sacerdotes such as Richard Perle (not for nothing nicknamed 'The Prince of Darkness'), Paul Wolfowitz, Elliott Abrams and Douglas Feith and their close ally the vice president Dick Cheney drove the neocon agenda which in the post-9/11 world looked both do-able and attractive. Their Big Project, the overthrow of Saddam Hussein was accomplished but their grand designs fell apart in the blood of the Iraqi insurgency, and America found itself a force of occupation rather than liberation. From a high point in 2003 the neocons influence has gradually waned, and now it may indeed be the time for the writing of their obituary. There is going to be a multilateralist in the White House, a man committed to diplomacy and seemingly willing to talk to those who have not been talked to in recent years, with Cuba and Iran on the 'to call' list. Obama looks like he might actually care about the Geneva Convention, and will give house-guest status to the Kyoto Protocols. We may in the next week see the beginnings of a new world order, and it is going to be very different to that of the old.

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Regards,
P.R.