#49. May 9, 2009 10:45 am Link
The US Hand in Pakistan & Afghanistan
It is disturbing but predictable that Mackey, Filkins and Cowell would file articles and blog posts that hide the US hand in the vast internal displacement of Pakistanis within their own homeland. Despite their claims of objectivity, their job is in accordance with the diktat of the Obama administration and Congress. The Pakistani Government, a hapless stooge of the US since the days of John Foster Dulles, is cynically sacrificing its own people, in order to stay in power and make a quick profit with a US handout.
The Pakistani people will not see a dime of that money.
Mackey is engaging in a clever theoretical exercise by comparing two ‘counterinsurgencies’ one in Sri Lanka one in Pakistan. But this is not Political Theory 101 for some Ivy League course. There is Af-Pak blood on US hands.
The flight from Swat and Buner is a TRAGEDY for the Pakistani people and Pashtun refugees created by earlier US action.
The insurgents against US invasion,occupation and militarization can all be conveniently lumped together by US-based media as THE TALIBAN or AL QUEDA. But it is clear that the local inhabitants of both Afghanistan and Pakistan are resisters against US and US-led NATO who are physically on the ground and in the air of their homeland, killing civilians.
This resistance can only grow stronger till the US and US led NATO vacate the region. That resistance will be a good thing for nation-building for both Afghanistan and Pakistan. Their peoples are to be commended, not labeled and theorized as insurgents/terrorists.
That said, I continue to read and pay attention to the points raised by Mackey, Filkins et al. We have a profound disagreement.
Chithra KarunaKaran
City University of New York
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LEDE BLOGGER RESPONSE: You won’t be surprised that I disagree strongly with your reading that anything written by myself or my colleagues is done “in accordance with the diktat” of the U.S. government, but we will have a blog post about Pakistani views of American media coverage later today which will deal with this sort of reading of our coverage in detail.
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New York Times copyright
http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/05/08/a-tale-of-two-counterinsurgencies-in-pakistan-and-sri-lanka/?apage
May 8, 2009, 12:08 pm
Pakistan and Sri Lanka, a Tale of Two Counterinsurgencies
By Robert Mackey
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Associated Press copyright
Desperation in Pakistani hospitals, refugee camps
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090509/ap_on_re_as/as_pakistan
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