5,000 Protest in Karachi
"That was worse than a crime; it was a mistake."
--Talleyrand on Napoleon's execution of the Duc D'Enghien
Dawn reports that 5000 protesters rallied in the Pakistani port city of Karachi on Sunday to protest the US missile strike that killed 18 Pakistani villagers (including women and children) in a failed attempt to kill al-Qaeda's second in command, Ayman al-Zawahiri.
(courtesy of Dawn)The crowds carried anti-American placards and chanted anti-US slogans.
Although demonstrations were held in some other cities, they were very small, only a few hundred in each case, in the Punjab, according to Dawn. Most Punjabis in places like Lahore don't have the time of day for al-Qaeda or its supporters.
The Nation maintains that "thousands" demonstrated in the northern Pushtun (Pathan) city of Peshawar, but Dawn put the demonstration there at only 500. Dawn's figure makes little sense, since the organizers of the protest control the Northwest Frontier Province, and if they could get out a fair crowd anywhere, it would be in their own capital. The photograph provided by the Frontier Mail, based in Peshawar, shows a bigger crowd than that.
The protest in Karachi was significant, but still small by the standards of that city (it has a population of some 9 million). Up to 80,000 protested the onset of the Afghanistan war in 2001, and 100,000 came out in spring of 2003 against the Iraq War.
The protest was called by the leader of the fundamentalist Jama'at-i Islami, Qazi Husain Ahmad, who also heads up a religious political coalition, the United Action Council. Even some rivals of that party, such as the secular MQM, threw their support behind the protest.
Within the context of Pakistani politics, the opposition is trying to use the missile strike to turn the population against Gen. Pervez Musharraf, who has worked closely with the Americans in attempting to destroy al-Qaeda and its allies in Pakistan and Afghanistan. He was condemned for continuing to rule as military dictator, despite the parliamentary elections of 2002. The religious parties, some of which have ties to the old Afghan Taliban, have about a fifth of the seats in parliament, and have allied with other opposition parties to virtually paralyze that body. The Jama'at-i Islami seldom got more than 2 or 3 percent in Pakistani elections, since most Pakistanis are not fundamentalists but rather traditionalists. Its popularity has been enhanced, especially among Pushtuns and in Karachi, by US interventions in the region since September 11, which are unpopular on nationalist grounds.
The Frontier Mail said that a member of the Pakistani parliament, Shabir Ahmed, addressed a crowd in Peshawar saying that the jihad against the United States must continue, and that just as the Soviet Union had been broken up into 12 countries as a result of its defeat in Afghanistan at the hands of jihadis, so the United States would be broken up into "52" separate countries. This is a member of the Pakistani parliament?
Protesters said that decisions should be taken in Islamabad rather than Washington.
It is impossible to tell how stable the situation in Pakistan is, or when an incident like this one will tip it over into substantial popular unrest. That uncertainty should inspire caution.
There are lots of things wrong with firing a missile at a private home at the time of the Feast of Sacrifice and killing 12 women and children. It was wrong, and was a form of state terror. But in addition, it was guaranteed to reinvigorate the Pakistani fundamentalists, who otherwise have not delivered politically for their constituents.
Can't the US be more careful about this sort of thing? I mean, I'm all for getting Zawahiri, one of the most despicable mass serial killers in history. But we also have to win the war for hearts and minds, and this isn't the way to do that.
posted by Juan Cole @ 1/16/2006 12:26:00 AM
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16 Comments:
"I'm all for getting Zawahiri, one of the most despicable mass serial killers in history."
What do you mean by "getting someone" ?
I would like this phrase to be written thus : "I'm all for capturing Zawahiri, one of the most despicable mass serial killers in history, then judge him and make him serve his sentence".
If arbitrary execution without trial becomes the norm, I feel we are on the same level as the killers.
And I see and hear very often journalists or commentators who have jumped to this other world were you don't mind killing without trial, and even kill a few bystanders to boost, just to "get someone".
Professor Cole,
You would definitely need the support of Talleyrand to accuse the US from such very weak position, about its "carelessness" and latest blunder in intelligence. But what would you have done, if you were in charge and had RELIABLE intelligence, since perfect intelligence is elusive, about the prescense of Zawahiri, wouldn't you have called for a strike?
Wars are replete with vicissitudes and uncertainties that only a Deus ex machina could resolve.
I just saw "Bomber John" McCain on CNN International here in Taiwan. The man's obvious and pathetic lust for the "commander-in-chief's" silly little Napoleonic baton remains undiminished and, frankly, embarrassing. Not only did he not apologize for the "mistaken" bombing of some innocent Pakistanis but he also sent some chilling "signals" to Iran about possible future "options" that that might involve the overstretched and disintegrating American military in even more overstretching and disintegration. No doubt about it, the Lunatic Leviathan has definitely run amok again.
I can still vividly remember coming home to America from Vietnam in January of 1972 where I found a country and government so ill-informed and out of touch with the realities of their own unraveling militarism that both bordered on the clinically insane. I feel the same way about America today. Those of its deluded and easily-buffaloed citizenry who blindly support yet another befuddled, undeclared "war" on "something vaguely terrifying" -- i.e., abstract angst, mystic dread, reactionary panic, or just plain fear itself -- seem to me like that miniature monarch, Lord Farquad, in the animated movie "Shrek." When sending off some knights to fight a dragon and win his princess for him the tiny little tyrant intones: "Some of you may die. But that is a sacrifice I'm prepared to make."
Americans like President George W. bush and Senator John McCain obviously and shamefully feel entitled to blunder and destroy without so much as a by-your-leave. Some hapless and nameless foreigners may die, but Bush and McCain will willingly make that "sacrifice" -- while relentlessly cutting taxes for their "have more" base and fobbing the horrendous bill off onto future generations of working Americans.
As well, given the notoriously incompetent American "intelligence" services and the demonstrated mendacity of the American government as currently constituted, who on earth would trust this bunch of clueless clowns on the loose with high explosives? No doubt about it, the truly scary crazy people have gotten back into the American government in full force, and the Lunatic Leviathan has run amok again. No wonder so much of the world loathes and fears America right now. A demented, frustrated giant frightens practically everyone.
georgekotzabasis
Euh... What about the rule of law ? If I follow your logic tomorrow Russia can bomb London as chechen "terrorists" are residing there. And why not Zimbabwe doing the same after all it is a fully fledged member of the UN.
Pakistan is a sovereign state and if the U.S. consider it as its ally it should have acted according to international and internal laws – i.e. soldiers, arrests and extradition. This action – with or without local consent – is as scandalous as the one that occurred in Yemen.
What amazes me however in all this is the way non western civilians are treated in these cases. Innocent women and children are dead but "rejoice" it is the price to pay for the war of terror. Imagine if the dead where a " western family " better even Anglo-Saxon – the media would have been already in a third world war frenzy.
Double standards somebody ?
Of Course, when the UK was fighting the IRA, we should have been bombing parts of Boston and New York, whenever MI6 got confirmation (or whatever, hey better kill than be killed right)of a suspected IRA. The odd innocent american, just the vicissitudes ....
Perhaps, the so-called "RELIABLE" intelligence was solicited from a person acting as a double agent allied with Zawahiri? Surely, one of the goals of the terrorists could be to make the US air strike into an international incident.
And once again the US has violated the sovereignty of a nation.
And in an short article published in The New York Times several weeks ago, Iran has complained about flights of Predators, the unmanned drone that bombed the village in Pakistan, into Iranian air space to the UN. The flights into Iran would probably be to gather intelligence on hard targets, such as radar installations, military bases and command-and-control centers for a possible air strike on the Iranian nuclear facility under consruction and to update grid maps for jet fighter pilots. An Iranian government official implied this, when he stated that the Iranians on purpose didn't track the flights of the Predatos,because it would give the United States the precise locations of the radar facilities. And like the US, Israel performed a pre-emptive strike against the nuclear facility being constructed in Osirik during Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq. And I recall that about two years ago, a Predator was used in Yemen to take a group of terrorists traveling along a road. So the doctrine of pre-emptive strikes fits very neatly for President Bush into the saber-rattling between Iran and the United States over the breaking of the UN seals by Iranians at their nuclear facility.
But in the final analysis, these unmanned Predator flights point to a significant escalation in the region by the United States.
I understand that 'wars are replete with vicissitudes and uncertainties that only a Deus ex machina could resolve." But having served as a medical corpsman in Vietnam before, during and after the Tet Offensive of 1968, I treated Vietnamese nationals, who were wounded by American soldiers and jet fighter pilots, the "collateral damage," that turned LBJ's policy of winning the hearts and minds ironically into a recruitment tool for the VC guerillas. Also, during the siege of Fallujah, field commanders authorized the use of white phosphorus artillery shells and/or bombs. Unlike napalm, shrapnel coated with wiley peter, as the grunts nicknamed it, burns until the white phosphorus has completely oxided with the air. And in the hospital, I treated grunts wounded by wiley peter, and in some wounds the wiley peter shrapnel burnt down to the bone. Civilains were wounded by white phosphorus during the siege of Fallujah. There is no excuse for using white phosphorus shells in a town densely populated with innocent civilians caught in the middle between the American soldiers and the insurgents. And once again we have created more civilans into insurgents.
Striking a civilian home in a country that you are not at war with has nothing to do with war.
If you would have gotten Zawahiri it'll be an extralegal execution combined with the murder of innocent civilians.
Hunting criminals and terrorists with such a blunt weapon as the air force shows complete disregard for the live of innocents and is hardly ever effective. Politically it is just plain stupid as Prof Cole nicely illustrates.
As we ponder the vicissitudes and uncertainties of war, it would be instructive to consider the neocons paramount belief: democracies don't wage war.
Ya. Right.
We have the "Peoples Magazine" syndrome. Zawahiri is the Global War on Terrorism equivalent of a celebrity. The points to be made in the clandestine services for killing him must be huge.
If he had been killed in the airstrike there would be high fives in washington for 24/7 - no matter how many innocents were killed.
The celebrity targets e.g. Saddam's sons, Chemical Ali, Osama, create the notion that if any of them are killed or captured, then the war is nearly won. So a massive effort is made to do just that, and strategies such as rendition, torture, secret prisons are easily justified. Collateral damage is "what-me-worry".
My guess is that with hundreds of millions people hating our guts, its statistically inevitable that new celebrity targets will imerge to replace the few we manage to do away with.
"[georgekotzabasis]
But what would you have done, if you were in charge and had RELIABLE intelligence, since perfect intelligence is elusive, about the prescense of Zawahiri, wouldn't you have called for a strike?"
So the only two choices, according to you, are, a)do nothing or b)order a US missle strike? How about informing the Pakistani government and offering your assistance? Or don't you consider Pakistan a sovereign nation? In any case, it would have been much more useful to capture, interrogate, and try him; in fact,
this is what the Clinton administration's preferred option was, and it led to discovering the existence of Al-Qaeda itself, as well as helped thwart dozens of major terrorist attacks both in the US and abroad.
SR
I think we may be missing the point. The Bush Administration doesn't care about collateral damage. Far from being sudden or unexpected or simply difficulties in the waging of "war", these tragic "mistakes" may actually be welcomed by this embattled administration. Contrary to popular wisdom, the Bush administration has much more to gain by providing new recruits to fill the ranks of Al Qaeda. Just think: Another terror attack a-la-911 would disarm the growing US opposition to Bush's Orwellian domestic and imperial overseas agendas at a time when he needs the boost. As Evan Eisenberg's clever characterization of Bush-as-armchair-warrior goes: "The armchair warrior knows ... that only a steady supply of enemies can assure him the loyalty of his friends. When so-called wise men warn him that in rashly slaughtering his enemies he is merely manufacturing more of them, he smiles." (http://www.newyorker.com/shouts/content/?040607sh_shouts)
10:18 AM, georgekotzabasis said... what would you have done, if you were in charge and had RELIABLE intelligence, since perfect intelligence is elusive, about the prescense of Zawahiri, wouldn't you have called for a strike?
It is really hard to imagine how many RELIABLE phone numbers one can pick up on Internet!
LOWELL BERGMAN, ERIC LICHTBLAU, SCOTT SHANE, DON VAN NATTA Jr. Spy Agency Data After Sept. 11 Led F.B.I. to Dead Ends
In the anxious months after the Sept. 11 attacks, the National Security Agency began sending a steady stream of telephone numbers, e-mail addresses and names to the F.B.I. in search of terrorists. The stream soon became a flood, requiring hundreds of agents to check out thousands of tips a month.
But virtually all of them, current and former officials say, led to dead ends or innocent Americans.
F.B.I. officials repeatedly complained to the spy agency that the unfiltered information was swamping investigators. The spy agency was collecting much of the data by eavesdropping on some Americans' international communications and conducting computer searches of foreign-related phone and Internet traffic. Some F.B.I. officials and prosecutors also thought the checks, which sometimes involved interviews by agents, were pointless intrusions on Americans' privacy.
Damiani, don't follow my logic, because my logic might be as wrong as yours, as I'm too a law-abiding person, follow the logic of this war. And it depends on the perspective one has about the war. This is not a localized war of Chechnyan or IRA dimensions, but a global, BORDERLESS war, and within such a milieu if certain nations harbor or provide sanctuaries to terrorists, they should be attacked by covert means and forces. And I can only quote Euripides in my defenceless defence. "It's a fine thing to be law-abiding when things go well/but when it comes to enemies the law is an obstacle."
As for you EWAN, you can be sarcastic if you wish, but your sarcasm is at the expense of history. Wars throughout history have been full of uncertainties and unknowns.
HOFFMAN, "double agents", "international incident" of the bombing of a house that killed at least some terrorists, if not Zawahari? This is virtually Le Carre fiction. Do you think that those who were responsible for this intelligence wouldn't have weighed all the prons and cons of the latter, including the possibility of your double agent? Ultimately however, they would have to make their grave decision, and act on it, on the weight of the intelligence that was most reliable.
At 7:14 AM, georgekotzabasis said... I can only quote Euripides in my defenceless defence. "It's a fine thing to be law-abiding when things go well/but when it comes to enemies the law is an obstacle."
Well, this way to take the law perfectly fits typical Euripides' character like Medea. No, it did not help her, she got dumped by law-abiding Jason anyway.
Prof. Cole,
You wrote:
"Although demonstrations were held in some other cities, they were very small, only a few hundred in each case... Most Punjabis in places like Lahore don't have the time of day for al-Qaeda or its supporters."
I'm surprised to hear that coming from you. Are you saying that those who opposed the strike (and violation of Pakistani sovereignty and civillian losses on a holiday) are supporters of Al-Qaeda?!
Can you imagine the outcry if, say, Mexico carried out a bombing campaign on the American side of the border, killing a family on Easter, when it was targeting a terrorist?
Scientific support men derive pleasure from revenge.
Men get greater satisfaction than women from seeing someone they dislike suffer pain shows a study of how people react when witnessing revenge. Scientists found highly significant differences between the genders in how male and the female brains respond.
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