Pakistan Claims Capture of 50 Khyber Militants
Aljazeera on Pakistan's military offensive in the Khyber area. Puritanism and women's rights are issues as well as whether government or local warlords are in control. Women's rights are even an economic issue for commerce in the city of Peshawar, since village women are not being allowed to travel into the city to shop.
Radio Australia says Pakistan is claiming to have captured 50 militants. It adds, "
Meanwhile around 100 college students staged a rally in Peshawar condemning the operation and calling for its immediate end. They say the offensive was launched at the behest of the United States and was causing food shortages."
If the militants had come into Peshawar, what do you think they would have done to the college students?
posted by Juan Cole @ 7/02/2008 01:09:00 PM
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4 Comments:
"If the militants had come into Peshawar, what do you think they would have done to the college students?"
What does this mean? I do not understand the implication, since the indication is militants were already in Peshawar.
The problem in Pakistan seems to be made more complex and difficult to solve because we are involved.
Why are we still in Afghanistan? Why are we involved in Pakistan?
I just do not want us to keep looking for reasons to contiue our military involvement in Somalia, Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. But, we are looking for and finding reasons to continue.
"What would the militants have done to the college students?" seems to me to be an uncommonly silly question in this context, very easily answered. The answer of course is nothing. The y are in Peshawar, kidnapped 16 Christians recently and released them unharmed, and therefore can clearly do the same or worse to the students - and they don't.
Now if they were in undisputed charge of the city, that might be different. But Pakistan is not Iraq; it does have a reasonably legitimate central government.
The frontier provinces have always had autonomy, but the Taliban types aren't going to have a free hand in a big town like Peshawar until there is a very different government in Islamabad, or more pertinently, until they have a lot more support than they do from the Pakistani public as a whole.
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