Today morning, Gurdev and I were reading in the newspapers the sad story of the people of Swat. Almost 6 lakhs have fled their homes in the face of continuous shelling by the Pakistani army trying to flush out the Taliban. The ceasefire is all but gone and the innocent civilians are caught in the crossfire. Only around 60,000 people are in the UN refugee camps. The rest are living in the most abysmal of human conditions. It is a human crisis of the scale of the one facing the Tamils fleeing in Sri Lanka. How does one help so many people who have lost their loved ones, their homes, their livelihood, their property, everything they owned and are fleeing with only just about the clothes on their bodies. They are at the mercy of corrupt government officials for food, money and some rehabilitation. It is such a sad situation.
I cannot understand for the life of me how Mr. Zardari could have approved the pact with the Taliban in the first place and allowed the enforcement of Sharia earlier in the Swat valley. What is the good Taliban?? Anyone who enforces themselves against the free will of the people, can they be good? By putting restrictions on women, snatching their freedom, putting humongous restrictions on the way a people live, forcing them to live a life of fear – how could that be good or be a path to God??? And US which is responsible for this mess by first giving arms and money to the Taliban and allowing them to grow and flourish and now acting holier than thou reserves the utmost contempt. They have single handedly interfered and made a mess of Afghanistan and are doing the same with Pakistan now.
This is also a lesson for India which looks at big brother to solve all its problems. The US is only a self-serving country which would intervene only if it sees gains for itself, like in Kuwait, period.