Pakistan: Taliban Key Challenge for Next President
August 28, 2008
Video Interview and Dispatch: Our correspondent in Karachi describes a country in civil war
BY Joe Rubin
Joe Rubin is curator and presenter of FRONTLINE/World’s iWitness, an ongoing series of interviews with reporters and newsmakers in flashpoint regions across the world.
>>see the video interview here
Our reporter in Pakistan says the next U.S. president faces major policy challenges there as the hearts and minds of future generations are being won in Taliban-influenced religious schools, and a weak and warring civilian government shows little appetite to take on the growing insurgency. Watch her interview and video clips from Karachi and read her dispatch below.
A Country in Peril
by Sharmeen Obaid Chinoy
Pakistani politics are not for the weak hearted. In a typical week here, the president of the country resigned, the two main political parties had a falling out, two powerful bomb blasts ripped through the country and at least 100 people were killed in skirmishes in the Tribal belt.
I was born and raised in Pakistan, but I have spent the better part of the past 10 years living in the West, mainly the United States and Canada. My husband and I made the decision to move back to Pakistan early last year. After all, the economy was doing well, security had improved tremendously, and a number of young Pakistanis were opening up new businesses. It was safe to say, society was thriving.
The bubble burst soon after we landed this year.
In the past few months, newspaper headlines here have screamed out news of scores of girls’ schools being burnt, video stores being ransacked, women being beheaded, hundreds of suicide bombers ready to attack, offices shut down for immoral behavior, stunning the country into silence.
The Taliban has arrived
Two weeks ago, my neighbors and I woke up to the news that an elderly couple, who live several streets away, had received a letter signed and dated by the Taliban, asking them dismiss their hired help because they were involved in “immoral activity” deemed un-Islamic by the Taliban. The shocked couple did not know who to turn to.
In the capital Islamabad, while Benazir Bhuto’s husband Asif Ali Zardari and the main opposition leader Nawaz Sharif wrangle for power, no clear policy for dealing with militants has been outlined. This is despite the fact that more 60 bomb blasts have rocked the country in the past 12 months, and that in the past month alone, the fighting in the tribal belt and in the Swat Valley has intensified to warrant heavy reinforcements by the Pakistan Army.
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| Posters warning against infiltration of the Taliban appear in neighborhoods across Karachi. |
“The man the United States relied on to fight the war on terror is now gone,” said Zubair Kadir, a lawyer who celebrated the resignation of President Pervez Musharraf by handing out sweets to his neighbors. “America put all its eggs in the same basket and now they don’t know who they should deal with.”
This is a sentiment that resonates deep within Pakistani society. The question on everybody’s mind is what will America’s next step be and how will the two presidential candidates deal with the country?
The fear amongst many Pakistanis is that a Democratic Party win will isolate Pakistan. They point to Bill Clinton’s policies and the fact that he spent only four hours in Islamabad in his eight-year tenure in the White House. “We cannot afford isolation,” says Sabiha Hamid, a businesswoman who runs a software company. “Pakistan is embroiled in a civil war, whether our government likes to admit it or not, and we will never win this war on our own.
We need America’s financial and moral support, said Hamid, whose business has been affected by the political instability in the country. “I think John McCain’s rhetoric and policies reflect those of the Bush administration and Pakistan needs that now more than ever.”
On August 25th, the Pakistan government — after years of side stepping — finally banned the Pakistani Taliban and identified it as a “terrorist” organization freezing its assets and bank accounts. The Taliban retaliated by issuing a warning in all the major cities: a spate of suicide bombings is now on the cards. For the 160 million Pakistanis, a new front on the war on terror has developed, right in their backyards. This is no longer America’s war, this is now very much Pakistan’s war.