ANALYSIS: Drone attacks and US reputation —Farhat Taj
ANALYSIS: Drone attacks and US reputation —Farhat Taj
Courtesy to "Daily Times"
In terms of the drone attacks, the US must not make any distinction
between al Qaeda and the Taliban. They both have internalised a global
ideology that is anti-civilisation and anti-human
There is
news coming up in the media that al Qaeda in Waziristan may run away to
Yemen in the face of growing drone attacks. The people of Waziristan
have expressed deep concern at this news. They do not want al Qaeda to
run away from Waziristan. They want al Qaeda along with the Taliban
burnt to ashes on the soil of Waziristan through relentless drone
attacks. The drone attacks, they believe, are the one and only ‘cure’
for these anti-civilisation creatures and the US must robustly
administer them the ‘cure’ until their existence is annihilated from
the world. The people of Waziristan, including tribal leaders, women
and religious people, asked me to convey in categorical terms to the US
the following in my column.
One, your new drone attack strategy
is brilliant, i.e. one attack closely followed by another. After the
first attack the terrorists cordon off the area and none but the
terrorists are allowed on the spot. Another attack at that point kills
so many of them. Excellent! Keep it up!
Your drone technology
has the full capacity to encircle and eliminate al Qaeda and the
Taliban in Waziristan. If you fail to do so and al Qaeda manages to run
away to Yemen or any other place, it could only happen in two cases:
either you are highly incompetent people or you have ulterior motives.
The
people who have established one of the world’s most vibrant democracies
and have taken science and technology to a new zenith cannot be highly
incompetent. Now the only possibility is that you have ulterior
motives, which could facilitate al Qaeda’s escape from Waziristan.
In
a sense the ISI of Pakistan and the CIA of the US share a sinister
reputation: both use fanatic Islamists to promote strategic goals. The
Taliban are the strategic assets of the ISI and al Qaeda of the CIA.
Terrorised people in FATA believe that the ISI would never eliminate
the Taliban for the sake of strategic depth in Afghanistan and
countless people across the Muslim world believe that al Qaeda is a CIA
invention to trigger chaos in Muslim lands and hence create excuses for
the US to control natural resources such as oil and gas in those lands.
There is also a perception in FATA and the rest of Pakistan that the US
is especially going soft on Islamists from the restive Muslim areas of
China. Those Islamists would be used to destabilise China, the emerging
rival to the US in world politics.
Here in Waziristan the US has
a good opportunity to prove to the Muslim world that it is indeed
serious in eliminating al Qaeda. The escape of al Qaeda from Waziristan
to Yemen or any other Muslim country would communicate the message that
the US is an imperial power that just ‘relocates’ its strategic assets
from one Muslim society to another only to destabilise them and hence
paves the way for US military intervention in those areas.
In
terms of the drone attacks, the US must not make any distinction
between al Qaeda and the Taliban. They both have internalised a global
ideology that is anti-civilisation and anti-human. They will keep
coming back to strike at civilisations — Islamic, Western, Confucian or
Indian. The sooner the world gets rid of them the better.
This
was the view of the people of Waziristan. I would now draw the
attention of the US to the Peshawar Declaration, a joint statement of
political parties, civil society organisations, businessmen, doctors,
lawyers, teachers, students, labourers and intellectuals, following a
conference on December 12-13, 2009, in Peshawar. The declaration notes
that if the people of the war-affected areas are satisfied with any
counter-militancy strategy; it is drone attacks that they support the
most. Some people in Waziristan compare drones with the Quran’s
Ababeels — the holy sparrows sent by God to avenge Abraham, the
intended conqueror of the Khana Kaaba. Which other Muslim society has
likened anything from the US military with a Quranic symbol? Only the
Pakhtuns did that so publicly in this time of rising anti-Americanism
across the Muslim world! What more does the US want from a Muslim
society? Now please go ahead and do the needful as indicated by the
people of Waziristan.
The overpowered people of Waziristan are
angry. They believe no one in their entire history has inflicted so
much insult on them as al Qaeda. In our native land, they say, al Qaeda
has killed so many of us. Anyone in the world who has gone mad in the
name of religion has come to occupy our land. They are Arabs, Central
Asians, Caucasians and Africans. They are people with black, brown,
blue and green eyes. They are brown, black and white. They all have
chosen our land for their sinister designs against all civilisations.
No self-respecting people, they argue, can accept this situation.
The
ball is now in the US’s court. Their action or inaction against the
terrorists in Waziristan would either confirm their image in the Muslim
world as an imperial power destabilising Muslim societies in the name
of the war on terror or would challenge that image, at least in FATA
and the NWFP, the Muslim society on the frontline of the war on terror.
The people of Waziristan hope the US challenges that image through the
elimination of all terrorists — al Qaeda or the Taliban — in Waziristan.
The
writer is a research fellow at the Centre for Interdisciplinary Gender
Research, University of Oslo, and a member of Aryana Institute for
Regional Research and Advocacy. She can be reached at bergen34@yahoo.co
In : Farhat Taj
Notes