Yesterday’s terrorist attack in Lahore comes as the Pakistan Army says that it expects to regain control of Mingora, the provincial capital of Swat, within a few days. However, as a senior officer noted recently, victory over the insurgents cannot come about simply by military means. There must also be negotiations.
The problem for President Asif Ali Zardari’s administration is that the Taleban-allied militants have already demonstrated their bad faith. After Zardari agreed to the application of Shariah law in Swat in an attempt to appease them, the insurgents merely used the concession to consolidate their hold on the province and begin a southwestern military push toward the capital, Islamabad. The way in which the militants were given an inch by the government and then seized a mile, bore out the widespread protests in Pakistan, as well as predictably from Washington, that the militants could not be conciliated in this way. The action may also have had an impact in Afghanistan where NATO has been urging talks, at least with some tribal leaders who are currently supporting the Taleban insurgency there.
However, for the Pakistani authorities, it is apparent that there is considerable popular support for the present military showdown with the militants. Even among those Pakistanis who were prepared to welcome the insurgents’ call for Shariah law, there has been widespread revulsion at the string of terror attacks they have launched. At the moment the government has the backing of all right-thinking citizens. But that support is not open-ended.
The manner in which the military is retaking seized territory is important. Reported carpet bombings of areas where civilians are still trapped are unlikely to win hearts and minds. Nor will the poor treatment in hastily set up camps of, by official estimates, more than two million refugees from the Swat Valley be overlooked or ignored. Initially the government appeared not to have appreciated the implications of thousands of people fleeing the conflict area, even though it warned them to leave.
There can be little doubt that the well-armed and well-trained military will prevail against the militants in the urban areas of Swat. The question is how well the army can control the rural areas to which the militants will retreat and from which they will renew their campaign as a guerrilla war with terrorist attacks.
The evidence of recent outrages, in particular on the Sri Lankan cricket team in Lahore and again on a key police building yesterday, is that the security forces are still lax and complacent. Nor do they seem to have yet been able to mount an intelligence offensive against the militants, to penetrate their ranks and find out their plans. This might seem surprising given the close links that the country's top intelligence agency, the ISI, once had — and some assert still has — with the Taleban. Defeating the insurgency will require more than just cooperation from the country’s bitter political rivals. It also needs stronger discipline by the security forces, both against the terrorists and on behalf of innocent citizens caught in the cross-fire.
US Supreme Court: Injudicious reaction
Excerpts from an editorial in The Guardian yesterday:
The supreme court justice nominee Sonia Sotomayor gave an emotional response to her nomination in the East Room of the White House yesterday. But judging by the pitched battle which awaits her in the confirmation hearing, she might be well advised to save the public display of gratitude for later. The conservative smear campaign against her has been up and running for weeks. They informed us that the first Latina woman on the bench was intellectually not up to the job; that she talked too much during hearings; that most of her rulings as a court of appeals judge had been reversed.
Even allowing for the fact that judges are politically appointed in America, this level of unsourced invective against Sotomayor is rich. Her appointment does not alter the balance of the Supreme Court, which retains a conservative majority. And to attack her for saying that her ethnicity and gender are important factors when serving on the bench is to somehow assume that the life experiences of conservative white men do not color their legal opinions. If 107 of the previous 111 Supreme Court judges have been white men, Obama was right yesterday to refer to Sotomayor’s life story as an asset. Whatever the rights and wrongs of her suitability for the post, the conservatives should be judged by their motives. Having lost control of both the White House and Capitol Hill, and having no leader, they are searching frantically for a rallying cause that will fill depleted campaign coffers. They know the Democrats have the votes to get Sotomayor confirmed, so their tactic is to kick up as much dirt as possible in the hope that some unforeseen revelation will sink her chances. It is unlikely that Senate Republicans will treat Sotomayor fairly, as Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader, promised they would. They are more likely to concentrate on highlighting what he called her “personal or political preferences”.
Overall, she has more legal experience than most recent predecessors. So it is hard to avoid the conclusion that the conservative opposition to her is a case of sour grapes. They once ruled the roost over appointments such as hers and now, thankfully, they do not.
