by Ramkumar Sridharan, San Jose
On Tuesday Feb 9,  around 60 San Jose State University students and members of the community gathered at the Martin Luther King Jr. Library in San Jose to hear Dr. Nosheen Ali, a Pakistani sociologist, speak on the war in Pakistan. The talk provided a very different perspective than the normal discourse on the war in the US media, and raised interesting questions.

The talk was titled "Droning about Pakistan: The new frontier in the global war", and Ms. Ali drew from her experiences as a researcher and sociologist as well as a progressive peace and justice activist in Pakistan. The event was organized by the Students Association for Middle East Studies at San Jose State University and the Culture and Conflict Forum, a South Bay community organization that organizes events presenting alternative culture and policy perspectives as a means to end injustice.

There is no end in sight for the war in Afghanistan, nearly 8 1/2 years after the war was launched. Early this year, the covert war in Pakistan became overt, as it became clear that the US has not only been engaging in unmanned "drone" attacks from the sky, but also operating on the ground. Cities in Pakistan are under siege as the suicide attacks get more and more daring and damaging; and ethnic violence is on the rise as well. 2008 and 2009 were two of the deadliest years for Pakistan since the beginning of the "war on terror", and the wave of civilian deaths due to drone attacks and suicide bombings that has greeted 2010 suggests that this year could see a similar fate.

Meanwhile, there are no signs of any significant changes in course by the US and NATO; rather, a further escalation of  the same strategy seems to be in order. The Obama administration's 2010 military budget is the largest ever, and yet this has raised hardly an eyebrow in the US media. In fact, there is a total absence of any real debate on the fundamental premises of the US war in Afghanistan in the media; we are  led to believe that war is the only option; we only see a discussion on war policy minutiae and disagreements over how exactly to escalate. The extension of the war into Pakistan is presented as but a natural and inevitable step.

Dr. Ali mentioned that the situation in Pakistan was indeed grave. The Taliban as a movement have gotten stronger than ever, as evidenced by increases in suicide attacks, and their continued ability to seriously resist the Pakistani military. At first glance, this appears a textbook case for escalation of war. However, such escalation, since 2007, in both Afghanistan and Pakistan, has only hurt, and civilians have borne the brunt. 

She suggested that it was time to question this military-only strategy.  A key feature of the US campaign has been the aerial bombings in tribal  areas by unmanned aircraft. These are ostensibly "targeted" strikes, intended to take out top militants based on accurate intelligence; and yet, after more than a hundred drone attacks, there is no denying that the overwhelming number of victims have been civilians. In January 2010 alone, there were 123 civilian casualties due to drone attacks, (compared to 3 militants). While there is much media coverage in the US media of the suicide bombings in major Pakistani cities such as Karachi, civilian deaths due to drone attacks in remote areas are reported just as an afterthought. But to the innocent victims of these bombings, is there a difference between the two? 

Drone attacks are a particularly sinister form of war-making, Dr. Ali pointed out. Several of the drones used in Afghanistan are controlled remotely from a military base in Nevada; a soldier could go from attacking a village in remote Pakistan during the day, to spending the evening with his wife and kids at home in the US.  The operator is simultaneously too far from his victims, and at the same time, too close - since the highly advanced video cameras embedded in drone missiles get you a much closer view of the target than an aerial attack possibly could.  It is almost a video game, except that the consequences are real for the target; this is the ultimate form of dehumanization. (Indeed, she mentioned that we are now starting to see video games that feature drones.  Even as their legality and morality are extremely fuzzy, drones are starting to seep into popular culture as "cool").

Dr. Ali mentioned that the use of drones has been promoted in the US military as a safe  and cost-effective way for the military to wage war. They have also been pushed as a tool that has the potential to reduce civilian losses - partly because of the technology that allows really close views of the target. However, the validity of a target is only as good as the intelligence that was used to arrive at it; and faulty intelligence is often provided either to make a quick buck or to take revenge. Clearly the facts on the ground, showing the high and rising civilian cost of drone attacks, should give us serious pause.

She suggested that the human cost of a drone attack goes beyond its immediate victims. By its very nature - an unexpected attack from the sky on a defenseless village, leaving death and destruction in its wake - it terrorizes the entire community. Use of these weapons constitute a fundamental violation of the Geneva Convention; they are in essence, state-sanctioned, extra-judicial killing machines.

Dr. Ali pointed out that the escalation of these attacks as well as the military campaign by the Pakistani army since 2007 triggered a massive displacement from the tribal border regions in Pakistan. Nearly a million internally displaced people have been living in squalid conditions, in camps outside Pakistani cities; and in fact some of the increases in ethnic violence in cities is attributable  to the tensions between the refugee populations and the locals. The displacement, loss of livelihood, and the sense of desperation ironically end up serving as recruitment tools for the Taliban movement, who have been able to grow in strength in these last few years, despite all the escalation. The use of drones may have ostensibly resulted in some tactical successes, but the truth is that they have been a catastrophic failure in strategic terms.

In order to figure out alternatives, Dr. Ali suggested that we needed to take off our blinders and look beyond the standard narrative.  Pakistan is much more than the Taliban and the war on terror. In March 2007, President Musharaaf attempted to unseat the Chief Justice of the Pakistan Supreme Court in response to challenges to his authority from the judiciary. Lawyers across the country rose up in protest in what was to become a progressive lawyers movement.  Rattled by the rising support across all sections of civil society for the lawyers, Musharaaf imposed a state of emergency in November and arrested hundreds of lawyers and judges across the country, and sent the Pakistani army out to the street.  Braving arrests and torture, people from all walks of life took to the street to not only demand a full restoration of the judiciary and lifting of the emergency, but also for the restoration of democracy. In March 2008, the Pakistani people welcomed their first democratically elected government in nearly a decade.  While there is a long way to go towards the building of a robust, fair and just state and society, this democratic movement illustrated the resilience of its people and the kind of state they desired; and it showed a face of Pakistan not normally seen.

Dr. Ali suggested that the United States can play a positive role by helping strengthen civil society, the democratic process, and the rule of law in Pakistan. A robust democracy, in turn will help marginalize reactionary forces such as the Taliban. Unfortunately the US has a history of doing just the opposite. From Gen. Zia Ul Haq to Gen Musharaaf, the US has often treated Pakistan as a "failed state", and favored strongmen and their military to keep their "rebellious masses" in check. During the course of the Lawyer's movement, US state support was conspicuous by its absence; the implicit message being sent was that, in Pakistan all this chatter about democracy was taking the focus away from fighting the insurgency. The continued portrayal of Pakistan as a failed state by the US media helps dehumanize its citizens; and makes the justification of war a lot easier.  This is something that fundamentally needs to change.

The conversation moved on to a vibrant discussion the question of what we, here in the US, can do to change the situation. Dr. Ali suggested that we must push for a fairer representation of Pakistan issues in the US media; and move away from the framing of all issues in under a single "AfPak" umbrella. She mentioned that we must raise the moral and legal questions associated with the usage of drones. There are certain weapons that are so abhorrent that they do not belong in a civilized society; drones should go the way of landmines and cluster bombs, which have international conventions banning their usage. We must demand that US foreign policy and military policy be framed with the interests of the people it directly affects in mind, as opposed to short term military agendas. We must demand further restoration of the rule of law, and transparent, fair trials in Pakistan as well as in the US; including reopening cases of "disappearances" in Pakistan, (many of which were carried out by the Pakistani intelligence at the behest of the US). Dr. Ali mentioned that a thriving democracy and a functioning judicial system in Pakistan, where the powers of the clergy are kept in check, and ex-militants have a chance to rehabilitate, would go a long way towards countering the process of Talibanization in the long term.