BBC's Owen Bennett-Jones travelled to Pakistan to find out why the Taliban gained support in the Swat Valley. The report examined fears and the Taliban’s message of hope to those who are trapped in rural poverty, and how they could see them taking hold of Punjab, Pakistan’s most powerful province.
Edited excerpts from that report with commentary by Carolyn Bennett
“‘He gathered his last few rupees, sent his children to buy some sweets from the market and whilst they were away hanged himself.
“‘My son could not cope with the poverty… He didn’t say anything to me or his family. He just killed himself. He was fed up because he could not get his creditors off his back and he could [not] pay them either.’”
[The father of Nawaz Mohammed, a 30-year-old with seven children who decided there was no way he could repay money he had borrowed from his employer.]“Almost every day the newspapers carry reports of fathers committing suicide because they are unable to feed their families.
“The leading farming families in Pakistan are generally described as ‘feudals.’ The Taliban denounce the ‘feudals’ as exploiters of the common people.”
The message of the Taliban is “‘there is a lot of injustice and we will give you land. We will look after you. We will be the empowered future ─ join us and be part of the future.’” [Khalid Aziz, a retired senior official from North West Pakistan].
“This message, along with the anti-Americanism resulting from the invasion of Afghanistan, fuels the Taliban’s popularity, particularly among the dispossessed.
“There is speculation that the Taliban might make a concerted effort to win control of the country’s most powerful province, Punjab.
“Punjab may be the country’s richest state, but many Punjabis do not know where their next meal is coming from and in rural areas, there is real despair.”
However, “the Taliban suffers from having failed to deliver when it has won power. In the Swat Valley, the Taliban told the poor and dispossessed that they would get land and they attacked leading landholders, some of whom held senior political positions. Once the Taliban commanders took over estates in Swat they decided they would hang on to them for their own families. They turned out to be venal as well as violent. If the Taliban kept their promises, they would be a far more formidable force.”
One comes away from Crossing Continents’ report of Inequality and the Taliban thinking about the global situation of conflict rising and spreading because of intolerable poverty and the fact that nations, sects and corporations take advantage of and worsen this situation. One thinks about poverty creation by “entitled” wealth, national leaders’ neglect of society and individuals generation after generation, suffering well into the future. One thinks about the callously filthy rich (often public “charities,” private and nonprofit foundations, tax sheltering tax evaders) and desperately poor divide. One thinks of U.S. and other powerful nations’ foreign and domestic policies that deepen desperation, pour on flames of war, cause the rise and raging of perpetual conflict.
Sources and notes
“Pakistan inequality fuelling Taliban support,” May 13, 2010 “Crossing Continents” program Owen Bennett-Jones investigates the grievances that lie behind Pakistan’s Taliban movement,
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/newsnight/8681024.stm
Britannica notes on Punjab and Swat Valley:
Punjab
Punjab province of eastern Pakistan is bordered by the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir to the northeast, the Indian states of Punjab and Rājasthān to the east, Sindh province to the south, Balochistān and North-West Frontier provinces to the west, and Islāmābād federal capital area and Azad Kashmir to the north. Punjab is Pakistan’s second largest province, after Balochistān, and the most densely populated. The name Punjab means ‘five waters,’ or ‘five rivers,’ and signifies the land drained by the Jhelum, Chenāb, Rāvi, Beās, and Sutlej rivers, which are tributaries of the Indus River.
Swat River Valley
Swat River in northern Pakistan formed by the junction of the Gabriāl and Ushu rivers at Kālām in the Kohistān region. Fed by melting snow and glaciers and receiving the drainage of the entire Swāt River valley, the river flows southward, then westward, until joined by the Panjkora River. The united stream then flows southwestward into the Peshāwar Plain and joins the Kābul River at Nisatta after a 200-mile (320-kilometre) course. The Swāt canals irrigate about 160,000 acres (65,000 hectares) in which sugarcane and wheat are the chief crops.
“Crossing Continents,” recipient of the Amnesty International, One World and New York Festival Awards, is BBC Radio 4’s award-winning foreign affairs documentary series. The program is broadcast 28 times a year on Thursdays and is repeated on Mondays, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/crossing_continents/2712645.stm
Journalist Owen Bennett-Jones, educated at the London School of Economics and Oxford University, has been based in Geneva, Islamabad and Hanoi. In 2003, he wrote Pakistan: Eye Of The Storm, a modern history of the country, and is working on a second edition. His coverage of events in Pakistan in 2007 and 2008 included interviews with Benazir Bhutto, Nawaz Sharif and President Pervez Musharraf, reporting on the country’s corruption, Benazir Bhutto’s return and on the aftermath of her assassination. For excellence as an interviewer and reporter, Bennett-Jones won the Sony Radio Gold Award in the News Journalist of the Year category for 2008. He has written for key British newspapers including The Guardian, Financial Times and The Independent and, in addition to “Crossing Continents,” has been a presenter on another BBC World Service radio news program, “The Interview.”
No comments:
Post a Comment