War of Terror

A report published in The News sheds some light on the dark side of the State’s war in the northwest. In the aftermath of the recent suicide attack in Mingora, some 1,000 people were rounded up and “brought to Nishat Chowk in [the] pouring rain to undergo search.” The article closes by matter-of-factly reporting the mass detention of “1,500 suspects.” Whose brothers? Whose sons? Whose fathers? Who knows.

A separate incident in Charsadda, where four men were killed in an overnight military raid, prompted massive protests in the town that shut down a main road for several hours on Friday morning.

From the Army action in South Waziristan, late 2009 (via DAWN)

There has only ever been scattered independent coverage of the military operations in FATA and NWFP. Without exception, the little that has sneaked through the filters has been horrifying in the sheer barbarity it has chronicled. If I may, then–it is as Rosa Luxemburg said, one year into WWI:

Violated, dishonored, wading in blood, dripping filth – there stands bourgeois society. This is it [in reality]. Not all spic and span and moral, with pretense to culture, philosophy, ethics, order, peace, and the rule of law – but the ravening beast, the witches’ sabbath of anarchy, a plague to culture and humanity.