Swat Valley and its consquences

[Jeff Gatherer]

With 1.9 million refugees in Pakistan, the fighting between government troops and the Taliban is creating a humanitarian crisis that may further destabilize the impoverished, nuclear-armed Islamic nation. Civilian deaths in the region since the fighting began are unknown, since it is often hard to distinguish between innocent civilians and militants. Since the Pakistani military mission has full support of -and was encouraged by- the Obama government, it seems unwise to escalate US presence in neighbouring Afghanistan and certainly it is disastrous for Obama to approve of military strikes on the Pakistan border. When the United States expands its offensive military strikes into neighbouring countries, the consequences can be catastrophic (think Cambodia in the early 1970's)

[Yggdrasil]

I was just recently watching an interesting round table talk on the Swat valley featuring Christiane Amanpour, Fareed Zakaria, and a couple others. Basically, the keep to stabilizing Afghanistan is to stabilize Pakistan. They did talk of an increased presence, but to how or to what extent I don't remember. Understand that we can't allow the Taliban to seize control f the Pakistani gov't. India would not stand for it, and I only see conflict in such a future. This is compounded by the fact that they're both nations with nuclear capabilities.

[The Better Version]

I would have to agree with this, however, it's very important they keep a limited presence because Jeff's right when he says that more direct presence can lead to more "Accidents". This is why we must depend primarily on the Pakistani/Afghanistan military as well as receive support from NATO troops. More importantly, however, we must re-strategize our methods. For instance, instead of dressing in military uniforms, we should probably dress like humanitarian aid or just regular civilians. We also need to focus more on governmental efficiency in the region and stabilization of peace because if we are to ever win this we must have full support from both Countries and that includes it's civilians.

It's a hairy situation but I do believe we can adapt to the change in warfare.