Police and civilian administration personnel have started returning to their posts and electricity supply has been restored. The life is slowly returning to normal in the biggest town of the Swat Valley which was a centre of fighting until a few weeks ago. But the situation is far from stable. People are still wary of the situation. Full Story »
Posted by Derek Hawkins - via NewsRack (Pakistan)
Yes! there is credibility in the story as it all presents the standpoints of Pakistani Govt that is tailored to what Americans have briefed them versus the facts on the ground. The journalist Mr. Zahid Hussain is one of the few credible people in the trade in the country. BBC often seeks opnion from him and he presents an unbiased view of events It has ben presented in the most respected daily in that country that appears to merit belief and acceptance.
Pakistanis followed this war on American behest and pat. What is happening is Swat is also being repeated in Helmand - and in fact whole of Afghanistan. America entered this country after 9/11 but Mr. Karzai cannot go beyond Kabul. What has been the use of expending all the time and US$3 trillion for such negligible gains. Osama is free, Iraq is somewhat chaotic to the same degree , there were no WMDs. The threat of a dirty bomb is alive well and living. Why maintain the club at Gitmo when the retrieved information has no reedemable value???? In fact why go on these Quixotic missions searching for fictitious enemies. The assymetric nature of this particular warfare is that something conventional soldiers from Pakistani or American army are not trained to fight. The same had happened with the Americans in Vietnam, Korea etc but American are obsessionists and bad learners. In their compulsion successive American administrations fought the Indo-China war. The Kennedy administration had managed to run the war from Washington without large scale troops , and Lyndon Baines Johnson that more aggressive action was needed. Obama incidentally is two things , he running the war from Washington with a large sacle troops involvement. There were SEATO and CENTO knotted in the Vietnam war. In comparison it is now NATO put in the pan . In both stances there was lukewarm cooperation from these orgamistaion and America had to carry the can. These organisations were invited to present an eye wash to the world and sanctify America's point of view. Needless to say this cosmetology is useless. America is deficit economy it has no fianancial forebearings to fight external wars. It should rather go home and try put things in order. They should halt the decline of the dollar and try to make the economy a manufacturing economy rather that solely a service economy when other can produce cheaply. when America is reliant on the world for almost every commodity. When American eductaional standards are falling ???? Like life itself there are more questions than answers in this miasma.