Why so much hatred for Karachi when Punjab and rest of the Sindh also rejecting IDPs? It sounds very racist.

“More pain was inflicted on the Pakhtun psyche by certain PPP leaders, including its blundering spokesperson Fauzia Wahab, when the IDPs were equated to the Afghan refugees. If this isn’t a slip of tongue, then it obviously means that many politicians and also other likeminded people from different walks of life in Punjab and Sindh have come to believe that the Afghan refugees too are primarily Pakhtuns and all of them need to be kept out of Pakistan’s two biggest provinces to avoid harm.” … “The apathy of some of the Sindh- and Punjab-based political forces to the woes of the IDPs looks all the more glaring when one compares it to the unparalleled generosity shown by the common people all over the country. In particular, the way the people opened their hearts and homes to the IDPs in NWFP was heart-warming to say the least. Nowhere was this magnanimity more visible than in Mardan and Swabi, the two districts that have received most of the displaced persons coming from neighbouring Swat, Buner and Dir. ”

“Fallout of Swat military operation” by Rahimullah Yusufzai
http://thenews.com.pk/daily_detail.asp?id=179691

Here is Hamid Mir with facts on the ground

http://www.jang.com.pk/jang/may2009-daily/28-05-2009/editorial/col5.gif

and before we give them oppurtunity to serve us a tourist next summer,
Here is Stephen Walt on all things about empathy

“One reason for this absence of empathy is the human tendency to filter current situations through the prism of the past. One of the more enduring findings in political psychology is that people place more weight on their own experiences than on the experiences of others, even when their own experiences are in fact atypical. ”

http://walt.foreignpolicy.com/
Jang yesterday reported there are laready 66 thousand pregnant women in these IDPs already, Imagine if one of those were me, you or our loved ones.

Yep ,as long as they do not show up in Karachi!

The way we are treating these good people of swat as they are displaced!

“The people of Swat and Buner are suffering for the collective failure of all state institutions, be they civil or military. They are citizens of Pakistan and enjoy all constitutional rights. Registration of IDPs for purposes of providing relief is another thing, but insistence on their registration for seeking alternate residences provided by their relatives living in Sindh is totally another matter. It is ironic that those who themselves migrated from across the border, on rightful grounds of course, are today resisting the right of residence to Pakistani IDPs in their own country! Any Pakistani citizen living in Karachi, Lahore, Hyderabad, Quetta, Sukkur and so on can buy property and live or work anywhere in Pakistan. Somebody should tell these political parties that it works the other way round as well.”

All Pakistanis must bear the burden of providing housing, food, shelter and financial assistance to the displaced people of Swat, Buner and other areas who are suffering for not their own follies but the tragic bad governance and poor policies of military dictators and their supporters.”

Here Jang writes that there are 66 thousand pregnant women in these camps , some expected to deliver in nest three months. Is not htis how the original “Taliban’ movement started, millions of displaced Afghanis in camps in wretched condiyions in Pakistan, while Mujahiddin were fighting Russians. Their off springs wre Mullah Omar and his associates and rest as we know is history.
http://www.jang.com.pk/jang/may2009-daily/26-05-2009/topst/main4.gif

Are the people going to be able to see the cause and effect?
Where is this metastasizing tragedy going to stop?

Having destroyed the once-flourishing tourist trade, the Taliban further hurt the people’s livelihood by threatening tailors and barbers and blowing up CD shops. No wonder the people of Swat have realised that it is their own survival that is at stake and that they have no choice but to help the army crush the rebels. What the government should note is that this change in attitude has occurred because the army has finally decided to do its job to destroy the enemy. If they have confidence that the government will not once again make a ‘deal’ with the Taliban, and the army will not abandon them, the people may be more encouraged to fight the Taliban and be an asset in a conflict that has countrywide ramifications. more here.

But that war was won by American, Saudi and UAE money and Saudi Wahabism, remember. So how that money was good enough then but not now? We are paying the heavy price for taking part in cold war. The only way to go forward is to bring peace and let the Tourism industry take hold over there so some warlords and drug dealers wont take advantage of poor people over there.

If Sindh is rejecting IDP then other provinces should come forward and make a example of it by taking as many displaced people as possible and settle them and give them jobs. BTW if someone is Pakistani then they have every right to settle anywhere they wish, if Karachiites wants to settle in Lahore then noone should give them hard time either.

Jan – Be nice and point me where I said it so I can respond you there.

“From Palestine to Africa to South America, our quest for global economic domination kills, sickens, maims or oppresses people on a daily basis and about 25,000 children per day die of starvation. I am not okay with these facts and I am not proud of my country.

I will spend my reflective time on MD to mourn not only the deaths of so many people all over the world due to war, but mourn the fact that they are the unseen and uncared for victims of US Empire”

http://www.counterpunch.org/sheehan05252009.html

“We have heard these anecdotes
That control will be again in the hands of the killer
Some will be chanting the slogans of death
And some will be chanting the slogans of life
The white and sacred pages of the history
Remind one of some people
In white clothes, they are the snakes in the sleeves
They capture Kabul and they capture Baghdad.”

Taroon again
“A fraud with the name of reconstruction
Takes power and gold from me”

“A veteran Afghan poet, Pir Muhammad Karwan, mourns a bride and groom killed at a wedding party that was bombed.

Here the girls with the language of bangles
Brought the songs of wedding to the ceremony
With the rockets of America
The songs of the hearts were holed ”

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/05/25-2

Would the civilians caught in the fire,elsewhere be feeling any different?

I think of civilization as a constant creation whereby we gradually expand the boundaries of community, the boundaries of those with whom we share the world – this is why it is so grotesque to see bombs and food parcels raining on the defenseless people of Afghanistan from the same source.” Good Muslim, Bad Muslim – An African Perspective by Mahmood Mamdani http://www.ssrc.org/sept11/essays/mamdani.htm

Akbar has asked very pertinent questions for you and others to ponder before engaging in bigoted stereotyping and demagoguery. It is NOT easy to discipline by bullets and buckwaas nor stop counter-insurgency with smart bombs – it require more brains – which may be in short supply. But the Establishment and its supporter certainly have a way with brawn in the mercenary services for Uncle Sam & Co.

Neena,
British draw the Durrand line, created FATA/PATA/FANA, and then ran away in 1947 as they could not “finish the job”.
Russians left with their tales between their legs as they could not “finish the job”
Americans are staring at defeat and tightening the screws around Pak Army(only cheaper alternative) to “finish the job”.

May be everybody should step back and ask,
What is the “job”?
Is it a political/socio-economical struggle?
Who are the actors?
What are their interests?
Who is the invader?
Who is occupier?
What would be a just solution of these conflicts?

Pakistan’s economy is in the clutches of international monetary institutions, by design and by failure of political system, where people like Shaukat Aziz/Musharraf/Zardari 9and all their predecessors)selling it out and no organized opposition.
Pakistan can not pay this huge standing army.So it has to do the dirty work for the highest bidder.
To me one solution could have been to dissolve the standing army altogether and rely on volunteer forces, but the time fort hat may have already passed.