Behind the Nightmare in Swat An Interview With Saadia Toor

by Ashley Smith / May 28th, 2009

"Ashley Smith: For last few weeks, the media have been filled with reports of the “imminent threat of the Taliban,” and then coverage of Pakistani military assault on the Taliban in Swat. Why has the Pakistani military abandoned the former peace and launched this attack?

Saadia Toor: Finally, we’re beginning to see a lot of good analysis coming out of the left media. Earlier, the U.S. government’s rhetoric was being picked up uncritically. We’ve seen scaremongering in the media over the imminent takeover of Pakistani nukes by the Taliban.

The U.S. has created this bizarre new moniker “Af/Pak” as a way to cover over their expansion of the war from Afghanistan into Pakistan. Building consent for this expansion has been what all the State Department, Pentagon and media propaganda has been about in the last few weeks.

To address your question about why the Pakistani Army abandoned the peace, we have to step back and understand the relationship between the Army and the Taliban. The Pakistani military has not been interested in dealing with the Taliban because the Taliban don’t appear as a threat to them. The military’s primary and existential obsession is with India, and that’s where the majority of the Pakistani Army is deployed. The Pakistani Army knows that the Taliban is, in part, its own creation, and it can deal with them." (more)