Pakistan

Mr. Asif Ali Zardari, President of Islamic Republic of Pakistan, has vowed to undertake more military operations on the lines of Swat Operation, Rah-e-Rast, to rid the country of Taliban. The ongoing operation has to date resulted in killing of 1000 Taliban viz-a-viz losing around 100 soldiers. The number of civilians killed is not known yet. It would be fine if the equation was limited to the aforementioned figures. But, that's not the case. The operation has made around two million people of Swat region refugees within their own country; homeless IDPs. There are reported to be around 5000 Taliban operating in Swat region. The number of soldiers deployed against them initially was 15000 who were later reinforced, the number of which is not officially known. It would be fair to assume that the current strength of the troops operating should be around 25000. Continuation of the current operations, perhaps, is a sour pill which has to be taken. However, we need to learn from the same. With eighty thousand troops deployed along Afghan border and the remaining staying in the cantonments focused on India, how many more troops can be spared to undertake Swat like operations? How many more (in millions!) IDPs can we look after? How many more unaccounted for civilian casualties can we bear? How many times can we keep on begging the rest of the world to help us deal with the problems of IDPs? Some other solution has got to be found to resolve this problem.