Refugees’ fate tests Pakistan’s rhetoric

Despite the exciting events in Iran, Honduras and the Koreas, pay attention to a less-observed drama beginning in Pakistan this week.

The drama revolves around the fate of 2 million refugees who fled a battle between Pakistan’s army and Taliban extremists in and around the Swat Valley.

The Pakistani government says the refugees can start going home this week. But they feel trapped between failed government promises and Taliban threats. Their fate will reveal whether Pakistan’s leaders really want to defeat al-Qaida and the Taliban.

The refugees’ tale reflects all the frustrations that have dogged U.S. efforts to work with Pakistanis. Their government dithered while the Taliban took control of Swat, cut off heads, and closed girls schools. But when the Taliban broke a peace pact in mid-April and advanced within 60 miles of the capital, officials woke up and sent the army in.

The good news? The Taliban’s overreach seemed to jolt Pakistanis into finally viewing them as a threat. The shift in Pakistani public opinion was stunning. Until then, much of the establishment had claimed the extremist violence was provoked by the United States and India, and rejected any efforts to crush them as “America’s war.”

But once the army attacked, the attitudes of Pakistani media and politicians shifted; this made possible greater U.S. and Pakistani cooperation on many levels. When 2 million refugees poured out of the Swat region, America had a stellar chance to do good — and boost its image by helping the refugees.

After all, as Gen. David Petraeus put it in an interview, success requires more than pushing the Taliban out. “Remember, it’s not about clearing and leaving,” Petraeus said, “it’s about clearing, holding and building, or rebuilding in cases where a lot of damage has been done.

“It is critical,” Petraeus said, “to create conditions as quickly as possible where these people can return to their homes, get services going, and reopen schools so camps don’t harden and they don’t have sustained displacement, which creates dissatisfaction.” That, in turn, would create conditions for Taliban recruitment.

So some U.S. officials suggested “Chinook diplomacy” for the new refugee wave, a replica of the massive reconstruction aid U.S. troops provided in Pakistani Kashmir after the 2005 earthquake. After all, if Pakistani public opinion had turned, surely the Swati refugees would welcome American aid.

No fingerprints

Yet a public demonstration of U.S. help was rejected. “I said they couldn’t fly in Chinooks, no way,” said Lt. Gen. Nadeem Ahmad, head of the Pakistani army’s disaster-management group. He told the New York Times there would be an “extremely negative reaction” if Americans were seen distributing aid, and that it should be distributed in a “subtle” manner.

That means the vast bulk of humanitarian aid reaching the refugees is U.S.-funded, to the tune of more than $300 million, but there are no Americans involved in delivering it. Most Pakistanis don’t know where it comes from.

Yet while the U.S. fingerprint on its aid is invisible, anti-American Islamist charity groups are openly working the camps, setting up clinics, giving out food, and recruiting for jihad.

Of course, the sight of Chinooks ferrying aid would probably rev up Pakistani conspiracy theories that America and India want to establish bases in Swat. I kid you not. Pakistani media are full of such theories, which they are pumping out again after a pause during the Swat crisis.

Moreover, Petraeus stresses that the Pakistani military wants to show it can handle this matter by itself. “They don’t want our Chinooks flying,” he says. “We can encourage others to give and we are providing (them with) helicopters, military supplies, and money. But there is sensitivity to the visibility of the United States. The Pakistanis, commendably, are determined to show they can do it on their own.”

That makes sense. But what if the Pakistanis aren’t up to the job? In phone conversations with Swatis and Pakistani journalists, I’m told the refugees don’t trust government claims that it’s safe to return. The government has yet to capture or kill any senior Taliban leader, reinforcing the belief that Pakistani officials want to maintain a Taliban card to brandish against India.

X Trudy Rubin is a columnist and editorial-board member for the Philadelphia Inquirer. Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.