It looks like a beautiful forest glade, perhaps just outside a village. You can hear the birds in the background as the blindfolded men are led one by one to stand by a wall. Each stands mute and still as the another one is led and positioned next to him by his own uniformed escort.
What’s striking is the almost total silence of the proceedings. The blindfolded men don’t speak to each other, they don’t weep or make a fuss. And the soldiers - according to the accompanying information on the video, they’re from the Pakistani army - don’t seem to need commands or directives. Except near the end, when a soldier asks his boss, “One at a time, or all together sahib?”
“All together” he’s told.
Seconds later, you jump at the rattle of gunfire and watch the bodies crumple. For just a moment, that aching silence is back. Then there are noises, moans, that seem to go on for endless minutes, though it can’t be more than a few seconds before a soldier comes up to the bodies on the ground and shoots them one by one. Then comes the silence again.
For more than a year, the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan have been asking for an inquiry into extra judicial killings by the Pakistani army. And now the Americans are being forced, reluctantly to show where they stand. This video was posted on the Facebook page of the Pashtuns’ International Association and apparently shows Pakistani soldiers executing six blindfolded men, possibly militants or their sympathizers, in Swat where it has been waging a fierce war against Taliban forces for the souls and the land of the Valley.
The authenticity of the video is still being verified, but according to the New York Times, there are people in the know who claim that its the real thing.
Not that the idea of mililtary backed extra judicial killings in Swat is all that new to either people in the region, or human rights activists in Pakistan or even, possibly in the corridors of power in Washington. It’s just that with such a public video, it’s kind of hard for the US to dodge the issue of whether its going to put its money where its mouth is when it comes to defending human rights.
How will the US navigate between two opposing directives - a law which prohibits US funding from going to countries that are grossly violating human rights, and the US need to keep the Pakistani military - the recipient of more than $10 billion over the last decade - on side in its fight against the Taliban.
I for one, can’t wait to see which way the US will go.
on Oct 2nd, 2010 at 8:44 am
Well, Dheera, the enigma you propose is in reality quite straightforward and simple. The Americans will proceed in their own way towards whatever works in acheiving their only and primary goal in Pakistan, the defence of the United States against terrorism by protecting the flank to American and allied forces in Afghanistan. Pakistan’s technical soverignity in all reality is seriously erroded and keeping the country stable for sake of its nuclear arsenal through to getting the ISI to stop its duplictous games with the Taliban, leaves the Americans no choice but “to play the ball as it lies” until the Americans can bring about a situation where they have firm control over their presence there. Whatever tactics are deemed necessary to achieve this will be employed until the overall strategy has won out. The Americans fear no sanctions over any breech of conduct save for their own system of military justice and other means of conduct in exercising foreign affairs, due to its status both as superpower and international cop of last resort. Governments as the saying goes, utimately do not have friends but self-interests. The US is in a very long and fustrating war which will test their policies to the limit. no longterm effects to this situation will result in any clearcut in any other direction.