All Eyes on Pakistan

Hello I’m Charlotte Bellis and you’re watching newsy.com

We’re tracking responses to the continuing conflict between Pakistan and the Taliban.

The BBC reports that as many as 800,000 people are fleeing Pakistan’s Swat valley as tensions escalate.

“ …they’ve added to the flood of refugees who fled fighting between the army and the Taliban—around 1 million in the past 8 months.” (BBC)

Al Jazeera English reports the Taliban has broken their peace agreement with the Pakistani government.

The Taliban justifies their decision this way…
“the peace deal with the government in the Swat valley is over” because “government troops had killed civilians in the area,” breaking their part of the agreement. (Al Jazeera English)

An editorial in Pakistan’s PakTribune says one of the country’s problems is that citizens are joining the Taliban:

“The challenge to the Pakistani State …is from Pakistanis, civilians who have taken up arms against the nature and policies of the State.” (PakTribune)

CNN looks at the international response to the conflict by interviewing an Indian author and political candidate who says:

“We’ve seen further, the actions of intra-service intelligence coming out of Pakistan, bombing the Indian embassy in Kabul quite recently—there’s another connection for you—as well as indeed being responsible apparently for some of the terrorist outrages in my own country, including what happened most recently in Mumbai in November. All of this, needless to say, worries us. At least we know the people at the top of the Pakistani state aren’t the ones doing that. If they are replaced by this kind of element, then we’re all in very serious trouble.” (CNN)

So what’s in store for the future?

MSNBC suggests the U.S. wants Pakistan and Afghanistan to become allies against the Taliban, but suggests it won’t be easy:

“There’s a lot of mistrust between these two nations and the White House is trying to bring them together and wants these trilateral meetings to take place regularly—four times a year. These two countries are emerging as the main foreign policy priority for the Obama administration.” (MSNBC)

Forbes cites a White House official who says Obama wants the president of Pakistan…

“to give higher priority to fighting Taliban militants than to guarding the Indian border.” (Forbes)

We’ll be sure to update you with the more coverage on the conflict.