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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
May 26, 2009
1:27 PM

CONTACT: Human Rights Watch (HRW)
Tel: +1-212-216-1832
Email: hrwpress@hrw.org

Pakistan: Lift Swat Curfew for Trapped Civilians

Food, Water, Medicine Running Out in Conflict Zone

NEW YORK - May 26 - The Pakistani authorities should immediately lift a 24-hour curfew in place since May 18 in the Swat valley and adjoining areas of the Malakand Division of Pakistan’s Provincially Administered Tribal Areas (PATA), Human Rights Watch said today.
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Human Rights Watch is one of the world's leading independent organizations dedicated to defending and protecting human rights. By focusing international attention where human rights are violated, we give voice to the oppressed and hold oppressors accountable for their crimes. Our rigorous, objective investigations and strategic, targeted advocacy build intense pressure for action and raise the cost of human rights abuse. For 30 years, Human Rights Watch has worked tenaciously to lay the legal and moral groundwork for deep-rooted change and has fought to bring greater justice and security to people around the world.

Human Rights Watch (HRW) Links:
Posted in Human Rights, Pakistan

State Dept. Has Few Who Speak Language of Area Where Taliban Operates

Pakistani soldiers over look the Swat valley from their bunker on top of Baine Baba Ziarat mountain in Swat district, during a trip organized by the army, May 22, 2009. Pakistani aircraft bombed Taliban militants on Sunday in the Orakzai ethnic Pashtun region, killing at least seven, while soldiers battled insurgents in the main town of the Swat region, government officials said. (REUTERS/Mian Khursheed)

WASHINGTON - Complicating the Obama administration's plan to ramp up civilian aid to Pakistan and Afghanistan, the State Department employs just 18 foreign service officers who can speak the language of the region where the Taliban insurgency rages, according to records and interviews.

Two of them work in Afghanistan, both in the capital, Kabul, according to the State Department's Bureau of Human Resources. Five are in Peshawar, Pakistan.

Posted in War/Empire, Afghanistan, Pakistan

Concern Mounts Over US Predator Covert Killings

This file handout from the US Department of Defense (DoD) shows an unmanned Predator surveillance plane during a simulated Navy reconnaissance flight. The US has taken the unprecedented step of sharing with Islamabad surveillance data collected by drones flying along over Pakistan, according to the top US military officer. (AFP/DoD-HO/File)

The CIA is said to have carried out at least 16 Predator strikes in Pakistan during the first four months of this year. America has stepped up the covert targeted killing policy in Pakistan and Afghanistan despite the concern of security experts about its effectiveness and complaints by human rights groups about civilian casualties.

Posted in drone attacks, War/Empire, Pakistan

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
May 20, 2009
1:30 PM

CONTACT: International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL)

Phone: +41 (0)22 920 03 25
Email: media@icbl.org

Nobel Peace Laureate Campaign Denounces Taliban Use of Landmines in Pakistan's Swat Valley

GENEVA - May 20 - The International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL) denounces recent use of antipersonnel landmines by the Pakistani Taliban (Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan) in Pakistan's Swat Valley. According to reports from the area including most recently from Human Rights Watch, an ICBL member, residents of Mingora, the epicenter of the fighting, have seen Taliban militants laying antipersonnel mines in the town.

Landmines could rapidly claim casualties among the civilians fleeing the conflict zone.

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The International Campaign to Ban Landmines is committed to an international ban on the use, production, stockpiling, and sale, transfer, or export of antipersonnel landmines.  
International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL) Links:
Posted in landmines, Pakistan

Swat Valley Could Be Worst Refugee Crisis Since Rwanda, UN Warns

Internally displaced girls fleeing a military offensive in the Swat valley hold classes inside a tent at an UNHCR camp (United Nations High Commission for Refugees) in the outskirts of Peshawar May 19, 2009. A Pakistani military offensive against Taliban militants in their Swat valley bastion has forced more than a million people from their homes, the government and the United Nations say. (REUTERS/Ali Imam)

The human exodus from the war-torn Swat valley in northern Pakistan is turning into the world's most dramatic displacement crisis since the Rwandan genocide of 1994, the UN refugee agency warned.

Posted in refugees, War/Empire, Pakistan

Obama, Pakistan, and the Rule of Law

"Our Founding Fathers, faced with perils that we can scarcely imagine, drafted a charter to assure the rule of law and the rights of man -- a charter expanded by the blood of generations. Those ideals still light the world, and we will not give them up for expedience sake."

Posted in airstrikes, drone attacks, war crimes, Af-Pak, Pakistan

The Mistake of Afghanizing Pakistan

As Pakistan begins an all-out air and land assault on its own people and its president asks America for drones, we must ask: Can Pakistan succeed in defeating the Taliban when America has not?

We must consider that if America, with its military might, satellites and well-equipped soldiers has not been able to stop the Taliban from crisscrossing the Afghan-Pakistan border in the last seven years, we cannot expect Pakistan to be able to accomplish that for us.

Posted in escalation, Af-Pak, Afghanistan, Pakistan

Becoming What We Seek to Destroy

The bodies of dozens, perhaps well over a hundred, women, children and men, their corpses blown into bits of human flesh by iron fragmentation bombs dropped by U.S. warplanes in a village in the western province of Farah, illustrates the futility of the Afghan war. We are not delivering democracy or liberation or development. We are delivering massive, sophisticated forms of industrial slaughter.
Posted in airstrikes, drone attacks, Af-Pak, Afghanistan, Pakistan

More Than One Million Flee Pakistan Fighting, Says UN

Internally displaced children, fleeing military operations in Buner, try to get free food at a UNHCR camp (Photo: REUTERS)

A spokesman for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees says the fighting between Pakistani security forces and the Taliban has led to massive displacement in the area.

At least half a million people have fled fighting in Swat Valley, where a peace deal broke down earlier this week, bringing the total displaced in recent months to 1 million.

A UNHCR spokesman said that up to 200,000 people have arrived in safe areas in the past few days. Another 300,000 are on the move or are about to flee.

Posted in refugees, Pakistan

Smart Power in Pakistan/Afghanistan?

Inside the Rayburn Building on Capitol Hill Tuesday, there were two distinctly different hearings on Pakistan. One featured the Obama administration's special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, Ambassador Richard Holbrooke, and it was packed with mainstream media--standing room only.

Posted in Af-Pak, Afghanistan, Pakistan
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