February 16, 2009

Photo Essay: Pashtun anti-Taliban Rally in Toronto

A peace rally which seemed to have started as a way to condemn the killing of civilians by all sides in the conflict rapidly degenerates into condemnation of the Taliban. At least, the general condemn them all attitude adopted by the peace faction of the Left seems to be the general gist of the press releases about the rally I was sent. However, early reports from those at the rally seem to indicate that it had a distinct anti-Taliban bent to it.

I can't speak to whether or not Pakistani forces routinely kill civilians. It certainly wouldn't surprise or shock me. What I can say is that the Taliban does routinely -- and proudly -- kill civilians.

For our part we do reluctantly kill civilians when we use Predators to fire on HVTs within Pakistan. And inasmuch as some segments of the Pashtun community within Pakistan harbor the Taliban, al Qaeda, and other related groups within the compounds which often also house extended families, I expect that we will continue to kill civilians.

There is really only one way to end this: defeat the Taliban. I'm sorry about that, but that is how wars are ended.

And in the context of Pakistan, the demands of "peace" and "schools for girls" are rather mutually exclusive demands. At least, these demands cannot both be met when peace is bought through allowing the adoption of sharia law in majority Pashtun regions. Like the Pakistani government has over the weekend.

Especially given that the kind of sharia familiar to Pashtuns in the area is of the Deobandi-Hanafi strain. A kind of Islamic law so strict and backward looking, that it spurred al Qaeda's leading early philosopher, Abdullah Azzam, to warn Arabs coming to Afghanistan for the jihad to prepare for culture shock. Can you imagine Saudis shocked that the local version of Islam was so strict?

Anyway, it's interesting to see the images from the rally below. They were sent to me by Zbig. He reports that even though it was well below zero, that about 250-300 people attended the rally. In an interesting twist, at least one of those at the rally brought an Israeli flag.

Many more pics below. If any one was at the rally and has a report, send it on in.

PS--I'm experimenting with ImageShack's multi-upload function. Let me know if/when there are problems with images in this post. Thanks.