News ignored by the mainstream media...

[Entropy]

I'm 40 years old and I gave up network news years ago. I still watch the PBS newshour on occassion. Those morning shows? Don't watch them either. I do watch the cable networks for breaking news - that's about it. Look at the cable news shows during prime-time. None of it is really news. Most of the "news" on the cable channels is during the day when most people are at work.

The problem with the random article on the NWFP is that there is no context and there's no room to provide any context. How is the average American to know what some news item from the NWFP means without context? I've been studying Afghanistan and the border area for years and a lot of the time I don't get it either unless I spend time doing my own research. Yes, places like the Frontier Post and others provide a lot of good content on the border region and Afghanistan and Pakistan, but most of it is incomprehensible without a lot of background knowledge - knowledge that most Americans don't have.

[George L. Singleton]

You are right.

Occasionally the TIMES OF LONDON, THE WASHINGTON POST, and THE NEW YORK TIMES can be looked to for background or broader, deeper reporting.

Someone else today on this site, this AM mentioned THE ECONOMIST MAGAZINE. I think it has shone in recent years and has top notch articles, but it is a very expensive publication, have to go to a library to affordably read it...it is not a daily newspaper in short, but darn good coverage and editorial thinking in print.

Of course, I would expect most all readers and contributors to SWJ to be untypical and extremely well informed on both Pakistan and Afghanistan, with all our services giving them prior to deployments briefings, maps, books and articles/magazines/newspapers to read on current and historic context events over there. Maybe I am too hopeful we are doing such good background education prior to deployments?

Thanks for your inputs.

[George L. Singleton]

I apologize for not recognizing that I could and will now shed some background light on my todays (3/10/09)Peshawar FRONTIER POST article and on the Pakistan "frontier" areas broadly speaking:

1. Reference to reopening Swat area girls schools is somewhat bogus.

2. Girls madrassas to be operated by radical Islamics to indoctrinate/brain wash girls is what is mainly being opened there, using...Wahabai Arab terrorist money of course, probably some Arabs as teachers.

***Swat under a Prince until about 1969, and then under a moderate provincial government until repeated take over attemtps by the Taliban was a shining example of moderate Islam, good but separate boys and girls academies; colleges and universities as understood to be such by the locals; improving housing, power, water, etc.
Chaos and backwardness is now imposed with the third time in 15 years return of Sharia Law and it's attendant thugs in Swat, men and their families who are not from Swat nor of their tribes but are the new "mafia" in town so to speak ruling from the barrel of a gun "in the name of extremist Islam."

3. Most free enterprise businessmen have fled so little real economic activity now exists and unemployment thanks to the Taliban and al Qaida violence there is now probably 80% or higher. To our on this site friend Bob this means more young boys, and now girls, to feed into the shredder of terrorist war actions within Pakistan and on in and out raids into Afghanistan, although suicide missions have only one way tickets.

4. Local police in the main fled, so those there now are a combination of the most severely extremist in their thinking and imported Taliban and al Qaida thugs.

5. "Freedom of the media" is a joke...I posted last week where a Pakistani Geo TV reporter was in Swat covering a large Taliban street march and he, the reporter, was gunned down, shot 32 times according to the Peshawar FRONTIER POST.

6. A/the key Taliban senior leader has been in and out of Swat and associated areas three times in the past 15 years, back now in Swat area. This tells you that no matter which Pakistani national and regional governments are in power they are afraid of this guy and will not "put him down." No wonder our military leadership in the field doesn't trust sensitive information to and with the Pak Frontier Force and general Pak military and Pak Government, as it/they are like a Swiss cheese shot full of Taliban, Taliban sympathezies, and al Qaida quizzlings and hirelings.

In short, it is a raw situation in FATA, Waziristan, Swat, the NWFP, where once more moderate Muslims ruled and ran free enterprises.

Part of the background problem is that the local Pukhtuns, the vast majority of the population, those who aren't making a living in the Pakistani military or government, are otherwise in about a 50/50 sense, today, in favor of outright Pukhtun ethnic revolution to found an "overlaid Pukhtun majority polpulation"...read that gerrymandered population...that would cover the majority of Afghanistan and much of Northern Paksitan (all areas named above in this posting). This would lend itself, my view, the/a Pukhtun general revolution, to severe persecution of minority population Paksitanis and Afghans in both nations.

Let me add that my information sources in all cases came and still today come to me voluntarily via interpersonal e-mails to tell me how bad things really are, ever since 9/11.

One Karachi based Pakistani, who would be a Punjabi ethnically speaking, they are hated by the radical Pukhtuns, Punjabis, called me long distance at his expense one Saturday morning our time...about a year or less ago...from Karachi, to thank me for my efforts writing letters (around 50 in DAWN since 9/11, well over a 100 in the FRONTIER POST since 9/11)...and to say how bad things continue to get. This Christmas, 2008, we also got a Christmas card from this Karachi based I would say early 30s young businessman (engineer), which I/we appreciate, as he truely is a moderate, well intentioned young Muslim gentleman.

Punjabis are the majority ethnic group of all of Pakistan, but Pukhtuns are the local/regional majority ethnically in Northern Pakistan.