Two months after the Pakistani Army wrested control of the Swat Valley from Taliban militants, a new campaign of fear has taken hold, with scores, perhaps hundreds, of bodies dumped on the streets in what human rights advocates and local residents say is the work of the military.What, then, will be the distinction between the Pakistani government and the Taliban? People will not be inspired to support the Pakistani government if the only difference between the Taliban and the Pakistani government is that the government's killers wear green uniforms. Fear doesn't generate allies. Fear doesn't encourage people to cooperate.
Using fear to control a population is, ultimately, a self-destructive tactic.
When people ask, often rhetorically, what the difference is between fear and respect, I say that you know whether yoiu can turn your back on someone who respects you.
ReplyDeleteActually, fear will work quite well *if* the perpetrators of fear are native or have native helpers willing to take up the slack. Just ask the opposition to the Red Chinese occupation of Tibet whether fear worked for squashing opposition to said occupation. Darn tootin' it did. But the Red Chinese had plenty of willing helpers -- the slaves that the Tibetan monastic class had kept in chains for oh so many centuries prior to the Chinese takeover, who were quite enthusiastic about ferreting out the silk-wearin' pansy boys who'd been flogging them with whips and who had maintained an entire army dedicated to nothing but putting down slave revolts (thus why there was no real opposition to the initial Chinese invasion -- the Tibetan army was used to shooting at unarmed slaves, not at real armed opposition, and fled running and screaming like little babies).
ReplyDeleteSo yeah, fear can put down rebellions and end insurgencies just fine -- ain't no insurgency in Tibet right now, in case you haven't noticed. What doesn't work, however, is fear imposed from outside with no native helpers. Whether this is the case in the Swat valley is an interesting exercise in ethnology...
Fear works for a while but people get tired of being in constant fear.
ReplyDeleteAs well the Pakistani/Taliban thing is not so much just fear. Actual killing happens. A lot of killing. Is that fear or reality?
I think we can say that fear alone does not work for the RW/neocons either. A certain amount of a population will always be subject to fear. But the reason for the fear has to come true at some point or it loses it's power.