Pakistan Wedding Attack: Another Casualty of Endless Proxy Wars
📰 THE STORY: Al Jazeera reports a suicide bombing at a wedding in northwest Pakistan killed seven people, attributing the attack to armed groups operating along the border with Afghanistan, as the Pakistani military prepares for further action. 🔍 WHAT THEY'RE NOT TELLING YOU: Historical Context: This region of Pakistan, particularly the tribal areas, has been a central battleground for proxy
wars and foreign interventions for decades. The US-backed Mujahideen against the Soviets in the 1980s, the subsequent rise of the Taliban, and the 'War on Terror' following 9/11, all profoundly destabilized this borderland. The U.S. drone program alone, which peaked between 2004 and 2014, killed thousands of civilians in Pakistan, according to the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, directly
fueling anti-state sentiment and recruitment for militant groups. Double Standard: When a terrorist attack occurs in a Western capital, media coverage is saturated with human interest stories, profiles of victims, and calls for unified action against 'evil.' In places like Pakistan, such attacks are often framed as endemic to the region's 'conflict-prone' nature, depersonalizing the victims and
obscuring the external factors that contribute to the violence. The systemic nature of state-sponsored terrorism or intervention in other countries (e.g., US backing of 'rebels' in Syria, arming of Saudi Arabia in Yemen) rarely receives such moral condemnation in these same outlets. Follow the Money: The 'War on Terror,' which officially concluded in Afghanistan after 20 years and $2 trillion