No Peace in Swat Valley

The drawing shows three boys in traditional Pakistani long shirts, shalwar kameezshalwar kameez, crying and holding banners that read "We want peace," "Not the peaces [sic] of human bodies" and, in Arabic script, "Aman" -- Pashto for "peace." On the left of the group, two hooded men (members of the Taliban, one presumes) carry swords; on the right, two figures in uniform carry guns (Pakistani army, one guesses). In the foreground, a hooded figure holds down a person who is pleading, "Please let me go; I have small children."

This was a drawing by a schoolgirl named Sheema for an end-of-Ramadan competition in Mingora, the main town of Pakistan's Swat Valley in the North-West Frontier Province. The scene depicting her hometown this spring -- civilians caught between the militants and the army -- illustrates the huge human cost of the operation by the Pakistan army against the Taliban. And the suffering is far from over. After a week of talking to people living in the Swat Valley, displaced from Swat or working in Swat, I can attest that Sheema got it exactly right.