In the latest Global Pulse episode, Pakistan at War, host Erin Coker asks who is to blame for the violence in Pakistan. Watch the episode and share your thoughts below!

Wednesday's market bombing in Peshawar capped off a particularly deadly month in Pakistan amidst a shored up military campaign in the country's western region of Waziristan.  More than 100 people died in Wednesday's attack, many of them women and children.

Global media largely attribute the recent bloodshed to the Pakistani Taliban's attempt to destabilize the government in retaliation for recent military efforts to drive extremists from the country's volatile North-West Frontier Province.

However, militant violence in Pakistan has been on the rise long before the government launched its new offensive. According to the terrorism database, South Asia Terrorism Portal (SATP), terrorist violence killed 2,155 civilians in 2008, compared to 140 in 2003. Similarly, nearly 1800 civilians have been killed in the first 10 months of 2009, exceeding the total number of civilian deaths from 2003 to 2006, according to the SATP.

Some international and media experts note that the Pakistani Taliban has absorbed Punjabi militants and other separatist groups, resulting in a new and dangerous band of extremists. These militants are further bolstered by al-Qaeda members who have taken refuge in the country's tribal areas near the Afghan border. This new incarnation of militants, notes the Council on Foreign Relations' Jayshree Bajoria, is "more violent and less conducive to political solutions than their predecessors."

In a Foreign Policy editorial, the Washington, DC-based Atlantic Council attributes Pakistan's inability to contain the growing extremist threat to a lack of modern military might and calls on the U.S. to furnish Pakistan with adequate weaponry to defeat the Taliban. Failure to do so, argues Shuja Nawaz, will result in continued terror strikes on the public. 

However, Pakistani blogger Riaz Haq blames the violence not on a lack of American weapons, but on government intelligence failures. "The best way to stop the increasing carnage on the streets of Pakistan...is to stop the attacks well before they occur," writes Haq. "Unfortunately, however, the intelligence agencies which are supposed to frustrate the blood-thirsty attackers appear totally ineffective, even paralyzed."
   
While the exact cause of the surge in violence may be up for debate, the toll it is taking on Pakistani civilians is undeniable.

The renewed clashes between government forces and the Taliban in North-West Frontier Province have resulted in a second wave of refugees fleeing the fighting, adding strain to already-crowded camps. According to the U.N., fighting in South Waziristan has forced an estimated 139,400 people from their homes [PDF link] and could displace thousands more.

The latest bombing in Peshawar has also disrupted the lives of Pakistan's urban residents. "The people want to go back to their mundane routines," writes Murtava Razvi in a Dawn editorial. "Youngsters want to go out to the parks, to the beach, to bowl, to eat out. Women want to go shopping unescorted, and men want to go about their daily chores without worrying about families left at home. This isn’t happening anymore."

Is misogyny an inherent part of Afghan culture? No, it's not. As far back as the 1920s, the Afghan government showed support for women. Mahmud Tarzi, Afghanistan's Foreign Minister and the King's father-in-law, was an "ardent supporter" of women’s education. In the late 1970s the Soviet-backed People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan gained power and expanded women’s rights substantially.

After the Soviet war, fundamentalist "Mujahideen" warlords gained power. "Serious wide-spread violations of 'women's rights' by Mujahideen soldiers included rape and torture," writes Sonali Kolhatkar in Change Links. Eventually, the Taliban seized power, further eroding human rights and basic freedoms, especially for women.

The situation of women in Afghanistan has improved since the Taliban rule, but even now remains desperate. Many are still routinely raped, abused and treated like second-class citizens. Then it was the Taliban, now President Karzai has passed a law backed by fundamentalist parliamentarians and clerics that legalizes abuse towards Shiite women.

When boys grows up seeing how their fathers, uncles or brothers mistreat women in the family, they cannot be expected to see that a women has rights or opinions. By passing laws that further instill abusive treatment of women, Afghan men find justification to continue mistreating them. Karzai himself is part of this mindset, as is indicated in this Times of London editorial: "[Karzai's] wife, Zinat Karzai, a medical doctor...has no voice, is rarely seen in public and is reported to have told an activist that she did not leave the house because her husband did not like it and did not give his permission."

Malalai Joya, an Afghan ex-MP and champion for justice and women’s rights who is featured in this week's Global Pulse episode, said in an interview with the Belfast Telegraph, "Karzai rules only with the permission of the warlords. He is 'a shameless puppet'...the only people who get to serve as president are those selected by the US government and the mafia that holds power in our country." She goes on to say that there is no difference between the Taliban and the warlords that are in power now, and that they were the ones that introduced the "laws oppressing women followed by the Taliban."

In a country where 85% of women have no formal education, where women are so desperate for justice that they set themselves ablaze and where women cannot even step outside of their house without their husband's permission, how can we in the West really believe that Afghanistan is really a democracy and that things are getting better for Afghan women?

In this week's Global Pulse episode, Afghan Women: Far From Equal, host Erin Coker asks whether the media should pay more attention to the struggle of women in Afghanistan. Share your thoughts below!

Countries all over the world continue the push to explore the final frontier: space.  In the post-Cold War era, India, China and Japan have entered the race. Why go to space? Are there not enough expensive problems on Earth? National pride and security seem to be the obvious reasons, and the lure of untapped mineral resources.

In an article on NPR’s website, Roger Launius, the senior curator in Space History at the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C. says, "The moon was just another place for the Cold War to play out... We really went to the moon because of the geo-political rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union -- a competition on a broad front between two superpowers over control of the world."

Now that the Cold War has ended, the need to travel and explore space has grown more complex. The space race is no longer confined to the Moon; it includes establishing space stations, satellites for telecommunications and exploring planets, asteroids and meteors as well. Increasingly, the role of exploring space is driven by a need to augment knowledge about the physical universe in order to support the Earth. India, a developing country that has shown significant advancement in space technology, has been launching satellites that have been playing a supporting role in agriculture, water resources, urban development, mineral prospecting, environment, forestry, drought and flood forecasting, ocean resources and disaster management, according to an article on CNN’s website. India's space program founder, Vikram Sarbhai, said 60 years ago, "We are convinced that if we are to play a meaningful role nationally, and in the community of nations, we must be second to none in the application of advanced technologies to the real problems of man and society."

On the economical side of things, there are many mineral rich regions on the Moon and possibly other planets that could supplement the Earth's energy needs, therefore leading to a large economic boost for countries that hold rights to these resources. An article on Wikipedia says, "The Moon is thought to be rich in Helium-3, which could one day be used in nuclear fusion power plants to fuel future energy demands in Asia, which harbors over 60 percent of the world's population and is among its fastest-growing economies." As a result, China has been focused on sending its taikonauts to the Moon. Another article on NPR's website reported Ouyang Ziyuan, the lead scientist with China's Lunar Exploration Program, saying that the aim of China's space program is clear: to advance the country's economic and scientific development. Ouyang says, "We could meet the whole world's energy needs with a hundred tons of helium-3 a year. That means we could supply the Earth with enough energy for 10,000 years."  This is a significant finding, in view of the world's current energy crisis, such as the dwindling oil supplies and increasing climate overload.

Considering the reasons above, the quest for newer resources of energy outside our planet might be a justifiable expense. The International Space Station is a good example of cooperation between nations. Here, space travelers from many different countries work together in cooperation, while governments on Earth continue their rivalries and wars. As Carl Sagan, an American astronomer and popular science writer said, "A new consciousness is developing which sees the earth as a single organism and recognizes that an organism at war with itself is doomed. We are one planet. One of the great revelations of the age of space exploration is the image of the earth finite and lonely, somehow vulnerable, bearing the entire human species through the oceans of space and time."

The government of Sri Lanka declared Wednesday a national holiday to celebrate this week's end to a 26-year civil war fought against the Tamil Tigers. While images emerged of jubilation in the streets of Colombo, news reports from the last battle front in the northeast depicted a grave state of affairs that could jeopardize long-term hopes for peace. According to UN figures, at least 7,000 civilians have died since January in the cross-fire between government military and dwindling Tamil Tiger forces. Sketchy reports are also emerging of 42 government-run internment camps where upwards of 300,000 Tamil civilian refugees have been interned in recent months.

At the same time, verifiable battleground facts are hard to come by in Sri Lanka. The Red Cross has been shut out of the northeast region, as have other international aid organizations and media. Many, including the pro-Tamil voices at TamilNet, fear for the safety of the island nation's Tamil minority, which comprise 12% of the population. Unlike in other recent conflict hot spots like the Sudan and the Balkans, there has been little talk of involving international forces in keeping the peace. If anything, the government has gained political cover through its linking of the fight against the Tamil Tigers to a larger global "war on terror."

"To protect the Tamil population in this country is my responsibility and duty," Sri Lankan president Mahinda Rajapaksa proclaimed in an address to the nation early this week. Rajapaksa delivered the lines in Tamil, a hopeful sign perhaps of a new reconciliation. But later on he also emphasized, "we don't want advice from other country about how we should treat our people." Coming at the end of a war that has killed in the range of 90,000 Sri Lankans, it is difficult to be convinced that the suffering is now fully over.

Watch the Global Pulse video on Sri Lanka here.

How should we view the recent resurgence of Taliban activity in Pakistan?

Be afraid, very afraid.

That’s a common message voiced by media and political observers in recent weeks. Pakistan’s government could go the way of the Shah of Iran in 1979, writes the Wall Street Journal editorial page. Taliban threats to Pakistan’s leadership represent the worst global crisis since the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, a RAND Corporation official tells the Financial Times.

And it’s hard not to be moved by the devastation occurring in Pakistani regions like the Swat Valley. Doctors Without Borders announced today that it was halting medical services to refugees in Swat due to escalating warfare.

But could all this fear of a Taliban takeover in Pakistan be blinding the U.S. to local realities? An Economist report notes that for all the Taliban’s repellent acts in Swat, the Pakistani military has engendered deep local hostility by its brutal strikes on civilian targets. Rather than pushing for further billions of dollars in military aid for Pakistan to stave off an unlikely Taliban takeover, U.S. leaders would do well to pay more attention to the shaping of local hearts and minds. Central Asia Institute, the education non-profit co-founded by Three Cups of Tea author Greg Mortenson, is one example of a worthy U.S. effort to build rather than break human capital in Pakistan.

Watch the Global Pulse episode on Pakistan here.