Twirp: Terrorist Wahabi Islamic Rep Pakistan 4

[Naresh]

<b>Mudy Ji :</b>

The opulence exhibited on the “Pakistani PM’s Table reminded me of the following :

<b>No aid without benchmarks : Kamran Shafi</b>

ON Jan 13, I had written in this same space about Swat : 'Visitors to Swat tell of Pakistan Army and Taliban check posts a few hundred metres apart, army vehicles passing through Taliban check posts too. Why?

'Are they cooperating to strike the fear of God into our hearts? And for telling their paymaster, Amreeka Bahadur, that the problem is far bigger than it really is, so go on coughing up those luscious dollars?

'Let me caution the powers that be in this tortured and unfortunate country: Barack Obama will soon be in the White House. Beware, sirs, for he is a highly intelligent man who will very quickly see through all of the charade and the subterfuge that seemingly is on shameful display in the citadel of Islam. He is not a duffer like your ‘tight buddy’ Dubya! So beware, if not for your own sakes, then for this poor country’s and its hapless people’s. I beg you.'

So then, told you so, didn’t I, O’ great and all-powerful Pakistani Establishment? But did you listen; did the federal government of Asif Ali Zardari (may God bless us), listen? No sirs, you did not. You thought that no matter what your acts of omission and commission, the slick-willy Husain Haqqani, the bestest diplomat in this universe and in the world’s beyond, would work his magic on the Americans and everything would be as hunky-dory for you as it was for the Commando when he committed his acts of omission and commission. You forgot, did you not, that he was also the COAS of the great Pakistan Army; and that an idiot sat in the White House.

Well, the verbal hellfire missiles fired at the above-mentioned Asif Zardari during the last week should have brought y’all crashing down to earth if you have even an iota of sense. But no, above-mentioned Husain Haqqani reportedly went on bended knee before Ambassador Holbrooke and beseeched him to try and ‘limit the damage’, please sir. Of course, whilst you and your paid hacks think that was a great coup, Mr Holbrooke’s attempts at so doing leave one flabbergasted: President Obama had 'very deep personal feelings for Pakistan … as a young man he visited Pakistan … his mother worked there, she loved Pakistan'. I ask you!

How does the fact that Barack Obama visited and had very deep personal feelings for Pakistan as a young man, or the fact that his mother loved this country, have any effect at all on how President Barack Obama will view this country when every report that goes to him speaks of the ambivalent, almost careless attitude of the powers that be towards matters of huge and critical importance to the United States?

Which doesn’t mean, however, that the American administration should kick the civilian, elected government in the teeth, and at the same time praise the army leadership to the skies. I take strong exception to President Obama saying that it was 'very difficult (for the government) to gain the support and the loyalty of their people' because it didn’t 'seem to have the capacity to deliver basic services: schools, healthcare, rule of law, a judicial system….' I wish someone would remind Mr Obama that army dictators have ruled this country for longer than civilians, and that it was an army dictator who was in office immediately before this government was elected to office. Why weren’t 'basic services' delivered then?

I wish someone would remind Mr Obama that it was the Commando who kicked out 62 members of the superior judiciary including the chief justice of the country: so much for 'rule of law'; and that it was the Commando who is primarily responsible for what is happening in the Frontier because of his foolish act of replacing the political administration with the army. Witness the saga of Lt. Gen. Safdar whose 'eyes saw everything” and whose 'ears heard everything' and Nek Mohammad!

It was completely unfair of Mr Obama too, to place the entire responsibility for what is going on in the country today on the civilian, elected government, when there is every evidence that the army simply did not do its job seriously, and well enough, in Swat. Ask the ANP.

There are several aspects to this whole rigmarole, however, and whilst I say the above, I also agree absolutely with Fatima Bhutto when she writes <b>‘Stop funding my failing state’ in the Daily Beast (May 4).</b> I have myself been turning this matter over in my head for days now, have discussed it with friends, <b>and have come to the conclusion that untied aid only spoils our ruling elites even more.</b>

America, old sugar-daddy America, should have seen by now that no amount of mollycoddling has ever helped chivvy the government of Pakistan, heavily influenced by the establishment as it is, towards doing the right thing. It will have seen too that a huge proportion of aid goes towards non-developmental expenditure on a scale that is unimaginable in other, far richer, aid-giving countries.

<b>Surely America’s diplomatic posts have reported on the outlandish luxury and circumstance in which the government leaders of the country live; the most expensive (and very kitsch) furniture, all damask and chiffon and silk and velvet upon which they recline and eat; the seven-course meals served in official banquets in our government houses across all the provinces and in Islamabad the Beautiful.

It should know too, that government leaders are not the only ones who wallow in luxury, and that even lieutenant generals of the Pakistan Army now ride about in BMW 5-series motor-cars; that senior officers of the military live in utter splendour compared to their counterparts even in aid-giving America!

Even next door the Indians live far more simply than our brass hats. I have visited the homes of three retired Indian armed forces officers: a lieutenant general, a major general and an air marshal. The houses/flats of all three would fit into just one of the houses we see in General’s Colony, Lahore, with space to spare.</b>

So let me say this to our donors (shame on us!) : it is high time that our elites got some shock treatment. Set the benchmarks; don’t give a red cent that is not tied to performance on the ground; and route any and all aid through the elected government. <b>And remember, we most certainly have the wherewithal to comprehensively defeat a militia that even now does not number more than 4,000, on our very own. If we want to defeat it, that is.</b>

kshafi1@yahoo.co.uk

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