Rather than imposing conditions on delivering promised funds to Pakistan – such as reopening NATO’s supply route through the country, should Washington give Pakistan the money it has promised with gratitude? With the shadow of the friendly-fire incident at Salala hanging over the NATO Summit in Chicago, this angry editorial from The Frontier Post argues that Pakistan has paid a far heavier price for America’s ‘War on Terror’ than the U.S. and its NATO allies put together, so paying Islamabad – and apologizing for Salala, is simply the honorable thing to do.
The Frontier Post editorial starts off this way:
How could the hubris of the self-important people in the U.S. Congress, administration, think tanks and media be anything but maddening? How could one react any other way when, while fleecing someone with a long, sharp butcher’s knife, they pose as though they were performing an act of great generosity?
The case at issue is funding for Pakistan from the Coalition Support Fund. U.S. Congressmen, by an overwhelming majority, want to link this support to a reopening of NATO supply routes through Pakistan. But this money is no hand out, charity or alms. It is reimbursement for what a recipient has spent out of his own pocket fighting America’s spurious war on terror. And Pakistan has been deceitfully short-changed and even cheated by the Americans on this reimbursement for years.
Even now, they are sitting on bills pending payment to Pakistan worth over $3.2 billion. Yet these Congressmen have the audacity to pretend that if we succumbed to their arm-twisting, they would be doing us a great favor by releasing the money.
U.S.-led adventurism has cost Pakistan dearly and multifariously. In monetary terms, it has inflicted economic losses on Pakistan to the staggering tune of a $70 billion. Much-hyped U.S. economic aid totaling $7.5 billion over five-years, said to be at an annual rate of $1.5 billion per annum, under the Kerry-Lugar-Berman Act wouldn’t even cover a respectable fraction of the colossal losses Pakistan has suffered. Even this puny amount of aid is slow in coming. The grandees in the Islamabad establishment who should be telling us the truth are too loyal to their American benefactors and treacherous to their own people. But while they remain stone silent, co-author of this law, Senator Lugar, has been more forthcoming.
Indeed, one such panjandrum, Congressman Dana Rohrabacher, wants to “cut off every cent” to Pakistan “because it is being used for evil purposes.” But at the same time, this Congressman Rohrabacher has been holding open hearings and moving resolutions in Congress for the dismemberment of Pakistan and the potential secession of its Baluchistan Province. Apparently, this jester doesn’t think that working toward a sovereign state’s dissolution is evil! He presumably holds that it is a noble task.
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