Editor’s Note: This Guest Voice column was written for TMV for the Pakistan-based website The Pakistani Spectator.
Understand us US By The Pakistani Spectator
by The Pakistani Spectator
There is a vast chasm between the West and the Pakistan. The West simply doesn’t understand what Pakistan is all about, and why despite so much aid and donations Pakistanis don’t become mellow towards it.
The West is right when it asks our President Musharraf why doesn’t he respect… media and freedom justice, and West is right when it asks our President why in the world Pakistan cannot have a true democracy — and why every after five or so years, democracy gets rolled-back by a serving general.
The West is wrong, when it sits back and ignores its policies’ aftermath in Pakistan, just like it did in the case of Taliban. Now when the Talibans have come back to haunt them and Pakistan, they are just dumbfounded as what to do.
Rather than indulging in the painful litany of the crisis, which got generated by US meddling, one should confine oneself to the situation we now have to stand up to, namely our sacrificial pursuit of pax Americana in this part of Asia, in the face of the traumatic destabilization of our state and society — principally by an anti-American (which has now become anti-Pakistan) insurgency.
Americans must understand that this war against terrorism is going nowhere, and it is only resulting in the causalities of innocent people. They simply can’t keep going on in the name of collateral damage.
The Taliban movement is a political problem which must be solved politically. A concerted effort must be made by both Pakistani and US authorities to engage
Talibans in a composite dialogue, and also they can be neutralized by showering modern blessings in the areas which are their strongholds.
The Taliban are operating in the area known as the FATA, the tribal belt between Pak-Afghan borders. In that area there simply is no education, no modern infrastructure, no health-service — nothing. Instead of insisting on sending US troops in that area, the US should insist on sending US-facilitated computers, schools, hospitals and industrial units in that area. That will end the war and this scourge of terrorism within a year.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.