Tuesday, August 17, 2010

Goodbye Pakistan?

The Sound of Pennies Dropping:

1. Pakistan's main spy agency says homegrown Islamist militants have overtaken the Indian army as the greatest threat to national security, a finding with potential ramifications for relations between the two rival South Asian nations and for the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan. A recent internal assessment of security by the Inter-Services Intelligence, Pakistan's powerful military spy agency, determined that for the first time in 63 years, it expects a majority of threats to come from Islamist militants, according to a senior ISI officer.

2. Much now depends on the ability of the government and its foreign allies to bring relief to flood victims. Tens of thousands of Pakistani troops and virtually the army’s entire helicopter fleet are now involved in the effort. But its resources are way overstretched, and for months to come the army is unlikely to be in a position to even hold the areas along the Afghan border that it has recently won back from the militants, let alone initiate any new campaigns against the Taliban. That means the war in Afghanistan is about to become even more bloody.

3. Pakistan has taken an awfully long time to understand that it faces an unprecedented terrorist threat that is not a result of conspiracies hatched in Washington, New Delhi or Tel-Aviv, as many in the public believe, but that is the result of the Pakistani state’s nurturing of extremist groups since the 1970s.

4. There appears to be a deeper reason that the global community is not responding as generously to Pakistan today: that country’s rampant corruption and links to Islamic terrorism. Quite simply, there is grave suspicion that aid will end up in the wrong hands: those of the Taliban.

UNICEF Canada is here.

12 Comments:

Blogger Jonathan Colvin said...

Perhaps another reason that Pakistan has not seen the response that Haiti saw is the perception that a country that can afford the sixth largest army in the world, a space program and nuclear weapons to boot should damn well be able to take care of its own people. That might not be fair, but it is the perception.

1:25 PM  
Blogger Anton Deque said...

I have to say, reluctantly, but honestly, that my overwhelming concern is to whom the money and aid go. I might contribute if the agencies were accountable to western countries; effectively colonial era 'do-goodery'. But the point is well made by you. This is a country in which it is hard to place any trust.

3:03 PM  
Blogger Terry Glavin said...

Nothing colonial-era about getting aid directly to the people. An obligation that burdens humanity is not a "white man's" burden.

4:23 PM  
Blogger EscapeVelocity said...

This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

4:26 PM  
Blogger EscapeVelocity said...

This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

4:27 PM  
Blogger EscapeVelocity said...

This comment has been removed by the author.

4:27 PM  
Blogger Terry Glavin said...

No crazed bigots allowed.

8:44 PM  
Blogger EscapeVelocity said...

It seems that your bigotry is just fine though.

This isnt the first Leftist joint that silences dissenters.

And it certainly wont be the last.

8:53 PM  
Blogger vildechaye said...

As I have previously stated, Escape Velocity needs to use his moniker to "slip the surly bonds of earth" and return to whatever bizarro world planet he came from. They probably even have a "Chinese Columbia" there, ready for takeover by China.

10:26 PM  
Blogger EscapeVelocity said...

It seems to me, that EscapeVelocity, is in the majority in the West, not interested in donating money to Pakistani Muslims.

Or as vildechaye likes to call it, out of this world loony.

Europeans are fed up and they have had enough. Muslims are not our friends. Figure it out already.

7:21 AM  
Blogger Unknown said...

Terry, the views you expressed over the weekend on Arlene Bynan show was spot on. We can neither trust the extremely corrupt pak govt. or the vile Pak. army and ISI cohorts. Our money will be pocketed and diverted to jihadi causes.

Pakistan is not a nation but a conglomeration of few elite and extremely rich families running a fuedal society opressing the majority of poor pakistanis. These people have been brainwashed to the extreme of the threat of west and Hindu India, more so the latter, all through their school and college education. It will take many generations of western based education system to change the mind set of these brainwashed people.

7:32 PM  
Blogger Terry Glavin said...

Thanks, AchAn.

I do very much worry that our revulsion with the Pakistani military caste and its clownish bribe-market of a parliament will cause us to withhold our aid money, rather than ensure humanitarian assitance bypasses the gangsters in Islamabad.

I fear you may be right about the brainwashing. For years, the "left" as well as the "right" in the Pakistani elites have been browbeating the people with notions that their sorrows are attributable to Israel and the US and India - anything but the bloodsucking Pakitani ruling class and its jihadist errandboys, who have so brutalized that country.

7:39 PM  

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