When Pakisan’s president visits the White House next week, he’s sure to ask for another handout. But Fatima Bhutto, niece of the late Benazir Bhutto, says the billions of dollars the U.S. gives are merely propping up a government that’s capitulating to terror.
Fatima Bhutto is a graduate of Columbia University and the School of Oriental and African Studies. She is working on a book to be published by Jonathan Cape in 2010. Fatima lives and works in Karachi, Pakistan.
By Fatima Bhutto
In Pakistan things move at a leisurely South Asian pace. We missed our goals to eradicate polio recently because we, a nuclear nation, could not sustain electricity across the country long enough to refrigerate the vaccines. Garbage disposal is a nonexistent concept, and plush neighborhoods in Karachi boast towers of rubbish piled on street corners and alleyways. Prisons and police cells are full of prisoners awaiting trials, and our justice system, despite the reinstatement of the Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudry, leaves a lot to be desired in terms of meting out free and fair access to justice.
One thing moving ridiculously fast, however, is the Taliban’s stranglehold on the country. After two years of fighting off Taliban insurgents camped out in the lush Swat Valley, Pakistan’s president, Asif Zardari, threw in the towel last week and gave the militants what they wanted—Shariah law.
Never mind that Pakistan’s constitution stipulates that no law contrary to Islam can be passed in the land. The no-goodnik president, who The Wall Street Journal called a “Category 5 disaster,” went ahead and unilaterally—without a vote granted to the citizens of Swat—imposed Shariah. So perhaps it shouldn’t be considered a great surprise that a week after the law was passed, the Taliban, in typical breakneck speed, have now advanced into the Buner district, a mere 70 miles from the capital.
Meanwhile, President Obama is set to meet with President Zardari (who locals have now taken to calling President Ghadari, or “traitor” in Urdu) in 10 days’ time. There is, I’d imagine, much to discuss.
The most important question that will come from Pakistan, however, is a familiar one: Can we have some more please? Money, that is, not Taliban. It may surprise some Americans that even in the midst of this recession, billions of their tax dollars are given directly to the thievery corporation that is Pakistan’s government, never to be seen again. George W. Bush gave Pakistan a whopping $10 billion to fight terror, money that seems to have gone down the drain—or rather, into some pretty deep pockets. And it’s not just the U.S.—last week, international donors from 30 countries met in Tokyo and pledged $5 billion to Pakistan to “fight terror.” The IMF has given the country $7.6 billion in a bailout deal that boggles the mind. Saudi Arabia has generously pledged $700 million over the next four years, and the less-generous European Union an additional $640 million over the same period. And then there’s Obama’s promise of $1.5 billion a year, dependent, the White House says, on results.
It’s phenomenally silly to give that kind of money to a president who, before becoming president, was facing corruption cases in Switzerland, Spain, and England. Zardari and his wife, the late Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, are estimated to have stolen upwards of $3 billion from the Pakistani Treasury—a figure Zardari doesn’t seem desperate to disprove, he placed his personal assets before becoming president at over $1 billion.
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(Submitted by Abdul Hamid Bashani Khan)