generalspeaking

Stricken Pakistan

The people of Pakistan are in dire straits in a number of provinces. Monsoons brought torrential rains that overwhelmed the capacity of the rivers, causing dreadful flooding in a country whose complex irrigation system was not designed fully adequately to avert just such disasters, and the required remediation work, although recognized, was never carried out. Funding set aside for that very purpose, after repeated flooding, was always used for other projects. This flood appears to be by far the most serious, with dread consequences, that the country has yet experienced.

When previous disasters struck the country the international community always responded with generosity. The Pakistan Ambassador to Canada is singularly unimpressed with the amount that Canada has allotted for flood relief to the tune of a seemingly-meagre $10-million, this time around. The response from the Government of Canada is clear and concise; there was never any kind of accounting for previous more generous responses; food was never delivered to where it was needed; it rotted before it could be used.

This time the government of Canada will decide more carefully where it will send relief aid; not directly to the government of Pakistan, unalterably corrupt, but to reliable non-governmental agencies to ensure that aid will not be wasted, and will reach those in dire need. The United Nations has appealed to the international community for almost a half-billion dollars in aid, citing the massive flooding as surpassing in destruction and need the natural disasters that have afflicted other countries in recent times.

This represents a humanitarian crisis of immense proportions. But then, whenever disaster strikes it always represents as an humanitarian crisis of 'huge proportions', and there always ensues a heartfelt cry of needy support from the UN, entreating its member countries to give, please, and generously. There is a sense within the NGOs, however, all appealing to their usual constituents in the West to give their charitable donations on behalf of the suffering people of Pakistan, that this time response is weak.

Not entirely surprising. In the past when funding has come from the international community through individual donors responding to pleas from involved NGOs, there have been later reports of inadequate responses, inefficiency, wasted efforts and supplies, and a skimming of donations by government agencies, along with international aid being found for sale in the marketplaces and bazaars, never having reached those desperately in need of it.

There is a realization that a country that invests itself in fully supporting terrorist groups, in fomenting violence and upheaval in neighbouring countries, a country responsible for training violent jihadists to be sent out to other countries to wreak havoc and mass murder rather than providing for the needs of its own indigent people, has failed to qualify for international aid.

There may also be an enquiry in the minds of many why a country like Saudi Arabia which generously funds madrassas that purposefully teach Wahhabist jihad, studiously refrains from funding emergency aid. Charity appears to have its distinct limits; religious imperialism trumps humanitarian aid. The suffering poor will find their place in heaven.

Added to that the impression that by funding the work of rescue, of feeding and medicating refugees in their desperate straits, the government is not held fully accountable, and will never be accountable as long as the international community keeps stepping up to the plate. In Pakistan this is admittedly dangerous. By withholding international help, particularly by the West, it allows the indigenous terror groups themselves to speedily offer charity to their own, to ingratiate themselves and in the process secure future recruits for Islamist jihad.

The failed state of Pakistan, ever violently resentful of its neighbour India, involved in one dreadful plot after another to impose violence and mass murder on India, in challenging it for ownership of the geography of Kashmir, and nuclear superiority, represents as the crucible of terrorist training camps. Pakistan's national army and its Secret Intelligence Service (ISS) remain the de facto government. Its current president is merely holding the seat warm for his and the son of Benazir Bhutto.

But will he ever ascend to the executive throne of the country, or will it inevitably revert back to military rule? This is a failed country with no sense of responsibility to its indigent population left to fend for themselves in every facet of life, experiencing loss and displacement whenever disaster strikes, and vicious exploitation when the Pakistani Taliban strike. The Taliban turned out, for the government of Pakistan and its ISS providers, to be a modern-day Frankenstein.

Pakistan, yet another nuclear pariah in an ever-increasingly troubled world of conflict and misery.

Labels: Pakistan, Political Realities, Traditions, Troublespots

posted by Pieface @ Thursday, August 12, 2010