The Wire: The elimination of Afghan Taliban chief Mullah Akhtar Mansour in a US drone attack inside Pakistan last month has once again raised questions about Pakistan’s nexus with, and seriousness to eliminate, jihadist groups on its soil. Instead of serious introspection about why an Afghan jihadist was found inside Pakistan and apparently carrying that country’s passport, the Pakistani civilian and military leadership has opted to respond by blaming the world for not doing enough to help Pakistan fight terrorism. A senior advisor to Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif called the US a ‘selfish friend’. Faced with increasing diplomatic isolation within the region and on the world stage, the Pakistani leadership, instead of taking stock of its own disastrous policies, went on to blame even those Pakistanis who have consistently warned againstusing jihadism as tool of foreign policy and national security.
The Director General of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Public Relations, General Asim Saleem Bajwa, recently told the Deutsche Welle’s Urdu service that “The world had abandoned Pakistan to handle and face the terrorists in the region alone, and Pakistan has completed the task”. The Pakistani military spokesperson’s allegation could not be farther from the truth. The direct overt US aid appropriations for and military reimbursements to Pakistan between fiscal years 2002-2016 have been about $7.9 billion while the coalition support fund disbursements were a little over $14 billion. Additionally, US civilian economic assistance to Pakistan was at least $11.1 billion. Pumping over $33 billion into Pakistan’s coffers along with granting access to state-of-the-art military hardware is not exactly abandoning a country, which is in a mess of entirely its own making. While Pakistan’s leaders portray its terrorism problem as an aftermath of the campaign against the Soviet incursion into Afghanistan, the fact is that the country’s love affair with jihadism and proxy warfare started right at its inception and has continued uninterrupted since.
Categories: Anti Islam act by Muslims, Anti-Islam Attitude, Pakistan, The Muslim Times