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Rich Pakistanis fueling country’s strife
How many ways can Pakistanis shoot themselves in the foot? Let me count them.
On Tuesday two suicide bombers, apparently sent by the Taliban, blew themselves up amid gatherings of students at the International Islamic University in Islamabad, killing at least five people and injuring many others.
This was just the latest in a string of deadly bombings that have ripped through Pakistani society in recent days. The Taliban, it seems, have unlimited resources to wreak havoc in Pakistan, as well as in Afghanistan. And where do they get their money? Yes, they earn a lot from all of that opium poppy in Afghanistan. But that is not all.
The Taliban in Pakistan also received more than $100 million last year in donations from sympathetic, wealthy people who live in Islamic countries — including Pakistan. In other words, Pakistanis are providing a good portion of the money the Taliban is spending to tear Pakistan apart.
That comes from a recent Central Intelligence Agency analysis, reported by the Washington Post and the New York Times. And it’s consistent with all we already know about Pakistan. Weren’t the Taliban a close friend and ally of Pakistan before Sept. 11, 2001 — after which the Bush administration forced a divorce? By all accounts the separation was only superficial. In fact, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, is widely quoted as saying in a leaked internal report that the Taliban in Afghanistan “are reportedly aided by some elements of Pakistan’s I.S.I.”
He was referring to Pakistan’s chief intelligence service, the Inter-Services Intelligence agency, and McChyrstal’s remark simply codified what most everyone in the region already assumed. During the 1990s, the I.S.I. wanted to have an ally in Afghanistan, to prevent India from extending its influence there. The I.S.I also set up training camps in Afghanistan, away from prying Pakistani eyes. The alliance continues.
Some people like to place a distinction between the Taliban fighting in Afghanistan and those in Pakistan. But remember: They all came from the same Taliban cabal that ruled Afghanistan until October 2001. They shares goals, tactics, fighters and equipment.
The Pakistani Taliban’s stated goal is to overthrow the government in Islamabad. They seized the Swat Valley early this year and were making inroads in Punjab Province, the nation’s most populous, before the Pakistani Army arose from its torpor and fought back by lobbing rockets and artillery shells into towns and villages from a safe distance.
This week, the Pakistani army began an offensive in South Waziristan, a Taliban stronghold. It’s hardly the first over the last eight years or probably the last. The army never seems to finish the job.
Aid for Pakistan
Meantime the Obama administration is pushing Congress to approve $7.5 billion in aid for Pakistan over the next five years. This is developmental, not military, aid. Well, no one seems to have noticed that over the last few years, Pakistan’s corruption problem has grown from serious to endemic. Transparency International, in a special report on Pakistan last month, found the amount of public funds embezzled has increased four-fold in the last three years — to almost $40 billion so far this year.
Is this a country to which the United States should hand over almost $1 billion a year in the next five years? It’s not as if the people of Pakistan couldn’t use the aid. Look at some of the state’s statistics, provided by UNICEF.
Ninety of every 1,000 children born there die before they reach age five. Only 37 percent of children struck with dysentery, a common and often fatal illness in developing countries born of contaminated food or water, receive treatment.
Adult literacy stands at only 55 percent. Just 18 percent of the nation’s girls attend secondary school. One reason: Thirty-two percent of children 14 years or younger are married.
The average life expectancy is 65 years.
What is the government doing about these miserable statistics? About 18 percent of the state’s budget is spent on the military, 1 percent on health and 2 percent on education.
This is a country that needs help. But first it has to help itself, stop shooting itself in the foot.
X Joel Brinkley is a former Pulitzer Prize-winning foreign correspondent for The New York Times and now a professor of journalism at Stanford University.