Absurdistan
Who would’ve thought that Pakistanis would be calling on Congress to slash aid to Pakistan?
… wealthy Pakistanis have contacted members of Congress — as well as classmates from American colleges they attended — and urged them to cut American aid to Pakistan… [Link]
Many years ago, the country blacklisted Shame, Salman Rushdie’s biting satire of how the generals create and nurture fundamentalists to keep the aid spigot open. But the conspiracy theory that was so heretical, it was forcibly removed from the country’s bookshelves, is now the conventional wisdom:
“The U.S. needs to realize that Musharraf is not fighting against terrorism and will not fight against terrorism,” said a student at one of [Pakistani’s] elite universities… [Link]
Nitin Pai wrote me a couple of days ago:
The ironies. Was just discussing with a friend that for much of the ’90s we lamented that the nukes are under military control. Now we hope that they are. India used to complain of U.S. aid to Pakistan. Now Pakistanis do.
On one level, I can perversely admire how the Pakistani military has managed to manipulate its benefactors for so many decades. Yet a government so reliant on foreign aid ends up a pawn of foreign powers, a bloodless coup of cash, incentives and claimed religious authority:
Washington appears to have taken a back seat, or at least a stance of resignation at the inevitable, as the Saudis, perhaps Pakistan’s most revered ally, engineered the return of Mr. Sharif… Sharif’s return complicates the Bush administration’s support for Benazir Bhutto… whom Washington has favored as a more secular politician, and a more certain partner against Islamic extremists. [Link]
And I feel sorry for ordinary Pakistanis caught between the Scylla and Charybdis of the looters versus the strongmen. Not only is the foreign hand real, it’s not very imaginative.
on Tuesday, November 27th, 2007, 5:44 pm in Literature, Musharraf, Pakistan, Politics, Salman Rushdie › 
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If our idiot President and his accomplices in Congress cut off aid to Pakistan then that would be admitting they were wrong all along. And of course they can’t admit that.
Great post Manish..
Iam glad people in pakistan are realising freedom and free speech is more important that financial benefits/growth and other economic
incentives.
when u look at south asia and middle east, US tried to have alliances with so many countries and slowly from bin laden to pakistan now everyone is turning against them. The whole military aid and all these alliances are backfiring. sad state of affairs. For US in that south asia/middle east region pakistan was their only hold and support and pakistan benefited from that for years. All these alliances bred terrorists or military groups in those areas. such alliances for personal benefits of one country that too based on exchanging military weapons never help in a long run.
even now US govt. is giving millions of dollars to pakistan in hope of catching terrorists and that pakistani student is right, all the money is going no where…
sad state of affairs everywhere..even today in so many places people with no freedom of speech, imprisoned for no reason…sometimes I feel united nations has totally failed as a organization..look at iran, iraq, israel,palestine, pakistan, darfur, africa everywhere so many human right voilations and what are all these organisations for human rights, united nations doing..Half the afghanistan, iraq, palestine, darfur populations and races are dead…it will be too late to make changes…the whole world seems to be ready for a third world war…