Problem is that the elite will be okay. It is the rest of Pakistan that is going to become an economic wasteland.
KARACHI: This is with reference to Ali Sarwar Naqvi’s article “Murphy’s law and Pakistan-US relations”, published on December 14. The writer lauds Pakistan’s decision to suspend its “business-as-usual” interaction with the United States. The bottom line, however, is that it is all about the economy. Without US dollars filling the gap in our deficit, it is likely that our economy will go from extremely bad, to terribly worse. We can expect the prices of food, petrol and electricity prices to take a steep hike. Poverty will then dramatically increase even further and, as a consequence, so will crime and social disorder.
General Asfaq Pervez Kayani said ‘honour before prosperity’, but unlike the affluent, the desperately poor, who may face near starvation in the future, will pay a big price for this rather bold stance. It is a case of ‘plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose’ (the more it changes, the more it stays the same), in other words, Pakistan (i.e., our GHQ and the ghairatmand lobby) has once again told the US: “If you don’t behave yourself, for the sake of my honour I’ll shoot myself”.
The problem is that the elite will be okay. It is the rest of Pakistan that is sure to head towards becoming an economic wasteland for the next few years. Unfortunately, the poor cannot eat nuclear bombs.
A reader
Published in The Express Tribune, December 15th, 2011.
