Say no to aid

Letter February 27, 2017
The US now should abandon the aid programme for our country

PARRAMATTA, AUSTRALIA: The United States has offered technical aid for merging Fata and Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa but we must refuse any further aid from the USA. The aid we have been taking in the past has become like ‘aids’ for our economy as the help has not allowed our economy to grow. The cornerstone of US policy is to give aid to developing countries which could prove to be useful for the USA. Hence, the US never allows these countries to stand on their own feet. Moreover, 65 per cent of aid is spent on unproductive issues and the remaining 35 per cent is spent on projects laced with corruption.

Our country has already been infested with foreign agents with many stationed in Islamabad to keep an eye on our nuclear programme since Ziaul Haq’s regime. The creation of the Taliban is also a relevant issue here. The United States Navy allegedly plans to deploy 60 per cent of its surface ships in the Indo-Pacific region in the near future. Instead of having to build facilities virtually from the ground up, as in Afghanistan and Iraq, the US has the benefit of simple arrangements from tremendous Indian facilities. This would not be a safe move for Pakistan. On the other hand, our so-called leaders neither have the guts nor self-respect to stand up against the US and India, and talk to them eye to eye, which could only be done by a person like Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, who accepted Henry Kissinger’s threat in August 1976 and accepted the gallows rather than accepting US hegemony and its dissuasive attempts for Pakistan to stop going nuclear. The US now should abandon the aid programme for our country, which will be a blessing in disguise.

Sajid M Ansari

Published in The Express Tribune, February 27th, 2017.

Like Opinion & Editorial on Facebook, follow @ETOpEd on Twitter to receive all updates on all our daily pieces.