Some questions for Mr Obama

LONDON: This is with reference to Charles Ferndale’s “Some questions for Obama” (July 1). I wonder whether this article would be published in an American or British newspaper. Mr Ferndale makes many valid points and he hints at why the foreign occupation troops are there. It is time we stopped aping the Americans and referring to the Afghan resistance as militants. Many self-styled Pakistani intellectuals, with their pockets bulging with US dollars, worry that there will be a bloodbath if the Americans leave Afghanistan. As if there isn’t one already. More Pakistani soldiers have died in Fata alone than the combined American and Nato casualties in Afghanistan. And the civilian deaths in Afghanistan and Pakistan are incalculable.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 5^th, 2010.