Athar Abbas says the army doesn't care if the US doesn't
give it more aid.
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Now I have been reading up quite a lot on the purported US cut in military aid to Pakistan which totals $800 million. Apparently this is big news and it somehow masquerades that the US government is oh so angry at the Pakistani military. Obviously the Pakistani military deserves to reap what it has sowed, but somehow the effect of the aid cut has materialized in the public sector instead of from the military establishment. Which I presume is good for the military establishment since it shows that the population of Pakistan is slowly forgetting the horrors and nightmares that army generals have wreaked across and upon this country, once more.
But before I get down to the nitty gritty of what the US aid cut means, if anything at all, I would just like to let everyone know that the very first thought that came to my mind after hearing about this news was: I don’t give a damn.
You see a lot of people, bloggers, like me have stopped writing. They’ve vanished, disappeared. Why? Well because there’s nothing much left to say or tell the world. We’ve constantly been saying the same things over and over again, and now there just doesn’t seem to be any point in conveying our words and thoughts to the population at large. Maybe it’s because we’ve become accustomed to the intuition that we are the world’s new favourite punching bag. Maybe it’s because we realize that we are partly responsible for the senseless monstrosities occurring with impunity in our homeland. But it’s mostly because we’ve become immune to the senselessness, and in this dark, depressed, depraved, deprived way of life, we’ve still managed to find something to cling on. Even though we’ve forgotten how to articulate our thoughts any more.
We need someone to blame. Every day when you see nothing good of your country being shown on international television and when people talk about your country as if it is hanging by a thread, you need to find someone or something to vent your anger out on. For us that someone/something is the US. Yes it is truly an evil that has grasped the world and poisoned the very roots of the concept of equanimity, brotherhood and peace. Maybe it isn’t the US; maybe it is the system it represents: A capitalistic overture that spouts for individualistic control over everything, at the cost of well everything. Human life is not sacred to the policy makers of the US. Countries’ sovereignties do not matter in their grand design. So what if they raped Pakistan (raid to capture OBL) and stabbed in the back (publicly stating they will not share any proof of OBL’s presence in Pakistan, but will go back and attack it again if they have ‘actionable intelligence’), and then left it to die (publicly telling the world the focus has shifted from Afghanistan onto Pakistan) before finally calling 911 (telling Pakistan there will be no suspension of aid at all), and then dashing back to put it on life support before it dies out completely (promising that the P3-C Orions and F – 16s will be delivered as promised), and then teasing it some more by lessening the amount of oxygen it was getting (reducing the total aid by $800 million)?
Here’s some food for thought. People in Pakistan don’t care how the US deals with the military of Pakistan. And that is the saddest bit. The US’ bigoted and selfish policies have only meant that the US only talks to the military and not the biggest stakeholder in Pakistan: The people of Pakistan. So the government decides to cancel aid from the USG as a form of rebellion, if I may be so brash to use that word. But the toothless rulers only cancel humanitarian aid. So here we are, a confused people, cursing the US for not giving us any aid, then rejoicing that we grew the balls to tell them to shove their aid where they may, and then cursing them some more for not providing aid for the hapless citizens of this country.
The military will find a way to get the $800 million that the USG has bitten back. But what will the people of this country get? More terrorism, more death and destruction, more sadness, more depravity, more misery.
Where the US could have made a mark, like educating children, or building basic infrastructure, or instead of training the military they could’ve offered to train the police so that we could’ve had real law enforcers instead of diseased pigs, or maybe started community projects to provide clean drinking water to the nation at large, the US did not bother. Because why should it? It’s already got the real players in the game by their balls.
So today, I don’t have any logic or reason left. Today I stand by the dozens and dozens of people in Pakistan who say that the pittance the US was paying us that they’ve now decided not to pay us is good riddance. Maybe like their money, they would also like to leave us alone. We will survive. We will win our battles. We have done that for 64 years. We will do it again.