West owes sustained economic support to Pakistan - Zardari

Pakistan President, Asif Ali Zardari

Advocating the critical importance of democracy and economic development to defeating terrorists, President Asif Ali Zardari Monday asked the international community, particularly the Western powers, to support Pakistan with immediate assistance a

WASHINGTON, June 22: Advocating the critical importance of democracy and economic development to defeating terrorists, President Asif Ali Zardari Monday asked the international community, particularly the Western powers, to support Pakistan with immediate assistance as well as expanded trade to help it address challenges of global implications. The president underlined the urgency to back Pakistani anti-terror effort with a ‘robust economic package’ to help the democratic government deliver for its millions of displaced people from Swat and other northwestern valleys.In an opinion piece in The Washington Post, Zardri called the internally displaced persons as the latest victims of terror that has afflicted the country in recent years.

“In the battle against international terrorism, we are in the trenches for ourselves but also for the world. We have lost more soldiers -- 1,200 of them—fighting the Taliban in Pakistan than all of the countries of NATO have lost, combined, fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan. Thousands of civilians, victims of attacks such as the recent bombing of the Pearl Continental Hotel in Peshawar, have died,” he wrote.

At a personal level, Zardari said, “I lost my wife (former prime minister) Benazir Bhutto, the mother of my children and Pakistan’s greatest leader.”

He appreciated the expression of support by President Barack Obama’s administration but said the European economic powers must join the effort to back Pakistan’s crucial struggle against militancy.

“We need immediate assistance. The Obama administration recognizes that only an economically viable Pakistan can contain the terrorist menace.”

In this respect, Zardari noted that the United States has committed $1.5 billion a year for five years to help stabilize Pakistan’s economy, and the House of Representatives and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee have acted decisively to reorient the Pakistani-American relationship towards not just a military alliance but a sustained economic partnership.

“Now, the rest of the world must step up and match the U.S. effort. Pakistan needs a robust assistance package so that we can deliver for the people and defeat the militants. And the rest of the world should again follow the American lead in helping us deal with the millions of internally displaced people who are the most recent victims of terrorism in our nation.”

Concurrently, he underscored, the rich Western countries       must give greater access to Pakistani trade and launch preferential trade programs for it.

“But aid is not enough. In the long term, Pakistan needs trade to allow us to become economically independent.”

“Only such an economically robust Pakistan will be able to contain the fanatics and demonstrate to the 1.5 billion Muslims worldwide that democracy and economic development go hand in hand.”

He applauded the United States’ initiative to move forward with the preferential trade program called economic opportunity zones in Afghanistan and the Federally Administered Tribal Areas region of Pakistan.  The program, he said, will remove trade barriers and provide economic incentives to build factories, start industries, employ workers—and give hope to the people.

“This opportunity zone concept should be a model to Europe, as well. Europe must realize that it is in its own self-interest, as the United States has realized, to do everything possible to grow the Pakistani economy and to provide incentives for Pakistani exports to the continent.”

The president faulted the Western capitals for supporting       Pakistani dictators in the past at the cost damage to democracy.

“The West, most notably the United States, has been all too willing to dance with dictators in pursuit of perceived short-term goals. The litany of these policies and their consequences clutter the earth, from the Marcos regime in the Philippines, to the Shah in Iran, to Mohammed Zia ul-Haq and Pervez Musharraf in Pakistan.

The West stood by as a democratically elected government was toppled by a military dictatorship in the late ‘70s. Because of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the West used my nation as a blunt instrument of the Cold War. It empowered a Gen. Zia dictatorship that brutalized its people, decimated our political parties, murdered the prime minister who had founded Pakistan’s largest political party, and destroyed the press and civil society. And once the Soviets were defeated, the Americans took the next bus out of town, leaving behind a political vacuum that ultimately led to the Talibanization and radicalization of Afghanistan, the birth of al-Qaeda and the current jihadist insurrection in Pakistan.”

He pointed out the problems created by the heroin mafia, which arose as a consequence of the efforts to implode the Soviet Union and said it now takes in $ five billion a year, twice the budget of our army and police. This is the price Pakistan continues to pay.

“Dancing with dictators never pays off. Frankly, the worst democracy is better than any dictatorship. Dictatorship leads to frustration, extremism and terrorism. But the past is the past, and we can’t undo it. We can, however, address the consequences of past mistakes and make sure they are not repeated.”

“My wife traveled the world preaching democracy to what should have been its loudest choir. The doors of many Western governments were shut to her, but she was not deterred. She was relentless in her passion for democracy, and unwaveringly optimistic about its ultimate success”. She said, famously, that “truth, justice and the forces of history are on our side.”

“Today, we shall see if America and Europe are on our side as well.”

Zardari contrasted the challenges of extremism with some other recent conflicts and said after the debacle of Vietnam, the United States could pack up and leave with minimal consequences for its genuine national interests; similarly, for the British in the subcontinent and the French in Algeria.

“But the West, indeed the entire civilized world, does not have that luxury in Afghanistan and Pakistan. If the Taliban and al-Qaeda are allowed to triumph in our region, their destabilizing alliance will spread across the continents.

In Pakistan today, democracy must succeed. The forces of extremism must be vanquished. Failure is not an option; not for us, not for the world.” (APP)