[Assam] Pak presidents op ed in NYT

[Dilip and Dil Deka]

The help Zardari is seeking to reduce poverty and to strengthen democracy  is for the long term. The West has been helping Pakistan and will continue to do so, may be more abundantly. We all hope that the average citizen in Pakistan will benefit from that.

But Zardari did not say much about the short term. He could have talked about formation of a joint investigative team of Pakistan, India and USA members to identify the planners of terrorism. He keeps talking about "non-state actors". If these actors are pakistani citizens, Zardari's government is still responsible for their act on a foreign nation. If Zardari is really keen on stamping out terrorism, his government should review the findings in India and arrange more raids simultaneously so that the culprits cannot escape.

Does he have the guts? Can he stand up against the military generals who seem to have more power than he?




________________________________
From: Ram Dhar <ramdhar at hotmail.com>
To: assam at assamnet.org
Sent: Tuesday, December 9, 2008 12:26:22 PM
Subject: [Assam] Pak presidents op ed in NYT



zaradaris  ope ed in NYT

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/09/opinion/09zardari.html?ref=world

highlight -
These militants did not arise from whole cloth. Pakistan was an ally of the West throughout the cold war. The world worked to exploit religion against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan by empowering the most fanatic extremists as an instrument of destruction of a superpower. The strategy worked, but its legacy was the creation of an extremist militia with its own dynamic. 
Pakistan continues to pay the price: the legacy of dictatorship, the fatigue of fanaticism, the dismemberment of civil society and the destruction of our democratic infrastructure.. The resulting poverty continues to fuel the extremists and has created a culture of grievance and victimhood. 

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