Relief Funding for Pakistan

We're glad, really we are, because we are reasonable people. We're glad that the federal government has decided to increase its direct aid to Pakistan during the crisis it is currently facing, due to catastrophic flooding conditions. With one-third of the country under flood waters, and two million people homeless and desperate for food and medical aid and shelter, and the sad reality of an inadequate government disaster relief response, the international community is called upon, yet again, to assist.

This is something the international community does often, and well. One might logically suppose that other Muslim countries, of which there are plenty in the immediate geography, might respond with generosity. India, despite its very good reasons to suspect Pakistan's ongoing role in fomenting violence against Indian Kashmir and cities like Mumbai, has offered $5-million in aid, which Pakistan first refused to accept, and then decided it would accept.

And now Canada's government has announced it will match every charitable dollar that individual Canadians donate to Canada-based charitable organizations working for humanitarian relief in Pakistan. Which will enhance all contributions by doubling all individuals' donations. And which will encourage people to give, who have thus far withheld their donations because of the wide-spread understanding of Pakistan's role in funding and arming terror groups.

Hitherto, funds received from the international community to shore up Pakistan's weak finances have seen the majority of the funding directed toward the Pakistani military - and under the table, toward funding terror militias. Very little has been invested in the country's infrastructure, or to enhance the potential for better lives for the country's people. Now, Pakistan's PPP President vows the country will battle its home-grown-and-cultivated terror groups.

And none of the emergency funding will be used for other than to aid its desperate and now homeless populations from the affected provinces.

President Asif Ali Zardari presents his country as one inextricably involved as a partner with the West, dedicated alongside its allies to the destruction of fanatic Islamist militias. Which, in fact, is what his predecessor, General Musharraf, and his predecessors, also claimed, while steadfastly dedicating themselves, the ISI and the national army to the support of jihadists, who were never supposed to breed their own Taliban and beset Pakistan itself.

And as much as we would like to believe that the words uttered by Pakistan's representatives can be trusted, and that the charitable funds emanating from the international community - notably relatively little from other Muslim countries even within the geography; wealthy Kuwait managed to cough up a tardy and pitiful $5-million in relief funding - is being directed where the need requires it, troubling information is leaking out of the country.

As, for example, the news that both government agencies and local clerics are strenuously goint out of their way to ensure that flood-afflicted families belonging to the Ahmadiva community in South Punjab's relief camps are excluded from aid. Government agencies have also withheld relief from flood-hit areas belonging to the Ahmadiva community, according to The Express Tribune. Not so, claims the government; all relief is being distributed equally, without discrimination.

This, from a government of a country that has never practised what it promises, but which entreats the international community for assistance, while it continues its traditions of deceitful intent and malicious interference in the affairs of its neighbours.