Flooded by Corruption

THE PAKISTAN FLOODS have wrecked the lives of some 12 million people, which is something no Pakistani government has managed to do since the inception of the state of Pakistan on 14 August 1947 - although it has not been through any lack of trying.

Now it appears from various NGOs that appeals for financial assistance from the public have fallen, if not on deaf ears, then on sceptical minds. For the public response to this disaster up until now has fallen well short of expectations. There seems to be a general dissatisfaction from the public, despite all of the media making the floods their main story for the last week.

It has been suggested that David Cameron is partly to blame for his criticism of Pakistan whilst on a visit to India, when he accused members of Pakistan’s intelligence service of aiding and abetting the Taliban. But this is wishful thinking on behalf of Pakistan’s apologists in the West.

The elephant in the room is, of course, corruption. People who normally open their wallets when they see the pitiful pictures of women and children either starving or, as in this case marooned without fresh water and food on a few metres of land surrounded by floodwater, are thinking twice before giving. They are doing so not because of what David Cameron said, but because they cannot be sure whether their money will be delivered to those who need it most or redirected into Swiss bank accounts. If the later then they are not responsible for the deaths that may occur as a result their understandable distrust; especially if this sordid recompense went to the Pakistani people’s own leaders.

SUCH SCEPTICISM ON behalf of the public would appear to be vindicated by a disclosure in today’s Sunday Telegraph which identifies all sorts of sordid goings-on after the 2005 earthquake in Pakistan when 80 thousand people died and four million were left homeless. According to the report, out of an international aid contribution of £3.5 billon, £300 million was ‘diverted’ by President Asif Zardari’s government. According to the Telegraph’s report, “ .... senior officials, schools, hospitals, houses and roads planned with money given by foreign governments and international aid groups remain unbuilt almost five years after the earthquake which killed 80,000 and left four million people homeless”. Pakistan’s opposition leader Nawaz Sharif, has even admitted. “There's reluctance, even people in this country are not giving generously into this flood fund because they're not too sure the money will be spent honestly”.

WHAT IS THE POINT OF people in the West giving when they distrust the overall honesty of Pakistan? Just a few weeks ago, before the current floods, Hilary Clinton announced a $500 million aid package for Pakistan. Just how much of that money will go to where Pakistan’s Western allies expected it to go remains to be seen.

It has been the misfortune of the Pakistani people that they have been left disappointed by whomsoever rules them. No wonder there is that Petri dish known as the Swat Valley that cultivates a bacteria that many Pakistanis find a beneficial aid to punishing their rulers.

At the height of the floods that ravaged his country, the Pakistan leader was engaged upon fundraising in the UK for his party, which tells you a lot about Pakistan’s political elite.

Pakistan’s’ politicians have used the people to do one thing and one thing only - to get elected. Well, you might say, we do the same. Yes we do, after all that is the purpose of a democracy – to get elected.

But we in the West get a return on our investment, while in Pakistan it seems that the government is permanently demanding aid from the West, and they appear to be the main beneficiaries. Let us not forget that Pakistan is a nuclear power. Its army is well looked after. For the civilian government has to keep the army on side in such a volatile country.

Whenever a new Pakistani government is put in place by the people, its first act appears to be to secure sufficient funding from the West – in other words the United States.

Because Pakistan is Old Islam, just as the British Labour Party were once Old Labour; the Pakistanis have no entrepreneurial culture to speak of. But India, its next door neighbor, has and is taking full advantage of this social requirement, because, like the West, religion has its place, and its place is not in government.

PEOPLE WILL NOT BE as generous as they have been in the past because Pakistan is corrupt. Its poor, desolate and heartbroken people are now forced to survive on the very edge of existence; relying upon, despite the many billions given in the past by the West, upon American helicopters to rescue their own civilians. A contribution that will go unacknowledged by the Pakistani government. For to do so would be tantamount to admitting to their own failure.

Corruption governs Pakistan. It survives because the West has a use for it. If the Taliban did not exist, then Pakistan would have to turn to other Muslim countries to garner financial support to keep it afloat as a nation.

In 1947 the Muslim population of India choose to abandon the multicultural experiment that defiled their religious practices, and sought and achieved their own nation state. But today pragmatic India, is full of ambitious people wanting to achieve success despite their religious faith, and believing as they do that their various Gods, will all be happy with them if they are able independently to feed their own families.

The people of Pakistan are to be much pitied because their educated elite (many it must be said at British universities) care little for them. The ordinary people of Pakistan are just voting fodder that are courted and patronized sufficiently enough, to let whatever party is inviting them to do so, to vote in order for them retain or gain power.