Pay now; ask for guarantees later
This after Pakistan frees the man who used to sell nuclear secrets to Iran and Libya — much to U.S. discontent. Now the Pakistani ambassador to the U.S. is telling Obama that “assistance that is conditional is never good.” After all, when dhimmis used to line up to pay the jizya, which was supposedly meant to “protect” them, they never received “unconditional guarantees” that they would not be molested from their Islamic overlords; rather, they were humiliated and slapped on the nape of the neck to remind them of their place. Are those days, symbolically at least, back?
UPDATE: Robert writes in to note that “Your post reminds me that in ’04 or ’03 I met Hussain Haqqani and Stephen Suleyman Schwartz at CPAC, and they assured me that a large-scale theological rejection of jihadism and Islamic supremacism was just around the corner. I’m still waiting.”
“Pakistan wants unconditional aid from US: Haqqani,” from Times of India, February 7:
LONDON: Pakistan wants aid from the Obama administration without any “strings attached”, the country’s ambassador to the US Hussain Haqqani has said.
Haqqani has said that “assistance that is conditional is never good.”
His comments come in the wake of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s plan proposal to triple civilian aid to Pakistan but impose clear conditions on military assistance to ensure the money goes towards fighting terrorists rather than building up Pakistan’s defences against India.
But to this the Pakistani envoy had a poser. “There is no bullet that has been invented that Pakistan can be given to shoot at the terrorists that cannot be used in case there is a war with India,” he said in an interview to Financial Times.
At the same time in an effort not to get his nation on the wrong side of the new US administration, Haqqani pledged that Pakistan would focus on fighting its “primary threat.”
He outlined this threat as currently coming from terrorists and not from “eastern neighbour (India).”
What a relief! He “pledged” that this money will go against fighting the jihadis. OK, no excuse America: Pay up.
The Obama administration is expected to unveil its foreign and security policy as its Vice President Joseph Biden speaks at the international security conference in Munich in Germany.
Haqqani’s advice was that while Islamabad can discuss what the Americans would prefer… any conditional aids are not going to serve the US or Pakistani interest.