President Zardari's interview to Wall Street Journal

President Asif Ali Zardari, in an exclusive interview to Wall Street Journal, reportedly requested a 100 billion dollar aid package from the West.
The raison d'etre of this request: if the US can spend 10 billion dollars a month in Iraq where there is little danger of an al Qaeda resurgence - the US acknowledged antagonist in its war on terror - then there is reason to spend all that much more in Pakistan to ensure that al Qaeda operatives hiding in the inaccessible regions along the Pak-Afghan border are dealt with appropriately, a claim made repeatedly by senior Pentagon and Bush administration officials.
There is no doubt that Pakistan has been engaged in a fight on behalf of the West since 1979 when Soviet tanks rumbled onto the streets of Kabul sending the Pentagon into the jitter. The outcome of our involvement was catastrophic ranging from the proliferation of kalashnikovs in our streets as well as the drug culture that caused severe socio-economic issues that the country continues to grapple with today.
Afghanistan post-Taliban is again in the grip of a civil war and it is Pakistan that is, again, paying a heavy price in terms of loss of life, directly through US attacks on our tribal areas as well as the collateral damage due to our military's ongoing operation in that part of the country; increasing number of displaced persons as well as loss of property and, what is also disturbing, the reappearance of the dreaded polio amongst children in the tribal areas who could not be vaccinated due to the insurgency there.
Political analysts also allege that Afghanistan in 1979 and 2001 provided two of our military dictators' legitimacy in the eyes of an international community that had initially refused to accept Zia-ul-Haq and Pervez Musharraf as legitimate leaders of Pakistan. Thus given the scale and extent of our problems attributable to our fighting proxy wars on behalf of the US the request for 100 billion dollars does not appear to be outlandish.
President Zardari's argument is simple: the US cannot afford to let the government fail, and the prospect of a nuclear armed Pakistan losing the fight to al-Qaeda as untenable to the West was raised by the interviewer. Many in Pakistan would challenge such logic; after all nuclear armed Pakistan is able to defend its nuclear weaponry from a bunch of terrorists hiding along the Pak-Afghan border.
Be that as it may, it is highly improbable that assistance amounting to 100 billion dollars would ever find its way into Pakistan's treasury within the year as a loan, leave alone as a grant as requested by President Zardari. Past precedence shows that even after the massive earthquake of October 2005 - horrific images of which were beamed world-wide resulting in mounting public pressure on Western governments to extend all possible assistance to the government of Pakistan to cope with the crisis - the world, including multilaterals, pledged 6.2 billion dollars. And Pakistan learned at that time that pledges simply cannot be equated with actual disbursements.
In addition, the Western countries are extending assistance to Pakistan not only through the Paris Consortium but also bilaterally. It is therefore unlikely that there will be any significant increase in assistance to Pakistan in the current year, given the additional factor of the global economic crisis and its associated bail-out package resulting in mounting budget deficits. Multilaterals are also unlikely to go well beyond their programming targets for Pakistan which would account for assistance of 2.5 to 3 billion dollars this year maximum.
President Zardari's statement that India has never been a threat to Pakistan is incomprehensible given Pakistan's three wars with India, its recent military manoeuvres in Siachen, constant Indian charges of cross border terrorism against Pakistan and the recent cutting off of water supply in contravention of the Indus Water Treaty.
President Zardari also labelled Kashmiri freedom fighters as terrorists - a statement likely to alienate large sections of the Pakistani public. The President would be well advised to consider the reasons behind Musharraf's failure to hold on to power: mainly because of his growing alienation from large parts of the public because of his policies. But President Zardari did insist and, rightly so, that Islamabad be treated at par with New Delhi with respect to the Indo-US nuclear deal.