On November 4, while addressing the inaugural ceremony of the three-day conference of the Association of Saarc Speakers and Parliamentarians, President Asif Ali Zardari said, "We have lost more than 40,000 innocent lives in addition to Rs 80 billion in economic terms."
These figures seemed odd. I therefore checked for accuracy of the reporting of the presidential address by the print media. As expected, the dailies Dawn, The News, Daily Times and Business Recorder reported the same version of the president's statement on this subject. For the last two years (while pointing to the inadequacy of US aid under the Kerry-Lugar), Pakistan's stand has been that its losses courtesy the US 'war on terror' have been more than 40,000 civilians, over 5,000 soldiers and officers of the defence forces, and economic damage exceeding $68 billion.
Unless the above estimates have been revised downwards (which was not disclosed publically), the president's statement overlooked the human losses suffered by the armed forces, and grossly under-stated the economic losses suffered by Pakistan while playing its role in the US 'war on terror'.
Since the above estimation of economic losses, Pakistan continued to suffer more losses. The cost of the damage just to PNS Mehran base and the aircraft parked there, and PAF Kamrah base and the aircraft parked there, amounted to tens of millions of US Dollars.
At the current rate of exchange of the US dollar, the rupee value of even $68 billion amounts to roughly six and half trillion rupees, not Rs 80 billion. The president's estimate of the economic losses reflects just about 12.5 percent of the actual losses suffered by Pakistan. Some estimates of our losses over the years, aren't they, and that too by none other than the country's president!
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