The human tragedy unfolding in the North and North-west of Pakistan with millions displaced and countless loss of property and life, is a grim sequel of our government's spineless obeisance to dictates of Washington.
Americans do not like wars on their own soil, but have no compunction in starting and fanning conflagrations around the globe with concomitant destabilisation destruction, debilitation and death, to say nothing of displacements and destitution.
This 6-D strategy spins the wheels of Military-Industry Complex symbolised by Wall Street and Pentagon, earning them trillions of dollars, but pauperising the rest of the world. And then they have the affront to pay a pittance in aid for the millions displaced due to the war unleashed at their behest.
We hope the Gilani government will have the gumption to say "No, thank you" to this humiliating offer of the US government subject as it is to "conditionalities". The number of displaced persons in less than a week of the 'operations', has already crossed 1.4 million mark in Malakand, Dir, Swat and Buner areas, and will certainly increase when exact figures are known after cessation of hostilities. What this portends for the economy of Pakistan, only those can visualise who recall the atrocities of 1947 - only this time people are not leaving because of enemy action, but at the hands of our own people and our own army.
It is difficult to judge the cost of this human tragedy, in terms of immediate aid, rehabilitation, and amelioration of the scarred psyches and bruised memories that will last for generations!
Our cash-strapped government already short of trillions of rupees or billions of dollars can ill-afford the extra hundreds of billions needed to cope with the unexpected problem of IDPs as well as reconstruction of their destroyed and devastated homelands. Does anybody have an answer? UN and other donors have a limit to their generosity, but our need for immediate succour is beyond imagination.
One point that must be forcefully brought to the notice of Obama administration (who have spent untold billions for rescuing their fat cats - banks and corporations in their own backyards) to accept the responsibility for resuscitating the shattered economy of Pakistan caused by their imposed 'war on terror' that punishes the innocent more than the miscreants.