Citizens of United States
We Pakistanis are ordinary beings like you, having the same dreams, same needs, ambitions, emotions, reservations and same passion if not more for our country. We like you, to feel the same regret for wars, same grief for the world problems, same distress towards injustice, same hopes for a better tomorrow. We, like you, also fantasize having serene borders, comfortable homes for our children, fine education, some leisure, and a satisfied mind that what we are contributing to this country and the world at large today will benefit us and our future generations tomorrow. We fancy the feeling of living in sheer coziness of our homeland, away from overseas interventions and foreign-extremism in the exact same way as an average American desires.
We didn’t get our independence as a birthday present, we got it after much struggle and sacrifices (over 4 million lives were lost during the migration); after much strangling and many fatalities, we finally broke free of the quandary at the hands of British and Hindu rulers. After independence, we have shown remarkable progress in many areas despite having rulers who placed personal interests over national interests, who never really had to face the trauma of poverty, sickness, injustice, or leaving their loved ones behind to inhabit a land with no promises. Yet we did not give up and made a nation out of it. We did not fail as our current leaders try to put it, to solicit more and more aid to gratify their own greed. In our short history we have never been blessed with a true leader after our founder, and yet imagine our courage, we did not break down, we moved on and on. And we never really looked for shortcuts to this existence, we have paid plenitude.
We have now been presented with yet another aid package from your country which will be financed by American taxpayers money, which is the right of American citizens and on which we have got no claim. To your surprise neither do we need it to solve our problems. We do NOT need it. We have been seasoned to rely on our own resources, our own means; because at the end of the day this money will not be utilized for our poor nation it will land somewhere you cannot imagine its terminus to be. Period.
Let us give you a reality check, as the voice of our Pakistani country men and as a friendly gesture to the fellow citizens of U.S. who have a right to know. In all veracity this little aid which comes with a lot of dictation, will be utilized to finance foreign lavish trips of our government personnel who will take approximately 200 personnel including their family members to luxurious places. It will be utilized to provide notorious yet special security services that we cannot afford, to people who are not even part of the government but somehow our democratic rulers are much obliged to flatter. The so-called economic development this new aid promises will definitely not materialize. We know this because this has been happening for the last several decades.
The so-called promises to create jobs for us will never be fulfilled, whereby this money would rather be utilized for expanding the job market within the USA for the American people, which itself is being hit by the worst recession in decades. Not only that, the conditions mentioned will destabilize our civil system, will cripple our autonomy, our existence, will rob our craftsmen and the population on the whole of their much deserved earnings, and in turn will fan more frustration. The ordinary Pakistani is already paying a heavy return against the lending of IMF. Our electricity, fuel and other bills have been incremented, and those too over the dictation of the IMF. The Kerry Lugar Bill does not attempt to bring any solution for our challenges at all, instead, it will be sucking blood from our innocent population in the name of few miscreants who are not a part of us in the first place, in the name of a war that didn’t belong to us by any means and was imposed on us. Are we really attempting to build peace in here? Who are we fooling in the name of amity?
Islamic Republic of Pakistan is an independent country, which means that we are fully capable to take care of our needs, self reliant and complacent like Islam teaches us to be. We do not rely on shortcuts for realization of our needs. By the grace of our creator, we have been seasoned to work hard and achieve the impossible. The elite on powerful positions do not in anyway represent the opinion of general public. In their sinister yet sadly successful efforts, public is kept so busy in their basic problems that they never really get to question them on where was the Aid money utilized and why was it even asked for in the first place.
Its time the U.S realized that and leave the treachery of aiding us on the face and stabbing us at our backs. As the voice of enlightened Pakistanis, let us assure you, we will be delighted if the same money is utilized in your own country to deal with the recession it faces, to deal with the crimes soaring high with U.S. topping the list of most crimes in the world in a year. We will be glad if it is also spent on researches and precautionary measures on why so many Americans die with stress-related diseases every year, why life is getting tougher and tougher for an average American family and their social values are declining. We urge you to ask your Government whether this aid package is really helping us, the fellow citizens of Pakistan, or are you helping our shameless government with their lifestyles and luxuries? Are you helping in setting up schools and better health care or fanning more extremism due to ill-utilization that our rulers will ensure and frustration that the brutal conditions on this sell-out package will bring for us? Are you actually helping to support our displaced countrymen or giving them more reason to hate you for financing our depraved rulers?
Your financial aid will not do us any good, since more than this amount already stays in the bank accounts of some of our narcissistic leaders, who occupy the ‘seats’ but are indifferent towards the distress of the majority. If you are still so keen to help us however, start sharing best practices, help us in establishing good governance, help us in making our systems more transparent, help us in medical researches, help us in building up universities to polish our youth else we really don’t need your help, we can help ourselves.
We also request you to ask your government on how this bill helps the American nation and us, when it will just land in a few pockets and exactly what will our unfortunate nation be faced with as conditions to comply, tragedy of which is unimaginable but appalling enough for us to reject any aid from U.S. at all! The Patriot act which has left your nation so vulnerable cannot be allowed to implement in Pakistan. Let us make it more apparent, we will not allow the U.S. access to any of our properties or our citizens. These citizens belong to a free country, accountable to none other than their own national laws and America as a knowledgeable and well-developed country should respect that. Our country is fully capable to deal with any miscreants itself and we have been doing it to our best since this so called war on terror started. We will not allow interference in any form whatsoever in the internal matters of our country, in its governance, in its institutions and above all in its authority that this bill carefully ensures. Our rulers may be dissolute, our nation is not.
Your country has not only deceived you in the name of wars to eliminate terror while being exceptionally involved in creating it, but it also has left many homeless, many innocent killed, many children orphans, many women widows, houses and hopes shattered. It hasn’t just betrayed us, it has betrayed you. And rest assured, the bullying tactics that your country specializes in will someday become a pit in itself. Haven’t we all started witnessing that it in front of our eyes already?
We however maintain, the U.S. citizens don’t deserve to be kept in darkness. Since World War II, your country has intimidated directly or indirectly at least 44 countries, if not more in the name of peace while creating havocs in real, distributing civil wars, turmoil, oppressing nations, breaking them into pieces, dictating policies that completely butcher the civil structure. As your infamous Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger once put it so correctly: "While being America’s enemy may be dangerous, being America’s friend is invariably fatal". Who would comprehend that better than our nation, who has a history of 62 years being your ally and what did we get in return? Treachery, betrayal, deception?
What did the US get out of it; a deteriorating economy, a failed social structure, not to mention countless killed soldiers? It isn’t a surprise the same Kissinger who believed in brutal de-population of the world and whose policies your government still follows, also said "Soldiers are dumb, stupid animals to be used as pawns for foreign policy". Decide for yourself, where this face will lead you? This hatred your government is mongering against your beautiful country is pushing you down the path of obscurity too, with a point of no return.
Ask yourselves, are the U.S soldiers really worthless herds of cattle to be thrown into hostile territories just so that a few in the Govt. can benefit by selling their weapons to the U.S Govt., which buys them from these local multi-million dollar businesses at such dear cost of American tax-payers’ blood-earned money? Decide yourself, where this will lead you as a nation? This hatred your Government is mongering against your beautiful country is pushing you down the path of obscurity too, towards a point of no return.
We as responsible citizens of Pakistan request the responsible citizens of U.S. to really ask their government on the effectiveness of wars it has waged in the past and what it plans to wage in future. For instance, what did the Americans get out of the Vietnam war? Did the Vietnamese attack them? What did the Americans get out of the War between Iraq and Iran? What did the American people get out of the recent war in Afghanistan and Iraq? Did the American people get a share of the oil wealth that is being ripped off the Iraqis by use of brutal force?
Think about the latest package of deceit this Kerry Lugar Bill brings for us, the ruthless face of which we are already seeing, yet you are kept so oblivious to. We respectfully ask you to convince your government to keep the same money to themselves and utilize it to benefit your ailing economy, or maybe it can be used to return the debt that US owes to China.
Only then will we as a nation be inspired by the high spirits on your nation’s conscientiousness, and will be stimulated to follow the right footsteps.
A Pakistani
