July 9, 2006: Our duplicitous ally ... Pakistan

Should Canada continue to give developmental assistance to Pakistan? No, imho.

Salim Mansur: Canada's friendship with Pakistan is killing us in Afghanistan Western Standard.ca, July 3, 2006
www.westernstandard.ca/website
/index.cfm?page=article&article_id=1815

Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan are part of the joint NATO-ISAF mission to assist returning a war-torn failed state to some normalcy where the central government can then secure the country by its own resources from external and internal enemies. This is what peacemaking requires in the post-9/11 world: active intervention on behalf of people in a failed state-an intervention that at every moment runs the risk of turning lethal [....]

[T]he world finds itself held hostage with terrorism as an instrument of asymmetrical warfare by radical Islamists. [....]

Indeed a stable Afghanistan under a constitution approved by its people and run by an elected government would be a stark contrast with Pakistan as a rogue state run by armed men. Moreover, the Taliban is a creature of this rogue state's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), and without its support, the Taliban could not function. Ahmed Rashid, journalist and author, is Pakistan's foremost expert on the Taliban. He writes: "Taliban's social, economic and political links to Pakistan's Pashtun borderlands were immense, forged through two decades of war and life as refugees in Pakistan. The Taliban were born in Pakistani refugee camps, educated in Pakistani madrassas [religious schools] and learnt their fighting skills from Mujaheddin parties based in Pakistan. Their families carried Pakistani identity cards." [....]