Pakistan’s Interior Minister Rehman Malik vowed today to crack down on charities with links to banned Islamist groups, insisting that they must not be allowed to distribute aid to flood victims and that anyone caught doing so would be charged as a terrorist.
The logic behind this, according to officials, is that the prolific amount of aid being delivered by private groups with historical links to Kashmiri separatist groups is making the government look bad, and is fueling anger among flood victims who feel the government has not responded sufficiently.
And indeed Islamist groups like Jamaat-ud Dawa were among the first responders to the flooding, which has gone from simple disaster to a catastrophe of historical size. At the same time Pakistan’s civilian government has supplied comparatively little aid, relying instead on the military’s rescue operations and humanitarian goods supplied by NATO to fill in the gap.
But the private groups have also played a major role in helping the millions of flood victims, and even if this is making those victims resent the government it remains vital. Moreover, banning the groups and charging aid workers as terrorists will likely only serve to fuel more resentment.
The claim that Pakistani security forces will keep the charities out of the flood stricken parts of the nation is ultimately an empty one, as much of the nation is now under water. But if the government begins to round up aid workers and filing terror charges against them, it will surely have a disastrous effect on the relief effort, not to mention the harm it will do to the Zardari government’s already shoddy reputation.
W0W…What a great IDEA… Yaa…anyone helping the common people, especially in a time of crisis certainly MUST be a terrorist, because you know the Zadari adm would not want to waste the food or money on them…
Mr 11% is busy stealing and working for his own benefit. The needs of his country are of no concern of his and the whole country is up for a sale to the highest bidder.
Sounds like the BP disaster in the Gulf of Mexico.. there ain't no flood, all the fish in the sea are safe to eat [no oil in them] and the air is not contaminated with the fall out of oil and corexit dispersant in the clouds, no one is getting sick, they are just tired].. and government never tells a lies , never fails to respond to all human needs, and never hides or covers up any of the facts about events.
Worldwide top down governments no longer represent the needs of the governed people. The governments have been encapsulated by, and are controlled by the SENMACEs, see SENMACE.com. It is the SENMACE that governments respond to, not the people.
Certainly a great step towards the flood victims as terrorists would gain undoubtedly positive feedback from the victim which could help them regain there power in pakhtunkhuwa as they did in the past.
Also Government should focus on the fact that some organization who were labeled as terrorists group in foreign eye are actually innocent and helping poor people of Pakistan.
but they didn't do this for India's help ?
Anyway you look at it, one isn't able fault the Pakistani government for their impeccable sense of timing. I also fail to see how exactly assigning resources to actively deny food and other assistance to the victims of the flood could be construed as a decisive move in winning this perceived propaganda battle. I don't even need to imagine, however inadequately I am able to, standing up to my waist in muddy water, struggling with hunger, thirst, disease and the loss of loved ones and livelihood myself to draw the exact opposite conclusions as the masterminds in the Pakistani government saw reason to.
Looks Zadari has been given the FedGov playbook on disaster relief. Sounds just like Hurricane Katrina and New Orleans.
What kind of screwed up politicians live in Pakistan?
I think this statement is meant to be taken as seriously as the rest of Rehman Malik's useless pronouncements. Probably just a lame attempt to show the international community that Pakistan (i.e. the Pakistani government) needs their money or else the supposed terrorist groups will hijack the relief effort.
How does Rehman Malik expect the government to stop such charities now seeing as how they have not been able to cease their operations for the past decade. Some say it is because these groups suit the military establishment's larger regional interests but I think a big reason is that the Pakistani state lacks the writ to enforce any law and order or any security. They can't stop the Taliban, they can't stop suicide bombings, they can't stop ethnic tensions in Baluchistan or in Karachi. Every area has its own warlord (MQM for Karachi, PPP in interior Sindh and Nawaz Sharif in a large portion of Punjab) and if the federal government has alliances with these groups then there can be some facade of central authority but everybody knows the state has collapsed.
Pakistans main charity -the charitable wing of the Taliban- is using this as a propaganda tool against the west and their government seem more at.
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