By Rasheed Khalid
The clause against army intervention in the Kerry-Lugar Bill is very good as Article 6 could not stop army intervention and international oversight seemed to be a positive change in the attitude of Washington.
National Finance Commission member Dr Kaiser Bengali stated this in a seminar on ‘Demystifying the Kerry-Lugar Bill’ organised by Journalists Resource Centre here at South Asian Free Media Association on Tuesday. Hr said that the bill seeks civilian oversight of armed forces but these people do not want to salute civilian leaders. It is a good that US is giving signals in favour of democracy though one does not know how far it goes. He said that we always called these Mujahideen as terrorists but now Americans also say that. He said that we did not have good experience of foreign aid.
He said the type of aid being provided to Pakistan under KLB was earlier only for military purposes. He said that aid in US is a foreign policy instrument and its results are not seen on the ground. He said that the money under KLB will not have to be returned, hence will not add to the burden on our economy. General Zia imported sophisticated torture instruments from US aid and General Musharraf also misused the US assistance he said adding Americans asked others after 9/11why US is hated in Pakistan and other countries and their analysis on the basis of surveys led to the election of Barrack Obama which indicated a change in US public opinion.
It is a defeat of neo-conservative ideology in US and eroded relative power of US establishment which had created Al-Qaeda, he said, adding that without aid, you cannot import oil. He said that all critics of KLB had been in the service of khakis in the past in one form or the other. He said that they did not criticise US conditions after a phone call in the aftermath of 9/11. He said that the pre-9/11 allies of the security apparatus (Islamic militants) are now attacking Pakistani people.
To meet deficit, we used domestic debt, which was converted into foreign one that compromises our political sovereignty in the past as unlike rupees, we cannot print dollars. He said that Nawaz Sharif to Shaukat Aziz regimes did it so but are now talking against an aid which is not a debt. Otherwise, a supporter of BISP, he said that the programme should not be financed by World Bank loan.