It was not even the fulfilled wind-up of the first night of the newly 2018 when the current President of the United States of America, Donald Trump, decided he would take the weight off his feet on his gold-plated chair and set forth on yet another ridiculous, not-fact-checked, angry adventure on the world of social media in the waking/crying hours of bats and vampires and infants.
Of all the things Trump could have achieved at 4:37 a.m.—that is, sleeping, for one—he began the new year and his thunder not by condemning white supremacists or Vladimir Putin for giving command over the U.S.’s democracy but by full-on accusing not only Pakistan of giving the U.S. “nothing but lies and deceit” in exchange for greenbacks but also Palestine for grinding down “hundreds of millions of dollars a year” without giving “appreciation or respect” even in the least. Into the bargain, he also went aboard pouncing on the Department of Justice, from baiting Iran to mocking Nuclear buttons, then cutting against James Comey, Hillary Clinton, Huma Abedin, the New York Times, Democrats, Barack Obama, and many others all at nearly one fell swoop.
In reply to Donald Trump’s controversial and threatening tweets, Bilawal Bhutto and Chairman of PTI (Pakistan Tehreeke Insaaf party) and former Cricketer Imran Khan were two of the frontrunners who were quick enough to strike back. Bilawal Bhutto tweeted, “Someone please explain to @realDonaldTrump (the) difference between coalition support fund reimbursement for work done and USAID ostensibly given for humanitarian reasons, to win hearts and minds. Cutting off moneys owed for assistance already rendered does not encourage further cooperation.” He further added, “The US just wants to ‘win’ in Afghanistan/Iraq/Syria and the many quagmires they are involved with. No plan to get out. All they are left with is excuses, blame games and denial.”
Moreover, by the same token, Imran Khan summed up the problem out in a dressing-down earlier. He said, “The lesson we must team is never to be used by others for short-term paltry financial benefits ever again.” He further stated, “The time had come to stand firm and give a strong response to the US. Two immediate measures can be taken by Pakistan to send an unambiguous message to the US: One, we must immediately remove excessive US diplomatic, non-diplomatic and intelligence personnel from Pakistan, so that diplomatic parity is established according to international legal norms governing diplomatic relations between states.”
“Two, we must deny the US GLOC and AIRLOC facilities, which we were providing free of cost to the US. As for the threat of the US rescinding Pakistan’s non-NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organisation) ally status, we should welcome it because it meant little in concrete terms. Only used, outdated weapons systems were available for Pakistan to purchase,” the statement read. “It is of critical importance that no vacuum prevails in FATA and that it is merged immediately into KP. Until the merger takes place, each day increases FATA’s vulnerability. It is time for Pakistan to delink from the US, especially after the new National Security Strategy announced by Trump in December 2017, which again targets Pakistan while emphasising the need to give India an increasingly strategic role in Afghanistan and the region.”
“While Pakistan does not seek a conflict with the US, it cannot continue being the scapegoat for US failures in Afghanistan,” were the words with which he chose to conclude his proclamation.
Trump said in one of his tweets that Pakistan was given more than 33 billion dollars in U.S. aid over the last fifteen years, but if the oh-so Great Him had the verve and lack of laziness in him to give facts a scrap glance, he would have known that the US promised Pakistan 1.5 billion dollars yearly up until 2014 and that also, right in the very beginning, the objective did not end up meeting. Over the last past ten years, the U.S. has come to only disburse 1.88 billion dollars to Pakistan.
In addition, according to the divulging statement of a superintendent of USAID to the Congress, it is a venture capital (an investment) that the US makes in certain belts of its benefits.
Despite the fact that Donald Trump can tweet whatsoever he wants about Pakistan or any other country, the mavens on his wand know the truth behind everything. They know that the battle against terror was not caused by Pakistan. It was conveyed directly to its threshold by the reckless hands of ex-President George W. Bush, who not only tore down Afghanistan into untreatable shreds but also Iraq, and as well as Pakistan, Palestine, Syria, and most of the Middle East that got hauled to hell shortly after by the next President.
The outcome of all that ensuing in Afghanistan? Hundreds of thousands of refugees bolted to Pakistan for shelter.
If the price of providing sanctuary for those millions of refugees that had somehow escaped from the Soviet-Afghan War was not enough in the eyes of the West, Pakistan was awarded with even more drain on its shoulders as the result of a US invasion supported by its union buddies. For one, more than 62,000 lives were sacrificed—out of whom, more than 50,000 were civilians and the rest were military recruits— from 2003 to 2017 on account of this battle on terror. Pakistan also suffered a loss of a total 123 billion dollars to its economy. The US has withal manipulated Pakistan to touch down at Afghanistan without any compensations for years now. Pakistan has also supplied the USA/NATO services with Ground Lines of Communication facilities and AIRLOC that are a must for the solitary global influence in undertaking rioters and has offered them with a stock track, through which weapons, food items and many other utilities move across for the U.S./NATO services situated in Afghanistan for operations.
Imagine if this means of resources were ever to be severed, what would happen to their troops? They sure would be finding themselves quite stuck in between Scylla and Charybdis to say. And as we all already know, Iran is surely not going to ever let the US walk all over them just to get to Afghanistan.
