Who to blame for Pakistan’s aid crisis: ISI or donors?

Foreign aid is all but sufficient in Pakistan where millions of people are surrounded by a severe humanitarian crisis. The post-flood environment in the worst affected provinces of Khyber-Pukhunkhwa and Punjab is alarmingly bleak as diseases, starvation and desperation join forces to bring about a major human catastrophe.

Politically the country is torn apart among corrupt and inefficient politicians who seem to be seeking personal interests from the crisis than lending hands to help their desperate people. There are conflicting calls coming from Pakistan’s political establishments regarding foreign assistance. Some rejects foreign aid categorically while others plead for billions.

International donor response to funding appeals has been criticized as weak and mean. Hundreds of millions of dollars have been demanded by the international aid community to fight highly contiguous diseases, feed the hungry, provide drinking water and assist people to regain a somewhat normal life.

However, it seems time has gone for Pakistan to receive immediate blank cheques from the West as it did in the past. People in most donor countries rightly say why aid to a country which exports religious terrorism? Will not the aid be siphoned off by the ISI (Pakistan’s notorious intelligence agency) to bankroll its Taliban protégés and sponsor more terrorist operations?

These are critical questions. Pakistan cannot rely on foreign generosity when its rogue state institutions only send suicide attackers, bombs and hatred to the world.

Will the unfolding flood crisis awaken Pakistanis and lead to radical political and institutional reforms?

The backlash is clear: ISI’s terrorism and Talibanization has weakened international sympathy with the Pakistani people. As ISI agents perpetuate violence abroad they bring home global condemnation.

The ISI, therefore, deserves a strong domestic condemnation for denying foreign aid to needy Pakistanis and turning Pakistan into a notorious terrorism hub.