Terrorists have gained the most from the recent American verbal assaults against Pakistan, and the strategy is damaging bilateral relations and compromising common goals in defeating terrorism, extremism and fanaticism, President Asif Ali Zardari wrote in an opinion piece in The Washington Post on Saturday.
“Democracy always favours dialogue over confrontation. So, too, in Pakistan, where the terrorists who threaten both our country and the United States have gained the most from the recent verbal assaults some in America have made against Pakistan,” Zardari said. “It is time for the rhetoric to cool and for serious dialogue between allies to resume,” the president said in the WP. He said the country’s motives were simple. “We have a huge population of young people who have few choices in life. Our task is to turn this demographic challenge into a dividend for democracy and pluralism, where the embrace of tolerance elbows out the lure of extremism, where jobs turn desolation into opportunity and empowerment, where ploughshares take the place of guns, where women and minorities have a meaningful place in society,” he said.
“None of this vision for a new Pakistan is premised on the politics of victim hood. It pivots on a worldview where we fight the war against extremism and terrorism as our battle, at every precinct and until the last person, even though we lack the resources to match our commitment. When Pakistan seeks support, we look for trade that will make us sustainable, not aid that will bind us in transactional ties.”
He said with Pakistan pounded “by the ravages of globally driven climate change, with floods once again making millions of our citizens homeless”, the country’s closest ally was talking instead of hearing. “We are being battered by nature and by our friends. This has shocked a nation that is bearing the brunt of the terrorist whirlwind in the region.”
Zardari added that Pakistan was fighting an ideology that “feeds on brutality and coercion that has taken the lives of our minister for minorities, Shahbaz Bhatti and former governor Salman Taseer, among thousands of others. And we have seen our greatest leader, the mother of my children, assassinated by a conspiracy that was powered by the same mindset we are now accused of tolerating”.
The president said both the US and Pakistan needed to learn from history.
“The Pakistani street is thick with questions. My people ask, is our blood so cheap? Are the lives of our children worthless? Must we fight alone in our region all those that others now seek to embrace? And how long can we degrade our capacity by fighting an enemy that the might of the NATO global coalition has failed to eliminate?”
Zardari said the recent accusations against Pakistan had been a serious setback to the war effort and joint strategic interests. He said Pakistan will continue reclaiming “our terrain, inch by inch, from the extremists, even without the United States”. “We are a tenacious people. We will not allow religion to become the trigger for terrorism or persecution,”
The president said the sooner “we stop shooting verbal arrows at each other and coordinate our resources against the advancing flag of fanaticism, the sooner we can restore stability to the land for which so much of humanity continues to sacrifice”.
Talk to, not at, Pakistan, Zardari tells US
