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November 20, 2006

Pakistan: Blair To Subsidize Muslim Madrassas

In one of the biggest wastes of British taxpayers' money in recent years, UK prime minister has announced that Britain will be donating $910 million to Pakistan (£480 million). Some of this money is to be spent on sanitation and delivery of health services, which may be acceptable. What is unacceptable is that a sizeable proportion of this phenomenal figure is to be spent on madrassas, the Islamic seminaries which exist throughout Pakistan.

And these donations are being made to a country which can afford its own nuclear bomb, and has no extradition treaty with Britain. Blair is on his way out - he has said he will not be standing in the next election as head of the Labour Party. The money will be donated in the financial years, 2008 to 2009 and also 2010 to 2011, when he will no longer be in office. If this is the sort of legacy he expects to bequeath, one only hopes he goes sooner rather than later.

The Pakistan Daily Times reports that the donations will be part of a "Long Term Development Partnership Arrangement", signed after Blair's meetings with Pakistan prime minister Shaukat Aziz. On Sunday, Blair announced that $38 million would be immediately released to help alleviate poverty in Pakistan.

Blair arrived in Pakistan at the weekend, and at a conference with President Musharraf in Lahore, the two leaders affirmed their co-operation in the war on terror. They agreed that southeastern Afghanistan needed to be developed, to avoid its return to the rule of the Taliban. Musharraf stated: "The Taleban problem is an Afghan problem. It is in the south-eastern region of Afghanistan, being supported by elements from this side. We need to put our house in order here on our side and make sure that this support is cut off. But the main battle is in Afghanistan."

In a commentary in today's Telegraph, it is stated: "In a crisis, a Labour politician's first instinct is to reach for his wallet - or, rather, for your wallet."

If Mr Blair thinks that Western aid will win over the Muslim world, he misunderstands human nature. One of the reasons that Iraqis distrust the West is that they had come to associate it, via the UN's oil for food racket, with their own corrupt officials.

The last thing we want is for a similar thing to happen in Pakistan. There are many things Mr Blair could usefully do to help that country, such as encouraging investment and trade and the opening of EU markets to Pakistani exports. Aid, in the final analysis, allows autocratic governments to spend more money without having to ask their peoples: in other words it makes them more irresponsible. This is in no one's interest.

Blair and his chancellor Gordon Brown, the dour individual likely to succeed the premier, have so far announced spending packages of £7,000,000,000 ($13,279,983,802) on Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan over the past three days.

This an additional cost, on top of the £5,000,000,000 ($9,485,702,716) spent on the Iraq war so far, and the £1,000,000,000 ($1,897,302,733) which has been spent on the military situation in Afghanistan.

The funding news came shortly after Blair had said on Al Jazeera television that the invasion of Iraq (which took place on March 19, 2003) had been a "disaster".

David Davies, Tory MP for Monmouth, said of Blair's decision to waste taxpayers money on Pakistani madrassas: "He does not seem to have grasped the fact that these people are not motivated by money. They are motivated by extremist religious ideology."

Posted by Giraldus Cambrensis at November 20, 2006 5:20 PM

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Posted by: Hungarian Crusader at November 24, 2006 1:26 PM

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