No Strings Attached

Since childhood, we usually use to hear about the different aids which other countries were giving to Pakistan as a form of gift and help to prosper economic development and encourage development. I usually thought that these countries must be very good and caring due to which they wanted to go for collective development and they care for all other less developed countries. Until a couple of years ago when actually I realized that not a single penny was given to other countries as a pure form of aid, there were always some sort of “strings attached”.

Countless examples can be seen in the 65 year history of Pakistan where it has received aid from relatively developed countries. No matter in what from it might be in, money, loans, food, arms, ammunition, etc. All these so called charities had some sort of conditions attached to them. A specific trend that has been seen in the past is that as soon as Pakistan has a military dictator as its leader, aid from USA increases significantly. No matter if it is the regime of Ayub Khan, where a lot of funds were allocated towards the economy of Pakistan, just to get its support or the regime of Zia ul haq, where again huge sums of money were poured into Pakistan’s economy, in order to get support against the Russian invasion of Afghanistan. Regime of Pervez Musharraf was also not different from the other two, when Pakistani land was used by USA to continue its war on terror in return for a huge sum of money.

My basic concern is not the fact that all these aids have some sorts of strings attached to them, but the main aim of the developed countries behind giving all these aid’s. Most of our leaders have been quite famous for their short term plans which indeed proved to be blunders in the long run. Location of Pakistan on the world map makes it extremely important in a strategic point of view. What I am afraid of are the intentions of the most rapidly developing country of the world; China. The recent agreement between China and Pakistan, resulted in an allocation of funds of around 28 billion dollars in Pakistan, which will indeed help a lot for the economic development of Pakistan, but I have my doubts over the “ over friendly” intentions of China and what it wants to achieve in the long run.