Pakistan Must Be Invest In Schools Rather Than Military: Hillary Clinton
August 22, 2009 by Trend PK
Filed under Breaking News
WASHINGTON: Pakistan’s fight with extremism would have been in better shape had the United States invested more in the nation’s schools not just its military, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said.
The United States has pumped more than seven billion dollars into Pakistan’s military since the September 11, 2001 attacks, which transformed the nation from Taliban backers into frontline US ally.
In an interview with a US magazine to be published Sunday, Clinton said she had told Pakistan’s former military leader Pervez Musharraf that more of the money should be going to education.
She recalled a trip to a Pakistani village, where families hesitated to children — particularly girls — because the children would need to travel away to the closest school.
“When I think about the extraordinarily accomplished Pakistanis in the professions, in medicine, in education, I think it is certainly the case that if Pakistan had invested more in the education of children so that poor families would not have sent their boys off to be educated by extremists, it might well have made a difference,” Clinton said.
“And it still can, because that’s part of our approach now,” she said.
US lawmakers have voted to provide 7.5 billion dollars for Pakistan over the next five years — largely in support for social development including building schools.
President Barack Obama’s administration has made the fight against Islamic extremism in Pakistan and neighboring Afghanistan a key foreign policy priority.
Pakistan Must Be Invest In Schools Rather Than Military: Hillary Clinton was first posted on August 22, 2009 at 10:49 am.
Operation Will Continue Till Govt Writ Restored
August 22, 2009 by Trend PK
Filed under Breaking News
ISLAMABAD, PAKISTAN: Extremists in Pakistan’s northwest have been defeated and scattered, but the military operation will continue until the writ of the government is fully established, said President Asif Ali Zardari in an interview.
In interview with the Chinese news agency, Zardari said, “We expect the military operation to continue until the writ of the government has been fully restored … democracy is always a format of dialogue. But nobody would be allowed to take the law into their hands and extremism would not be tolerated.”
He said that all Pakistanis were now of the opinion that extremism should not be tolerated. “And the message which the political forces of the day and the people of Pakistan want [to convey] is … [that] live with each other in harmony and peace.”
Zardari said that the social and administrative infrastructure had been restored in troubled areas, and normalcy was returning to Swat, Malakand and Buner.
“The process of development has been launched. Economic activity is picking up gradually,” he said, adding that schools and hospitals had also started functioning.
However, he said the army would remain in the area to assist the civil authorities and eliminate pockets of resistance.
The president also said that the Pakistani leadership, security forces and people were firmly resolved to fight militancy and eliminate extremism from all parts of the country. “It is a fight for survival … we must win it,” he said.
About the country’s economy, Zardari said that it had lost momentum significantly, and GDP grew by a modest two percent in 2008-09.
But he said that this modest growth seemed to be satisfactory when viewed in the backdrop of a domestic situation affected by the war on terror and the volatile security situation and the global financial crisis.
He said that the focus of the government’s policies was to revive economic growth in a stable environment.
Operation Will Continue Till Govt Writ Restored was first posted on August 22, 2009 at 10:54 am.
