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| Afghanistan-Pak-India |
| The challenge of Balakot |
| 2005-10-20 |
| By Pervez Hoodbhoy For me personally, there is a sense of deja vu. Nearly 31 years ago, on December 25, 1974, a powerful earthquake flattened towns along the Karakorum Highway and killed nearly 10,000 people. I travelled with a university team into the same mountains for similar relief work. Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto had made a passionate appeal for funds around the world, had taken a token helicopter trip to the destroyed town of Besham, and then made fantastic promises of relief and rehabilitation. Hundreds of millions of dollars in relief funds received from abroad mysteriously disappeared. Some well-informed people believe that those funds were used to kick off Pakistan’s secret nuclear programme. |
| Posted by:john |
| #2 And I wonder what the funds of 2005 will be used for? |
| Posted by: john 2005-10-20 20:33 |
| #1 Well, Bhutto did say in 1971 (following the defeat in the 1971 Indo-Pak war) that Pakistan would "eat grass" in order to have atomic weapons. So a few hundred thousand non-Punjabis suffer.. no problem for the Pak elite. |
| Posted by: john 2005-10-20 19:00 |