ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s former ambassador to the United States called Monday for his country to focus less on defence and said decades of misguided American aid have only enabled the powerful military.
Husain Haqqani, an outspoken academic turned diplomat who was forced to resign in 2011 over charges that he sought US help to curb Pakistan’s army, argues in a new book, “Magnificent Delusions,” that the two nations have always failed to understand.
At a book launch in Washington, Haqqani said Pakistan’s military was disproportionately large following the Indian subcontinent’s partition in 1947 and that the army has since prioritised US assistance in its goal of reaching parity with New Delhi.
“That is what has caused the internal dysfunction in Pakistan because the military has continued to become stronger. It has helped build Pakistan’s national narrative. Pakistanis never paused to think what is our resource base capable of supporting,” Haqqani said at the Hudson Institute, a think tank where he is a senior.
“A nation with nuclear weapons should not behave like a guy who keeps buying guns because he says he needs to defend his family and then stays up all night because he’s afraid somebody will come and steal his guns -- and then further down has a heart attack because of high blood pressure that he suffered from staying up,” he said.
But Haqqani called for Pakistan to refocus on fighting widespread poverty and illiteracy and to combat a creeping “ideological nationalism, that being Pakistani equals being ‘Islamic.’” AFP
