Chowrangi

For more than 2.5 million IDPs of swat and Malakand division Pakistan’s foreign minister has called for more international aid to combat extremists, saying in an interview that the Taliban could otherwise move into India and the Gulf. The warning from Shah Mehmood Qureshi, in an interview with the Financial Times, comes before the first summit of European Union and Pakistan leaders in Brussels, at which aid for Islamabad will likely top the agenda. The Government is ready to make the most of it.

He called for 2.5 billion dollars alone in emergency relief and reconstruction aid for the northwest, where troops have been locked in heavy combat with Taliban militants since late April. Pakistan expands its anti-Taliban offensive in the northwest to the lawless tribal areas bordering Afghanistan, where the United States says militants are planning attacks on Western targets, reported by Dawn also.

‘They have a global agenda, they have a regional agenda, and they are not confined to Pakistan. They could go into the Gulf, they could go into India, they can go anywhere,’ Qureshi said.

Now can this aid will be helpful to eliminate militants completely and restrict them?

Is only the aid could affect the spread of Taliban?

The Pakistani foreign minister said the international community needed to help Islamabad improve its counter-terrorism capacity and stabilize the nuclear-armed state’s flagging economy. While Prime Minister Syed Yousuf Raza Gilani said international community should fulfill its pledges of assistance to Pakistan in its endeavors to win the hearts and minds of displaced persons of Swat.

A huge number of IDPs are victims of this war on terror and government is still begging the international community. US has triple the aid amount and still the situation of crisis is unresolved. Our ministers keep on saying that more aid is required but they didn’t have the dare to empty their own pockets. A humanitarian issue has been politicized by the government and to an extent exploited also. Some of the news reports are suggesting that the number of IDPs is exaggerated by the government to get more and more aid. The whole issue is loosing its credibility by such rumors or news. Transparency and honesty is required to deal with the situation and Safe and sound return of IDPs towards their homes should be guaranteed and done as soon as the military offense succeeds.

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