Pak investment in Afghanistan hits $500 million

[rangbaaz]

The sources at the beginning of this thread would indicate yes...

there we go, source is there but only for those who want to see it
some people just like to poke their nose in everything
they better focus on what's happening in their country
Pakistan Zindabad

 

[TaimiKhan]

That was 'Direct Overt U.S. Aid and Military Reimbursements to Pakistan, FY2002-FY2011'.

Anything that we should know about Covert U.S. Aid and Military Reimbursements to Pakistan

Height of imagination.

So from where are these covert Billions gonna come ??

No one there is the US to ask where the money is going and for what ?/ All the senators, congressmen/women and Indian caucus sleeping ??

I think it would be better if you guys try to stop derailing the thread.

If you still have any issue, Google is there to help you, I don;t have time to indulge in such ridiculous discussion where you come up with some imaginary covert fund of Billions.

 

[prithwidw]

Then it wouldn't be 'covert' now would it ..

'Covert aid' == speculation.

That was smart. But, I have not got my answer yet.

 

[AgNoStiC MuSliM]

That was smart. But, I have not got my answer yet.

What answer do you expect to a question based on speculation?

The answer is no 'covert aid' - there, satisfied?

If not, then provide some credible source supporting your contention - on a different thread.

 

[prithwidw]

Height of imagination.

So from where are these covert Billions gonna come ??

No one there is the US to ask where the money is going and for what ?/ All the senators, congressmen/women and Indian caucus sleeping ??

I think it would be better if you guys try to stop derailing the thread.

If you still have any issue, Google is there to help you, I don;t have time to indulge in such ridiculous discussion where you come up with some imaginary covert fund of Billions.

Dude, there are always billions of dollars at Washington's disposal for these type of things(secret initiatives). Do I need to remind you of that? Are you that naive?

And in bold above, stop accusing every person who questions, instead of providing just replies.

 

[TaimiKhan]

Dude, there are always billions of dollars at Washington's disposal for these type of things(secret initiatives). Do I need to remind you of that? Are you that naive?

And in bold above, stop accusing every person who questions, instead of providing just replies.

Well then provide back up to your claim. Where are the covert funds going ?? Not in the economy, not in the military.

Yeah definitely going some into destabilizing Pakistan from Afghanistan, may be the Indians also having a share in the pie as they also need money to bring in and support terror in Pakistan.

So where are these covert billions coming in and going into whose pockets except for the ones mentioned above.

 

[prithwidw]

Well then provide back up to your claim. Where are the covert funds going ?? Not in the economy, not in the military.

Yeah definitely going some into destabilizing Pakistan from Afghanistan, may be the Indians also having a share in the pie as they also need money to bring in and support terror in Pakistan.

So where are these covert billions coming in and going into whose pockets except for the ones mentioned above.

I was expecting a reasoning from you, but you have started attacking India in this thread. OK, I provide you benefit of doubt, now please prove that part in bold as highlighted above.

Terrorism is Pakistan's mantra, not India's, and I have many different sources to prove that. You got any?

 

[TaimiKhan]

I was expecting a reasoning from you, but you have started attacking India in this thread. OK, I provide you benefit of doubt, now please prove that part in bold as highlighted above.

Terrorism is Pakistan's mantra, not India's, and I have many different sources to prove that. You got any?

Other threads are full of whose mantra terrorism is.

Keep the discussion to the topic, as you were the one who said about covert funds, as we are not talking about it nor do we know, but Indians know about it, thus it would mean you guys got something from it and now throwing at us as if we have taken covert funds.

heck since i have joined this forum and of the thousands of discussions with Indians, you are the first one to put this blame on us. Not even the learned US members ever accused us of taking their covert funds.

So now keep the discussion to Afghanistan and the topic of the thread.

If you wish to talk about your this new covert fund membo jumbo and whose mantra terrorism is, open a new thread, and invite me in, then we will talk.

 

[prithwidw]

Other threads are full of whose mantra terrorism is.

Keep the discussion to the topic, as you were the one who said about covert funds, as we are not talking about it nor do we know, but Indians know about it, thus it would mean you guys got something from it and now throwing at us as if we have taken covert funds.

heck since i have joined this forum and of the thousands of discussions with Indians, you are the first one to put this blame on us. Not even the learned US members ever accused us of taking their covert funds.

So now keep the discussion to Afghanistan and the topic of the thread.

If you wish to talk about your this new covert fund membo jumbo and whose mantra terrorism is, open a new thread, and invite me in, then we will talk.

Nopes, no new thread for that. It will only flame things further. Coming back to the topic, it's good to know that Pakistan has invested $500 million in Afghanistan.

Now with terrorism extinct one day(someday), the progress will be far far better.

 

[ajpirzada]

Have you heard about Allama Iqbal Faculty at Kabul University? Sir Syed Science Faculty Block at Nangarhar University? Liaqat Ali Khan Engineering Faculty at Balkh University? Rehman Baba High School in Kabul? And the sprawling ten-tower Jinnah Hospital Complex in Kabul and the Nishtar Kidney Hospital in Jalalabad?

Ø Pakistan will issue 250,000 multiple entry visas to applicants across Afghanistan in 2010
Ø 28,000 Afghans have studied in Pakistani schools, colleges and universities in the past 30 years; Islamabad has longstanding policy of educating the children of Afghan refugees
Ø About 500,000 Afghan children attend schools in Pakistan
Ø The most successful professionals in today's Afghan society had studied in Pakistan
Ø Afghan graduates from Pakistani universities receive higher salaries than graduates from any other country in the region
Ø Every single day in 2009, 52,000 Afghans entered Pakistan for business, education and tourism
Ø Tajik, Uzbek and Hazara Afghans are as welcome in Pakistan as the Pashtun Afghans
Ø Pakistan once hosted 5.5 million Afghans, a majority of them continue to live with their Pakistani cousins
Ø When the world abandoned Afghanistan after 1989, it was Pakistanis who supported their Afghan cousins


By AMBASSADOR MOHAMMAD SADIQ

KABUL, Afghanistan—While addressing the media in Islamabad on 11 March 2010, President Hamid Karzai very aptly said Pakistan and Afghanistan were conjoined twins. The remarks were not new but they hit the headlines, showing that nature of relations between the two countries continued to baffle many.

Mark Twain, the great American writer, had famously said Johann Sebastian Bach's music was better than it sounded. If Twain were around today, he would have pronounced Pak-Afghan relationship ‘better than portrayed.’

Some 52,000 Afghans crossed border with Pakistan everyday in 2009 for business, jobs, medical treatment, education and to visit relatives. This was a significant increase over a year ago when 44,000 Afghans traversed the border daily. More visitors now undertake documented travel between the two countries by obtaining visas or visit permits.

Our Missions in Afghanistan have geared up to issue quarter of a million multiple entry visas to Afghan nationals during 2010. Pakistan issues more visas to Afghans than the rest of the world combined. Pakistan does not charge any visa fee from Afghan passport holders.

Contrary to the craftily promoted perception that Afghans of only one ethnicity are welcomed in Pakistan, one finds people from all over Afghanistan in Pakistani cities. Our consular records show that visas issued to Afghan nationals closely represent the ethnic composition of the population.

Despite occasional ups and downs at certain levels, the overall bilateral relations remained remarkably frequent and cordial. This explains the continued presence of over three million Afghan refugees in Pakistan for last 30 years. At one point, over 5.5 million Afghans were living in Pakistan. 37 percent of the refugees who voluntarily repatriate to Afghanistan are back in Pakistan within weeks.

In last thirty years, Afghans of all ethnicities and of political views had taken refuge in Pakistan: whether it was mass exodus against the Soviet occupation or flight from atrocities of a decade long internecine war. They looked at Pakistan as a place where they could find safety, at least temporarily, for their families.

The world hurriedly left Afghanistan after the Soviet withdrawal. The unfortunate events of 9/11 have reengaged the world in Afghanistan but still little attention is paid to the honourable return of refugees to their homes. The international community’s attitude towards Afghan refugees is rather callous. Just one example: they were disenfranchised in the last Presidential elections because the international community claimed that it was short of funds!

Due to Pakistan’s longstanding policy on educating Afghan nationals, some 28,000 Afghans had attended Pakistani universities and colleges in last three decades. Today, 6,000 Afghan students are enrolled in Pakistan's colleges and universities. This represents about 60 percent of all Afghans studying in institutions of higher education abroad. In addition, about half a million Afghan refugee children attend schools in Pakistan.

To facilitate the capacity building efforts of other donors, Pakistan also encourages third party sponsorship of training of Afghan students and officials in its institutions. Under this policy, over five hundred Afghan nationals attended courses in the field of agriculture from a few weeks duration to postgraduate degrees in the Agriculture University of Peshawar alone. Scores were trained in other professions ranging from medicine to civil aviation.

Over the years, Afghan students in Pakistan have mostly been allowed the same opportunities and treatment which are extended to our own nationals. A whole generation of Afghans is thus educated, and now gainfully employed, inside Afghanistan or abroad.

Most successful professionals in today's Afghan society had studied in Pakistan. They dominate the work place not only in government offices, international organizations and NGOs but also as professionals, businessmen, and skilled and semi-skilled workers.

And more proudly, Afghan graduates from Pakistani universities are paid significantly higher salaries than graduates from any other neighboring country.

Pakistan is further providing 2,000 fully funded graduate and post-graduate scholarships to Afghan students in its institutions of higher learning over the next four years. The placements are being made in ten different fields from medicine to IT to agriculture. The first batch of the students under this programme had already left for Pakistan early this year.

Providing consistent and across the board education and capacity building opportunities is Pakistan’s greatest gift to the people of Afghanistan and it is considered so innate that it is hardly mentioned in any discourse in Kabul.

Another important area where Pakistan has been of unlimited help to the people of Afghanistan is healthcare. Afghans are provided free medical care in Pakistan’s government hospitals, a facility available to our own nationals.

Over 90 percent of Afghans who seek medical treatment abroad visit Pakistan. Most of the Afghan patients opt for free treatment at government or philanthropic healthcare facilities. Moneyed Afghan patients are welcomed by many countries but for their less fortunate compatriots only Pakistan has kept its doors opened.

Just a few examples of the effects of this facility: 40 percent of patients in Peshawar’s major government hospitals and 11 percent patients in tertiary hospitals all over Pakhtunkhwa province are Afghans; over 50 percent patients in major government hospitals in Quetta are Afghan nationals; and two Pakistani philanthropic hospitals perform free eye surgeries on about 30,000 Afghans every year.

Since 2001, Pakistan has also played an active, but unpublicised, role in Afghanistan’s reconstruction and providing humanitarian assistance.

Following are some of the major assistance projects which Pakistan had completed, or about to complete:

1. A state of the art Allama Iqbal Faculty at Kabul University is completed.
2. As a separate project, the Government of Pakistan is furnishing the Iqbal Faculty building.
3. The building of Sir Syed Science Faculty Block is near completion in Nangarhar University, Jalalabad.
4. The structure of Liaqat Ali Khan Engineering Faculty in Balkh University, Mazar-e-Sharif is almost complete.
5. Rehman Baba High School in Kabul was completed, where 1200 students are currently enrolled.
6. As another project on the same campus, hostel for 1000 students is under construction.
7. Donated buses for the students of Kabul University.
8. A sprawling Jinnah Hospital Complex with ten towers is under construction in Kabul. It will provide the most modern health facility in the country.
9. Civil work on Nishter Kidney Hospital in Jalalabad is completed. Afghan doctors, paramedics and technicians to run this facility are also trained in Pakistan.
10. A 200 bed Naib Aminullah Khan Logari Hospital is under construction in Logar.
11. Donated mobile field hospitals and ambulances to several provinces.
12. Construction of Torkham-Jalalabad Road in eastern Afghanistan is completed.
13. On request of the Afghan Government, Pakistan has undertaken to convert Torkham-Jalalabad road in a dual carriage highway. About 60 percent work is already completed on this project.
14. Built three intra-city roads in Jalalabad.
15. Provided earth-moving and road building machinery to various provinces.
16. Donated fifty buses for public transportation.
17. Provided cash assistance to the Afghan Government.
18. Distributed food packages to the needy and school supplies to students in large numbers.

Several other major projects, including two Eye Hospitals, Limb Centre at Badakhshan, two Nuclear Medical Centres in Kabul and Jalalabad, are in the pipeline.

Pakistan has committed US$330 million for reconstruction and assistance projects in Afghanistan. However, every dollar spent by Pakistan has more effect when it is compared with a dollar spent by other donors. Our foreign assistance accounting system does not add establishment, oversight and inspection costs to the projects. If expenditure in these heads is charged to the projects, our committed amount would easily increase by another 50 percent.

Pakistan was also instrumental in facilitating the launch of several industries in Afghanistan after 2001. For example:

20. State-owned National Bank of Pakistan (NBP) was the first foreign bank to operate in Afghanistan after 9/11. Two private Pakistani banks followed NBP to Afghanistan. The emerging banking sector of Afghanistan was heavily depended on Pakistan's human resource in its initial phase.

21. The telecommunication industry of Afghanistan drew Pakistani manpower, or Afghans trained in Pakistan, in its nascent stage.

22. State-owned Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) pioneered the opening of Afghanistan to international air traffic. It was the first foreign airline to start operations to Kabul after 9/11. Ariana Afghan Airlines uses Pakistan’s civil aviation training facilities.

Robust trade and economic interaction is another important feature of Pakistan-Afghanistan relations. Pakistan is the largest trading partner of Afghanistan while Afghanistan is Pakistan's third largest export market.

Pakistan has provided transit trade facility to Afghanistan for decades without any reciprocity. The two countries are presently engaged in negotiating an improved Transit Trade Agreement to further facilitate Afghan transit trade through Pakistan.
To enhance Kabul’s connectivity to the world, Pakistan plans to improve its road links and develop rail connections with Afghanistan.

A sad casualty of foreign occupation and long civil war was the performing art tradition of Afghanistan. Pakistan was instrumental in preserving some of this tradition: many performing artists took refuge, or grew professionally, during their stay in Pakistani cities. Today, a large number of Afghan artists have close links, and wide following, in Pakistan.

Pakistan is pursuing a close, friendly and cooperative relationship with Afghanistan. A peaceful, stable and prosperous Afghanistan is in Pakistan’s national interest while war and instability in Afghanistan is detrimental to our prosperity and stability. Contrary hypothesis promoted so assiduously by certain quarters is disingenuous.

The unique relationship between Pakistan and Afghanistan - which is rooted in common religion, culture, tradition, history and values - is not just a relationship between two states or governments. It is way beyond this. It is between the two peoples and societies. Pakistan-Afghanistan relationship is unmatched in spirit, level of interaction and variety of interface by relationship between any other two nations.

Mr. Sadiq is Pakistan’s Ambassador to Afghanistan. This is the revised version of an op-ed he wrote and was published in Afghanistan’s English- and Dari-language newspapers on the occasion of Pakistan Day on March 23, 2010.

Pakistan-Afghanistan: The Conjoined Twins - PakNationalists | Google Groups

 

[ajpirzada]

Ariana Airways crew get certificates

KARACHI: Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) and the Flight Operation Unit of PIA Training Centre (PTC) awarded certificates and souvenirs to Ariana Airways (Afghanistan) crew members on successful completion of the first Flight Operations course conducted by PIA. On the occasion, Director Training and Development, Mr. Dilawar Fareed Baig said the training of these members of Ariana Airways would strengthen ties between the airlines of both the countries. He mentioned the PIA has signed an MOU with Afghanistan for conducting various courses. Previously, three other courses have been conducted, but the Flight Operations course is being carried out for the first time. This step has been taken in the context of our close and brotherly ties with Afghanistan. While giving the details about the course, he explained the FO course has the duration of 24 weeks but on the request of Ariana Airways, the PTC has completed this course in 12 weeks, starting from 29th December 2009 to 18th March 2010. staff report

Daily Times - Leading News Resource of Pakistan

 

[t-birds]

Indo-Pakistan proxy war heats up in Afghanistan



KABUL (AP) — Across Afghanistan, behind the obvious battles fought for this country's soul, a shadow war is being quietly waged. It's being fought with spies and proxies, with hundreds of millions of dollars in aid money and ominous diplomatic threats.

The fight pits nuclear-armed rivals India and Pakistan against one another in a battle for influence that will almost certainly gain traction as the clock ticks down toward America's military withdrawal, which President Barack Obama has announced will begin next year.

The clash has already sparked bloody militant attacks, and American officials fear the region could become further destabilized. With Pakistani intelligence maintaining ties to Afghanistan's Taliban militants, India has threatened to draw Iran, Russia and other nations into the competition if an anti-Indian government comes to power in Kabul.

"This is a delicate game going on here," said Daoud Muradian, a senior adviser to the Afghan Foreign Ministry. He spoke wearily about how Afghanistan, a mountainous crossroads linking South Asia, the Middle East and Central Asia, has for centuries often been little more than a stage for other countries' power struggles. "We don't want to be forced to choose between India and Pakistan."

For both India and Pakistan, Afghanistan is an exceedingly valuable prize.

To India, ties with Kabul mean new trade routes, access to Central Asia's vast energy reserves and a way to stave off the rise of Islamic militancy. It means the chance for New Delhi to undermine Islamabad as it nurtures its superpower aspirations by expanding its regional influence.

While Pakistan is also desperate for new energy supplies, its Afghan policy has been largely shaped by the view that Afghanistan is its natural ally. The two countries share a long border, overwhelmingly Muslim populations and deep ethnic links.

Then there is fear. Pakistan and India have already fought three wars over the past seven decades, and Pakistani military leaders are terrified of someday being trapped militarily between India on one border and a pro-India Afghanistan on the other.

"We can't afford an unfriendly government in Afghanistan," said Mohammad Sadiq, Pakistan's ambassador to Afghanistan.

The shadow war began in earnest in the wake of the 2001 U.S. invasion, when the Taliban government was forced from power and New Delhi began courting Afghanistan's new leaders. It was a move into a country that Islamabad, a fierce supporter of the Taliban government, had seen as its diplomatic territory for two decades. But New Delhi quickly became a close ally of President Hamid Karzai, who will travel to India early next week for talks aimed at strengthening ties between the two countries.

On the surface, both India and Pakistan are bringing help to a country that desperately needs it.

New Delhi has built highways in the western deserts and brought electricity to Kabul. It is constructing a new Parliament building and offers free medical care in clinics across Afghanistan. Despite its immense spending needs — India has widespread poverty and staggering infrastructure problems despite its rapidly growing economy — it has given more than $1.3 billion in development aid.

That, in turn, has sparked Pakistani efforts, with Islamabad spending about $350 million on everything from school textbooks to buses.

But this is far from pure humanitarianism.

Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the top U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan, laid out the situation bluntly: "While Indian activities largely benefit the Afghan people, increasing Indian influence in Afghanistan is likely to exacerbate regional tensions and encourage Pakistani countermeasures," he warned in a report late last year.

Heightened tensions are the last thing the U.S. wants. The Afghan war has killed more than 1,800 coalition soldiers — more than 1,100 of them Americans. More than 2,400 Afghan civilians were killed just last year.

If the competition over Afghanistan is rooted in a cocktail of issues, much of it revolves around the Taliban.

New Delhi's perceptions of modern Afghanistan have been molded by its memories of the 1996-2001 Taliban government, the fundamentalist Muslim regime which rose to power with Pakistan's help.

It was a time when New Delhi was openly despised in Kabul, when anti-India insurgents trained in Afghan camps and the hijackers of an Indian airliner were welcomed here as heroes. Even after the Taliban government fell, Pakistan's powerful spy agency, Inter-Services Intelligence, or ISI, retained links to the Taliban insurgency now battling the American-led forces and the Karzai government, in case the Taliban ever return to power.

But if there's one thing New Delhi does not want, it's another militant Islamic government in Kabul.

"We want the stabilization of Afghanistan because it is directly related to our security. Plain and simple," said Jayant Prasad, the Indian ambassador to Afghanistan, speaking inside his heavily guarded Kabul residence.

India has paid heavily for its Afghan involvement. The Indian Embassy was bombed in 2008 and again last year, leaving 75 people dead. Six Indians were killed by militants during the construction of an India-funded highway.

Two Kabul guest houses popular among Indians have been attacked. The last attack, in February, left at least six Indians dead and forced New Delhi to temporarily close its medical and teaching missions in Kabul. India blamed that attack on the Pakistan-based militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba, the same group believed to be behind the 2008 Mumbai terrorist attacks.

India and the United States have both said the embassy attacks were carried out by militants allied to Pakistan's ISI.

The Pakistanis "are bringing the proxy war to Afghanistan and we are the targets," said Prasad.

It's an accusation that Pakistan angrily denies.

"India has always used Afghanistan against us," said Sadiq, the Pakistani ambassador.

Karzai has made little secret of his preference for India. The president, who was educated in India, has loudly welcomed New Delhi's assistance while rarely mentioning Pakistan's aid.

Other Afghan officials barely disguise their distrust of Pakistan.

Pakistan wants "a puppet state in Kabul, a subservient state," said Muradian, the foreign ministry adviser. "India wants a stable, pluralistic Afghanistan."

Certainly, India has shown it is willing to play diplomatic hardball.

Even India's allies say New Delhi has a large presence in Afghanistan from its foreign intelligence agency, the Research and Analysis Wing, or RAW. At least one victim of the February guest house attack was an undercover RAW agent, a senior Afghan official said on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.

According to Islamabad, many of those agents are providing support to separatist militants in Pakistan's Baluchistan province — an accusation New Delhi denies.

The reality remains murky. Pakistan keeps Baluchistan largely sealed off to outsiders. Western diplomats, speaking on condition of anonymity, say Indian intelligence is believed to be in contact with the Baluchi separatists, though it's unclear if they provide any support.

India also is keeping in reserve its longtime links to Afghan warlords, in case Afghanistan is again divided by violence.

For years, New Delhi supplied the leaders of the Northern Alliance, the collection of ethnic militias that battled the Taliban (and often one another), with food, intelligence and medical care. Later, after the Alliance helped the U.S. oust the Taliban in 2001, the warlords scattered into government and business — and sometimes into crime or exile.

But India remains in close contact with a range of the former militia leaders, according to people with close ties to New Delhi's foreign policy elite, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the press.

New Delhi's biggest worry is that U.S. forces will withdraw from Afghanistan before Karzai's government is in full control of the country. An early withdrawal, India fears, could allow Islamabad and the Taliban militants to gain more power in Afghanistan and potentially even usher in another government hostile to New Delhi.

While a full American pullout appears unlikely anytime soon, U.S. military officials have angered New Delhi by talking about the possibility of allowing some Taliban to join the Afghan government.

India warns it could form a coalition with Iran — an alliance that would infuriate Washington — if the Taliban appear poised to return to power. The "self-interested coalition" could include Russia and several Central Asian states that would also fear a Taliban return, according to an Indian with knowledge of the diplomatic maneuvering.

For now, though, India's program to win Afghan hearts and minds is clearly working.

Take the three Indian doctors working in the dusty northern town of Mazar-i-Sharif, dispensing prescriptions and performing surgeries in a faded colonial-era hospital that somehow survived the years of fighting.

Every morning, clusters of women in blue burqas gather in the narrow hallway outside the clinic, while men wait in the parking lot. They are the poorest people in one of the world's poorest countries: widows, the unemployed, the elderly. They measure the distance to the clinic by the cost of getting there — and a 10-cent bus ride is a painful investment.

About 150 arrive every day for free care and medicine.

An old man named Myagul — he has only one name, and didn't know his age — had been coughing badly, he said, and growing dizzy when he stood up. The doctors prescribed blood pressure medicine and cough syrup. He'd already been to a handful of doctors, but they had all asked for fees he couldn't afford.

But on a warm Afghan morning, the old man with the greasy beard and the torn blazer left the clinic clutching a handful of medicines, weary but pleased.

"Finally it was these Indians who helped."

 

[AgNoStiC MuSliM]

with Islamabad spending about $350 million on everything from school textbooks to buses.

This is the third or fourth article in a row now, in the last few weeks, out of the US media that specifically mentions the dollar value of Pakistan's contributions to Afghanistan along with India's.

On defence.pk we have been talking about Pakistani aid to Afghanistan for over a year at least, and we started a sticky to highlight it. Until a few weeks ago there was absolutely no mention of Pakistani aid to Afghanistan when articles talked about the India-Pakistan dynamics in Afgahnistan, even though they would often specifically mention the '$1.2 billion in Indian assistance to Afghanistan'.

The context would almost always be one of comparing India's '$1.2 billion aid' to Pakistan's 'support for the Taliban'.

What changed since then? Obviously not the facts, since we knew about Pakistani aid to Afghanistan for over a year. What changed was the US-Pak relationship and the mutual desire to cooperate, and voila, the US media overnight starts actually being somewhat objective and cuts down (somewhat) on the nonsensical and unsubstantiated 'anonymous intel and military sources' propaganda pieces pushed by the US establishment to malign Pakistan.

Now we finally have some mainstream US outlets actually acknowledging Pakistan's aid contributions to Afghanistan, after over a year of ignoring it while highlighting the contributions of India in the same breath.

For those who think the US media is objective when it comes to reporting on foreign affairs, especially where the US has a strategic interest, should open their eyes with this blatant display of deceitful and manipulated reporting. Of course the coverage in the run-up to the Iraq war should have been an eye-opener enough, but I think most people justified that as an isolated case of the Neo Con's under Bush having gone crazy. This doesn't change with US Administrations, the US establishment has, and will, continue to push and manipulate the domestic media to propagate its preferred message on foreign policy, whether true or not, to mold public opinion.

 

[Sparten80]

This is a good sign, and I would like to see Pakistan establish a ministry for development projects for the trans Pakistan-Afghanistan border region.

Important developmental aid showed be put into laying down and completing a rail link linking Peshawe/Landi Kotal to Jalalabad and Kabul.

A second rail link from Quetta/Chaman onto Kandahar would also be good to help catalyze and ease transport of goods and further integrate the economies of the historically two brotherly nations and people.

The construction of high quality roads across the border from Paktiya, Paktika, Loga and Konar provinces into adjacent regions of Pakistan(South Waziristan, Parachinar and Bajar respectively) with national highways connecting them into our national motorway grid would help to better integrate the economies further at a grass roots level.

These projects will help to integrate our countries and will have a net positive effect for all, it would be a win-win situation for both Afghanistan and Pakistan, infact the international community and help better integrate the two countries as well and should be undertaken in Pakistan's national interest.

A prosperous Afghanistan is in Pakistan's interest, and the same is true vice versa, this has been proven more poignantly in our current times, and has been true since historical signs. We are like two conjoined twins.

 

[AgNoStiC MuSliM]

Pak-funded Iqbal Faculty building handed over to Kabul University​

Thursday, July 29, 2010

ISLAMABAD: The Government of Pakistan handed over the new building of Allama Iqbal Faculty of Arts to the Kabul University at a graceful ceremony held on Wednesday in Kabul.

This major project was completed under Pakistan’s bilateral assistance programme for Afghanistan. Pakistan’s Ambassador to Afghanistan Mohammad Sadiq handed over the keys of the building to the Chancellor Kabul University Professor Hamidullah Amin. Acting Minister for Higher Education Sarwar Danish, senior Afghan officials, members of Afghan parliament and leading members of Pakistani community in Afghanistan attended the ceremony.

In his brief remarks, the ambassador underlined the importance of strengthening of cooperation between the two countries in the field of education. He said Allama Iqbal Faculty would become a symbol of Pakistan’s desire and contribution for promoting higher education and learning for Afghanistan’s future generations.

The state-of-the-art building has been built by the Government of Pakistan for the Kabul University at a cost of over $10 million. The building contains 28 classrooms, two seminar-halls, library, two computer labs, 20 faculty offices and its own water supply, sewerage and power generation systems. The building has also been fully furnished and equipped by the government of Pakistan.

Pak-funded Iqbal Faculty building handed over to Kabul University