Zardari has done more for US than Musharraf: WSJ

NEW YORK - President Asif Ali Zardari has “aided the US military effort in a way his predecessor Pervez Musharraf, supposedly a pro-American strongman, never did,” The Wall Street Journal said in an article that urges the Obama administration to make good on its aid commitment to Pakistan.

“Mr. Zardari’s government has deployed the army against the Taliban, or parts of it, and consented to a dramatic increase in Predator strikes,” Bret Stephens, the newspaper’s deputy editorial page editor, wrote.

“(The) administration ought to understand that Pakistan’s reluctance to defeat the Taliban at any price is a mirror image of our own reluctance,” he said in an op-ed piece: The Pakistan Paradox.

“The July 2011 “deadline” to begin withdrawing (US) troops was bound to affect Islamabad’s calculations, and not for the better. The sooner we junk it, the better the cooperation we’ll get,” Stephens wrote.

“Pakistan suffers from an abandonment complex rooted in historical facts, especially the Pressler Amendment that cut off Pakistan-US military ties throughout the 1990s. Those fears are compounded by a national paranoia that is the product of conspiracy theory, misplaced indignation and jingoism. The country’s elites typically divide between secularists, mainly feudal aristocrats or corrupt parvenus like President Asif Ali Zardari, and Islamists of either conservative or radical bent,” the article said.

“And while the Obama administration has made much of its aid packages for Pakistan - $1.5 billion a year on the civilian side, followed last week by the announcement of another $2 billion for the military-Pakistani officials complain that only a small fraction of the funds have been disbursed,” Stephens added.