Stop funding my failing state: Fatima Bhutto

Fatima Bhutto, the fiery niece of slain former Pakistani premier Benazir Bhutto, has asked the world community to "stop funding my failing state".        

"The billions of dollars we have received have not made Pakistan safer. Instead, we now have our own version of the Taliban busy blowing up trade routes and flogging young girls," Fatima wrote in an article "Stop funding my failing state".         

"After two years of fighting off Taliban insurgents camped out in the lush Swat valley, Pakistan's president, Asif Zardari, threw in the towel last week and gave the militants what they wanted — Shariah law. So perhaps it shouldn't be considered a great surprise that a week after the law was passed, the Taliban, in typical breakneck speed, have now advanced into the Buner district, a mere 70 miles from the capital," she wrote for thedailybeast.com.        

Noting that US President Barack Obama is set to meet Zardari, she said: "The most important question that will come from Pakistan, however, is a familiar one: Can we have some more please? Money, that is, not Taliban."       

"It may surprise some Americans that even in the midst of this recession, billions of their tax dollars are given directly to the thievery corporation that is Pakistan's government, never to be seen again."        

She pointed out that former US President George W Bush gave Pakistan a whopping $10 billion to fight terror, "money that seems to have gone down the drain — or rather, into some pretty deep pockets".      

"And it's not just the US — last week, international donors from 30 countries met in Tokyo and pledged $5 billion to Pakistan to 'fight terror'. The IMF has given the country $7.6 billion in a bailout deal that boggles the mind.      

"Saudi Arabia has generously pledged $700 million over the next four years, and the less-generous European Union an additional US $640 million over the same period. And then there's Obama's promise of $1.5 billion a year, dependent, the White House says, on results," she wrote.      

Fatima said it is "phenomenally silly" to give so much money to Zardari, who "before becoming President, was facing corruption cases in Switzerland, Spain, and England. Zardari and his wife, the late Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, are estimated to have stolen upwards of $3 billion from the Pakistani Treasury — a figure Zardari doesn't seem desperate to disprove, he placed his personal assets before becoming president at over one billion dollars."      

A graduate of Columbia University and the School of Oriental and African Studies, Fatima now working on a book to be published by Jonathan Cape in 2010.