Britain cannot afford a failed Pakistan

Joe Camel

Why do the Arab OPEC countries refuse to aid Pakistan, whose economic and financial troubles are said to be worse than ever before? Is their reluctance to help truly “surprising”, as Elliot Wilson claims? If so, it is disappointing that he didn’t go more deeply into this aspect, instead of merely skimming the surface in four short sentences:

(Quote) “In Saudi Arabia he [President Asif Ali Zardari] sought — and was denied — oil concessions. Pakistan imports 70 per cent of its energy, most of it sourced from Riyadh, and spiralling oil prices have shredded the country’s finances. [. . .]Yet the country is fast running out of rich friends. Key Gulf powers like Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have been surprisingly reluctant to help.”

Ed Hummer

"For one thing, Britain’s imperial past constitutes an almost unbreakable umbilical cord linking London with Lahore, and Pontypridd with Peshawar. For all of the conjecture surrounding the future of globalisation, we do, for better or worse, now live in a global village, where people, capital, goods and services migrate across borders with a fluidity not seen since the Edwardian era.

One million British Pakistanis live in the UK, the vast majority of whom work hard, pay their taxes, and add a richly textured cultural layer to modern Britain. Only a handful genuinely hate their adopted home, and were Pakistan allowed, humiliatingly, to fail as a state, that number would inevitably rise. ‘A fractured or failed Pakistan would lead to increased extremism and terrorism in Britain and across the world, not just in Pakistan,’ says Baron Ahmed of Rotherham, Britain’s first Muslim peer. "

This is drivel. We owe Pakistan nothing. If and when it fails we should resist the siren calls to let another million in.

As for paying taxes - "the vast majority" of them have cash in hand shops or taxis, when a la 7/7 they aren't fleecing the dole. I'd love to see a breakdown of taxes by ethnicity.

Neil McEvoy

Mr Wilson,

Nowhere on earth is "tens of thousands" of miles away.

Austin Barry

Apart from the US disabling, by extreme force if necessary, Pakistan's nuclear weapons, this festering Islamic Dystopia should be left to self-destruct. We owe it nothing.

Bill Corr

So, according to Elliot Wilson, only a few of the "British" Pakistanis genuinely detest the lax and tolerant post-Christian 'kuffar' country in which they were born and which supports so many of them so very generously on welfare benefit.

Yet we keep hearing that these same people are given to romping off to enjoy the fun of training camps for Islamic extremists back in the old country. Even a few "British" bobbies among them, if the reptiles of the tabloid press are to be believed.

Let wretched and unworthy Pakistan collapse without a further penny of British taxpayers' money. If the "British" Pakistanis in the U.K. kick up a fuss about the collapse, sent them all - ALL - back to the old country to live on benefit fraud in Waziristan as best they can. Enough said

40 Degrees South

Why not allow this failed experiment in religion-based nationhood "to fracture into four, ethnically homogeneous fragments, with the Punjab and Sindh in the east and Balochistan and Waziristan in the west" a la Yugoslavia, preferably without the successor state wars? Why not continue the balkanisation which started with East Pakistan leaving in 1971 to become Bangladesh ? And why, if the UK is still a sovereign nation, or has a govt which still thinks it is in charge of a sovereign nation, should millions of people from any of the successor states of the Former Islamic Republic of Pakistan expect any right to enter al-Britanniya ? Surely your govt is the one who decides who enters your country, and the circumstances in which they enter ?

Max Kaye

I've rarely read such a flawed and wrong-headed article in the Speccie.

Pakistan should be allowed to self-destruct.

We should keep as far away as possible. ("Tens of thousands" of miles would be nice - though a geographical impossibility).

Herbert Thornton

So, Pakistan's implosion would stoke extremism here?

From all official reports, it's very well stoked already. To suggest that Britain's economy, itself near collapse, should prop up that of Pakistan sounds like a mixture of blackmail and madness.

Jim

It's getting harder for you interfering spendthrifts to bounce us into hopeless conflicts.

jk

The article is calling for interference to prevent a state which can one day become an actual islamic state (caliphate) instead of the pseudo-islamic confused and failed secular-democratic state it is today.

Be frank Eliot instead of beating about the Bush. The next plan is to invade Pak - some lame pretext is needed and these articles are hoping some money may do the trick...