Pakistan is flush with the success of raising nearly US$6 billion to help it recover from last month's massive earthquake, but the pressure is now on for it to deliver.
The sum pledged at an international donors' meet Saturday exceeded the government's appeal for US$5.2 billion for reconstruction and ongoing relief after the 7.6-magnitude earthquake that killed more than 73,000 people.
Having been chastised by UN Secretary General Kofi Annan for a "weak response" to the Oct. 8 quake, a host of countries, international banks and other groups pledged more than US$5.8 billion in grants, loans and aid.
"It was, from the point of view of Pakistan, a roaring success in that they actually obtained more pledges than they had asked for," political commentator Mohammad Afzal Niazi told reporters.
However, "The real test for the government will be whether they are able to deliver to the victims the fruits of this," Niazi said.
Another concern was whether the pledges would be honored, he said, because donors to international disasters frequently fail to deliver on grand promises that catch the spotlight.
Also, the government had been so focused on raising the aid that it had not properly worked out what it would do with it, Faisal Bari, economist with the Islamabad-based Mahbobul Haq Human Development Center, told reporters.
"It is good to know that they have been able to raise what they wanted," Bari said.
"The negative side of it is that there has been too much attention in raising money and too little thinking on what the reconstruction and rehabilitation plans should be," he said.
The UN and aid agencies have warned of a possible "second wave of deaths" with the onset of the severe Himalayan winter and the homes of three million people reduced to rubble in the quake.
President Pervez Musharraf and Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz were warm in their thanks to the conference delegates from about 50 countries and 25 international organizations and financial institutions.
The generosity had shown "that this world is truly a global village," Musharraf said.
"We are not isolated," Aziz said. "We are on the world map. We have respect."
Donor fatigue after last year's tsunami and Hurricane Katrina in the US were blamed for some of the initial donor reluctance.
Aid agencies said privately though there were also concerns about Islamic fundamentalists based in Pakistan, and widespread corruption.
After years of isolation because of its support for the brutal Taliban regime in neighboring Afghanistan, Pakistan was brought back into the global fold in late 2001 when Musharraf agreed to support the US "war on terror" launched after the Sept. 11 attacks claimed by al-Qaeda against the US.
In what some said was payback for Pakistan's efforts against al-Qaeda-linked militants, the US led the emergency relief effort in the immediate aftermath of the quake.
It was also among the main donor nations on Saturday, pledging US$510 million that was second only to Saudi Arabia's US$573 million in loans and grants.
That most of the new pledges were loans was a disappointment, Oxfam humanitarian coordinator James Cocking told reporters.
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
Le Tuan Binh keeps his Moroccan soldier father’s tombstone at his village home north of Hanoi, a treasured reminder of a man whose community in Vietnam has been largely forgotten. Mzid Ben Ali, or “Mohammed” as Binh calls him, was one of tens of thousands of North Africans who served in the French army as it battled to maintain its colonial rule of Indochina. He fought for France against the Viet Minh independence movement in the 1950s, before leaving the military — as either a defector or a captive — and making a life for himself in Vietnam. “It’s very emotional for me,”
UNDER INVESTIGATION: Members of the local Muslim community had raised concerns with the police about the boy, who officials said might have been radicalized online A 16-year-old boy armed with a knife was shot dead by police after he stabbed a man in the Australian west coast city of Perth, officials said yesterday. The incident occurred in the parking lot of a hardware store in suburban Willetton on Saturday night. The teen attacked the man and then rushed at police officers before he was shot, Western Australian Premier Roger Cook told reporters. “There are indications he had been radicalized online,” Cook told a news conference, adding that it appeared he acted alone. A man in his 30s was found at the scene with a stab wound to his back.