Thursday, August 19, 2010

Watered down


I started, scrapped and re-started this note many times tonight. Not because I don’t know enough about the issue up front. My quandary concerns how to get my thoughts across without anyone setting this aside because of yet another issue about the country that I grew up in yet hardly recognize anymore.

A little more then a decade ago Pakistan was still relatively unknown. When my cousins moved to the US some 15 or so years ago I remember laughing because a kid at their school asked if Pakistan was a ship. Such was the ignorance of the younger generation about the Country. A ship!

Today though ask any - excuse my lack of tact - ignoramus about Pakistan and a switch (however dim) is immediately turned on. Of course they know Pakistan! It’s the new Taliban hot bed. The home to an ex-convict President who lives in the luxury of a palace. That place that the world repeatedly gives aid to that disappears in to the black hole that is the government. The land of no freedom (god I hate that word now). And, of course, the dysfunctional, bankrupt neighbor of India.

What we tend to forget though is that Pakistan is also home to Pakistanis. Of real people that face the corruption of a government that chooses to vacation in suites that cost 7,000 pounds a night while the country is wrecked by floods. Who are vulnerable to the threat of radical militants on one hand and drone attacks from a foreign land on the other. Who have no access to a decent education to learn and explore and break the ties of social classes. Who are bound to society riddled with so many negative labels by the media that it’s difficult for the general world to focus on the people that make up the country. Every day, normal Pakistanis.


So yes Pakistan has its problems and I will be the first to admit that there is no end or solution in sight. But while the world may be tired of yet another issue in a country smaller then Texas, we can't ignore what’s important at hand. And that is real people who are facing all the havoc wreaked by the one of the worst natural disasters ever seen.


With 14 million people displaced, more then 15,000 dead, no clean water or hot food accessible, entire villages washed away,  disease on the rise, farmlands (primary source of income for most) lost, and the government response being almost laughable, there is only one thing you need to know about Pakistan that is relevant at the moment; Pakistan - Pakistani's - need help.

I may be rambling here. So in a nutshell I’ll quote an  analysis of this same note by a favorite blogger “Okay, you know Pakistan as a despotic, corrupt country harboring militants and criminals but don’t let that cloud your judgment because there are real people there who need your help.”


Don't trust the government - hell I don't! Some research has helped put together what I think are pretty reliable ways to donate;

Imran Khan flood relief:

Pakistani American Culture Center :

Oxfam:

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