OUR ruling elite has been very vocal in denouncing the recent tweets by Donald Trump in which he condemned Pakistan with allegations of deceiving the US in its fight against terror and threatened to halt further US military assistance.

We have even claimed that being a respectable and dignified nation we can manage to survive on other sources of assistance, such as China, Turkey, Russia, etc. as we cannot rely anymore on a non-trustworthy and unreliable ally having double standards.

I would like to ask our politicians, bureaucrats, judges, generals, business tycoons etc. whether they are also willing to repatriate their assets and properties back from the US, stop looking for lucrative investments in the US through offshore companies, ask their children to quit their education and research in prestigious US universities or relocate their hi-tech US jobs back to a jobless Pakistan, discontinue searching eligible matches for their daughters in the US, decide not to spend their holidays at luxurious US touristic destinations, refrain from going to specialist US hospitals for even minor ailments, give up chances of sponsorship for a green card to settle in the US after retirement, etc.

Whenever there is news that our leaders are on a private visit, it invariably turns out to be in the US or London. They never seem to be on a private visit to China, Turkey, Russia, etc. or to any of our other time-tested allies.

Fuad Enver

Islamabad

Published in Dawn, January 18th, 2018