Earlier this week I participated in an hour long dialogue on what has been happening in Pakistan as of late. The video footage from TVO is available below.
I ended up in a debate with an esteemed participant who argued that Pakistan cannot survive without US aid. I wrote an op-ed for the Daily Dawn in Pakistan exploring the question can Pakistan survive without US aid?
http://www.dawn.com/2012/02/15/can-pakistan-survive-without-us-aid.html
Some fact-checking is indeed in order. Pakistan is a $175 billion economy. Since 2002, the US has provided on average $825 million annually in economic assistance to Pakistan. On the other hand, Pakistani expatriates have remitted on average $1 billion each month in 2011, making remittances an order of magnitude higher than what the US has been providing to Pakistan. I would argue that Pakistan’s economy owes much more to what the expatriates contribute than what comes in charity from the United States.
