DOLLARS have always had an uncanny fascination for the residents of the Land of the Pure.

Maybe it is because of our tendency to slavishly copy the Yankees in all they do or undo.

Or, perhaps, this is because dollars can buy all that is high and mighty in this blessed land.

The Americans too somehow believe that it is the dollar that is the end all, be all of all that matters.

Not to forget that we have constant hullabaloos about the illegal foreign currency (mainly dol-lars) transfer scams.

One could talk about other scams also related to dollars.

One would crave the indulgence of the gentle reader to go back a wee bit in recent history.

May one refer to the leading article that made it to the front page of the ‘revered’ New York Times, a few years back?

The writer had spun the yarn – if that is the word one wants – that the United States had spent more than five billion dollars “in a largely failed effort to bolster the Pakistan military effort against militants from Al Qaeda and the Taliban”.

The money in question was apparently provided through a programme known as “Coalition Support Funds” – a programme that was tailored to reimburse Pakistan for “conducting military operations to fight terrorism”.

It would appear that our American handlers got worried that their hand on the rein was not tight enough.

Once again in the recent tug of war between the two ‘strategic........

© Pakistan Observer