The people to help us in Pakistan are waiting and ready...
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http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/003/254saclr.asp Standing Up for Democracy
Two Pakistani leaders explain why the United States shouldn't abandon the region.
by Claudia Winkler, Managing Editor, Weekly Standard
IN THE TURBULENT and dangerous politics of Pakistan, credible public figures willing to stand up for pluralist democracy are no commonplace. So it was a privilege to meet with Afrasiab Khattak and Asfandyar Wali Khan--middle-aged men who between them have spent more than a decade in prison in the course of their careers opposing military dictatorships--on their recent stop in Washington. Their earnest plea: The United States must remain engaged in their region.
Khattak is a lawyer, writer, and longtime member of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, where he just finished a three-year term as chairman. His duties on the commission included responding to the anguished parents of young Pakistanis recruited to fight for the Taliban, while their government turned a blind eye. "It was a disaster," Khattak said on the "NewsHour" with Jim Lehrer in April 2002. "Thousands of people, sentimental people, simple people, naive people went into another country to fight without any preparation, any planning."
In July, Khattak joined the leadership of the Awami National party, of which Asfandyar Wali Khan is president. Elected to the Pakistani senate last March, Wali Khan is the son and grandson of Pashtun political leaders dating back to the independence struggle on the subcontinent.
The ANP is based in the Northwest Frontier Province, where it confronts an Islamist provincial government with anti-American, pro-jihadist leanings. Yet the party has national aspirations and universal principles. Its leaders see it as a "bulwark against extremism and fundamentalism."
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