Re: An ode to Shaukat Aziz
Market prices go up and down on a regular basis. It would have taken one week of price rises before the government concluded that this was anything more than bad fluctuation, then one more week of government efforts to identify the causes of the problem and fix it in other means, and finally at least one day to decide that the problem could be fixed by throwing soldiers at it.
Anyway, I’m surprised that you’re criticising the government for taking so long before sending soldiers in. I thought people like you thought that throwing soldiers at civil government problems was a Bad Thing.
Incidentally, to give an idea of why it makes more sense to smuggle flour to Afghanistan than selling it to Pakistanis, consider this. As per the article I posted, flour in Pakistan hit a high point of $32 for 80kg - that is $38.4 per 100kg.
In Afghanistan, according to the BBC, flour costs $67 per 100kg. That’s nearly twice as much.
By the way, Afghanistan is now begging the Internation community to pay for its flour consumption since its people are starving now.
Not just that, but flour costs EVEN MORE in Tajikistan than in Afghanistan. In other words, if you owned a flour mill in Pakistan, your best interests lie in exporting it, even illegally, rather than sell it at your local market.