Youth Service To Compete with Militancy in Pakistan

(New York Times)
According to the inspector general of the police in Peshawar, the North West Frontier Provinces (NWFP) and Federally Administrated Tribal Areas (FATA) could benefit from a youth conservation corps modeled on the CCC of Franklin Roosevelt.

According to the New York Times, the inspector, Malik Naveed Khan, wants "to create a broad “conservation corps” to employ 300,000 men — approximately one from every family — to build roads and bridges in the impoverished tribal region. The men would get a stipend to counter the generous 13,000 rupees (about $200) the Taliban pay some members each month.

"The economic effect will be immediate,” said Mr. Khan, who says he is impatient with a slow-moving $750 million five-year American aid program that began a few months ago. He recites his ideas to the many American development experts who come through his door offering to help.

The Americans all say about his employment plan, modeled after President Franklin D. Roosevelt's Civilian Conservation Corps in the 1930s: “ ‘We are thinking about it,’ ” he said. “I say: ‘Don’t think about it, do it.’ ”