The passage of the Kerry-Lugar Bill by the U.S. Senate and billionaire pledges for aid by friends of Pakistan have given a new lease of life to President Asif Ali Zardari's government.

Under the Kerry-Lugar Bill, sponsored by Senator John Kerry (D-MA) and Senator Richard Lugar (R-IN), Islamabad will receive $1.5 billion in economic aid for the next five years. Similarly, on September 24, friends and supporters of Pakistan pledged $5 billion for the South Asian country at the summit meeting of Friends of Democratic Pakistan (a group of 27 countries, including the United States and Britain), which is extending economic support to the cash-strapped Pakistan) held in New York.

There could be no better use than spending American taxpayers' money, which also includes the hard-earned dollars of Pakistani Americans, on the development and prosperity of the people of Pakistan. However, the question haunting every Pakistan watcher is: What is the guarantee that American taxpayers' money will not end up in President Zardari's personal Swiss bank accounts?

One could easily gauge the level of political corruption and deceit in Pakistan after seeing Salman Farooqi, one of Pakistan's most corrupt bureaucrats (and now a close confidant of President Zardari) sitting next to President Barack Obama, the man who brought historic change in America, during the Friends of Pakistan meeting. Those sitting next to Obama are rulers of a Pakistan where police is beating starving people who stand every day in long lines to get flour and sugar at subsidized rates. Government ministers and corrupt bureaucrats, notorious for their connections with the sugar mafia in Pakistan – they are accused of causing artificial sugar shortages to jack up its prices – came in droves to New York, along with their wives, at the state's expense, to shop during the Pakistani president's visit.

American, European and Pakistani taxpayers' money was spent lavishly and without remorse during Zardari's New York stay. Paid Pakistani journalists, known for their close connections with the rulers, were seen "breaking" news fed to them by visiting ministers and officials of the Zardari administration. One must not forget that a congressional investigation on money laundering conducted by Senator John Kerry in the 1990s also found $20 million in a Zardari Citibank account. No one knows how much of the Kerry-Lugar Bill money will go into such an account.

How successful was President Zardari's U.S. visit? This can be gauged from the fact that President Obama avoided a meeting with the corrupt Pakistani leader.

The world must not forget the latest report from Transparency International [a global civil society organization leading the fight against corruption], which pointed at unprecedented corruption in Pakistan. It should not forget the grim situation of human rights in that country. It should not believe in President Zaradri's statement before the U.N. General Assembly that the human rights situation in Pakistan has improved. The world should remember the women who were paraded naked in a small town in Punjab province recently and whose culprits are still at large. It should also remember those Christians whose houses were burnt on hearsay by Muslim fanatics. The world must help Pakistan, but it must link the aid to the country's human rights record and clean governance.

The translation is excerpts of the original article that appeared in the Urdu language Pakistani weekly following President Zaradri's visit.