Ahmad tells RFE/RL it was a transformational moment in his life -- the moment when he declared "rock and roll jihad" against the "ideology of hate." "The Taliban and their brand of Islam is not Islam at all. Islam doesn't teach you to kill innocent women, children, and men. Islam doesn't teach you to commit suicide," Ahmad says. "That's haram," or forbidden.

The generosity of the British public in helping Pakistan's flood victims is "shaming politicians around the world", the head of the Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC) has said. Brendan Gormley, chief executive of the DEC, said the UK public was leading the way in donations, but that further funds were urgently needed.

Aid has been associated with diplomacy, and often with the projection of soft power. In the context of India-Pakistan relations, however, there has never been an eventuality for such a case to arise.

Catholic Relief Services teams are navigating landslides and flood-destroyed roads to get aid to Pakistan's most needy families, including widows like Hajraiba. Included in the emergency kits are plastic sheeting to create temporary shelters, sleeping mats, cookware and a covered bucket for water storage.

Pakistan has accepted an offer of $5 million of flood aid from neighbor and longtime rival India, in a move that could spark a political backlash at home. In an interview with Indian news channel NDTV, Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi described the offer of aid, made last week, as a “very welcome initiative."

United States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton recently pledged that the U.S. would provide long-term support to Pakistanis affected by historic, devastating floods...My own view, in a nutshell, is that this is not a public diplomacy issue. It’s a humanitarian issue. We in the West should find every way to relieve the immense suffering in that unstable but crucial nation, simply because it’s the right thing to do, not because we can expect to score points or to keep the Pakistani Taliban from scoring points.

Pakistan said on Thursday it is still mulling over India's offer of aid for flood-affected communities, despite a serious shortage of funds hampering Islamabad's ability to provide relief to the eight million people in need...India last week offered $5 million, but a Pakistani diplomat said Islamabad has not yet decided whether to accept, despite the massive scale of the flooding and its lack of resources to respond effectively.

In principle, the United States is in a position to replicate the "Chinook diplomacy" that created immense goodwill toward America in 2005, when the U.S. conducted a massive helicopter airlift after an earthquake in Pakistani Kashmir.