US holds back aid to Pakistan
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The United States is holding back some military aid to Pakistan, President Barack Obama's chief of staff confirmed, after a New York Times report said US$800 million ($745 million) was being withheld. There has been increasing pressure in Washington on the Obama administration -- which provided US$2.7 billion in security assistance last year to Islamabad -- to hold back on aid. According to The New York Times, about US$800 million in military aid and equipment, or over one-third of the more than US$2 billion in annual US security assistance to Pakistan, could be affected by the suspension. Asked by ABC about the report, Chief of Staff Daley did not dispute the figures and confirmed that some military aid was now being withheld. US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had warned last month that the United States could slow down US military aid to Pakistan unless it took specified steps to help the United States. Why did the US halt the aid?First, the US wants Pakistan to take action against terrorists more aggressively than it does now. The message given to Pakistani leaders was loud and clear. Second, during the visit of the US Secretary of State to Pakistan at the end of May, it is reported that the US side had demanded immediate action and intelligence sharing on four leading terror names -- Ayman Al-Zawahiri, Siraj Haqqani (operational commander of the Haqqani network), Ilyas Kashmiri and Atiya Abdel Rahman (Libyan operations chief of Al Qaeda, who was a key aide to Bin Laden when he was hiding in Abbottabad). Third, the more recent accusations that Pakistan's intelligence services approved a journalist Saleem Shahzad's killing whose mutilated body was found in early June has added to the disappointment of the US. (Shahzad was working on certain stories which were related to al-Qaeda and al-Qaeda's involvement with the army.) Fourth, Pakistan has recently shut down the US programme to help train Pakistani military troops fighting the Taliban and the Al-Qaeda in the border region near Afghanistan and Pakistan has threatened to close down a base the CIA has been using inside the country. Fifth, the holding back of military aid could be a result of the growing opposition on Capitol Hill to sending security assistance to Pakistan. Last week the Republican-controlled House of Representatives approved a Pentagon budget bill that limited the Pentagon from spending more than 25% per cent of its projected $1.1 billion budget for training and equipping Pakistani troops next year unless the Secretary of State would submit a report to Congress showing how the money would be spent to combat insurgencies. Sixth, it is reported that much of the military aid from the US has been spent on strengthening its military power against India as India poses a greater threat to Pakistan than that from the Taliban. Complex relationship
The truth of the matter is that the relationship of US with Pakistan is very complicated and US' close cooperation with India has been uncomfortable to Pakistan. Prime Minister of Pakistan Gilani during his visit to China in May said: "We are proud to have China as our best and most trusted friend, and China will always find Pakistan standing beside it at all times." Gilani's comments appeared to underscore tensions with Washington. The New York Times said the suspended aid included about US$300 million to reimburse Pakistan for some of the costs of deploying more than 100,000 soldiers along the Afghan border, as well as hundreds of millions of dollars in training assistance and military hardware. The moves come amid intensifying debate within the Obama administration about how best to change the behaviour of one of America's most important counterterrorism allies, according to the Times. On June 23, Clinton told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that unless certain unspecified steps were taken by Pakistan, the United States was not "prepared to continue providing (aid) at the pace we were providing it". "We're trying to... play this orchestra the best we can, where we... look in one direction and say to those who we think are largely responsible for the difficulties we know that exist within Pakistan... you can't continue doing that," she said. Clinton did say that US officials did not believe top Pakistani officials knew that Osama bin Laden had been hiding in Abbottabad, the garrison town just north of Islamabad where raiding US forces killed him on May 1. "In looking at every scrap of information we have, we think that the highest levels of the government were genuinely surprised," Clinton said. But the US killing of bin Laden, which was done without tipping off Pakistan in advance, was a clear demarcation line in relations between the two countries, which since then have grown more tense. Some of the aid to Pakistan, the Times reports, like night-vision goggles, radios and helicopter spare parts, cannot be sent because Pakistan has denied visas to the American trainers needed to operate the equipment. Other aid no longer moving to Pakistan includes equipment like rifles, body armour, ammunition and bomb disposal gear that Islamabad has since refused following its expulsion from the country in recent weeks of more than 100 Army Special Forces trainers. The Pakistan military is the most important institution in the country. But it is has been under intense domestic and international pressure because of the humiliation of the Bin Laden raid, an attack on Pakistan's naval base in Karachi weeks later, and continuing fallout from the arrest and subsequent release of a CIA security contractor Raymond Davis who shot and killed two Pakistanis in January. Although the hold back of military aid has not been made public, it is known to the top levels of Pakistan military officers. Ms. Maleeha Lodhi who served as Pakistan Ambassador to the US, said that the Pentagon action was short-sighted and was likely to produce greater distance between the two countries. She said: "It will be repeating a historic blunder and hurting itself in the bargain using a blunt instrument of policy at a time when it needs Pakistan's help defeat Al-Qaeda and make an honourable retreat from Afghanistan". However, the US looks differently the role of Pakistan as a partner in counter-terrorism and may resume military aid if Pakistan pursues terrorists more aggressively.
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