USA EXPOSED PAKISTAN DECEIT USA CURTAILED AID DECLARING PAKISTAN A “HOSTILE STATE” USA SAYS PAKISTAN GAVE NO PROOF OF INDIA’s INVOLVEMENT OF TERROR IN PAKISTAN
Although US policy of forbearance is centered around its fear of Pakistan’s collapse, that tolerance is being tested in the face of the Pakistani military-intelligence’s serial malfeasance, including its continued patronage of terrorists associated with the 26/11 Mumbai attacks.
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WASHINGTON: Pakistan’s bottom feeding on American aid is about to end unless it terminates its policy of covertly using terrorism to further its frontiers, the Obama administration has conveyed to Islamabad, amid indications that the US is also making Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s proposed visit to Washington conditional to meeting this objective.A key administration official on Thursday said there has been no announcement about a Sharif visit to Washington in October although the trip had been widely reported in the Pakistani media based on briefings from diplomats in Islamabad. “This is news to me. We have not made any statements about that (Sharif’s visit to Washington),” Peter Lavoy, special assistant to the US president and senior director for south asian affairs at the national security council of the White House, told PTI. “If it is pakka (final) you would be the first to hear.” The rethink — or at least holding back the announcement — of the visit comes after the administration conveyed to Islamabad that it will not certify the effectiveness of Pakistan counterterrorism operation to Congress to enable passage of the Coalition Support Fund (CSF), the military reimbursement aid that goes towards keeping Pakistan solvent. As part of its rentier-state ethos, Pakistan provides logistical support to US and coalition forces in Afghanistan and in turn bills Washington for reimbursement. Pakistan has extracted more than $13 billion from the US since the coalition forces swooped into Afghanistan. The CSF was scheduled to end following the US drawdown from Afghanistan in December 2014, but the Obama government extended the program for another year through a legislation containing additional conditions, including a requirement for certification by the defensesecretary that Pakistani military operations are rolling up terrorist networks, including the Haqqani group in North Waziristan. But true to form, Pakistan’s military-intelligence establishment has again suckered Washington fooling the US by keeping the death from illnesses of Taliban supremo Mullah Omar and Jalalludin Haqqani while trying to manage their succession. The manipulation, coming after Osama bin Laden being sheltered in Abbottabad, has further eroded trust in a country with a long history of lying and dissembling. Although US policy of forbearance is centered around its fear of Pakistan’s collapse, that tolerance is being tested in the face of the Pakistani military-intelligence’s serial malfeasance, including its continued patronage of terrorists associated with the 26/11 Mumbai attacks in which six Americans died. “The US move is politically more damaging for Islamabad than its financial impact, which is significant nevertheless for being an important source for narrowing the current account deficit. More importantly, it coincided with the deterioration in ties with Afghanistan because of Kabul’s allegations that Islamabad continued to harbor Taliban bases from where attacks were being launched,” Karachi’s Dawn newspaper, which first reported the rupture, said on Thursday. “The US decision is also likely to sour ties in the run-up to Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s scheduled visit to White House in October,” it added. Pakistan’s economy is both parlous and perilously-poised, despite frequent juggling of numbers in a country that does not even conduct a regular census. With economic growth barely matching projected population growth, it is reduced to living on aid and remittances. Even aid is starting to dwindle after its familiar patrons in the Gulf have pulled the plug and its sugar daddy China has not come through with the expected bail-outs. Desperate to keep the US pipeline open, the Pakistani military, which runs the country’s foreign policy on behalf of the nominal civilian government, has been decimating its civilian population with every-day air-strikes this week in North Waziristan, announcing dozens of dead “militants” which no one is able to authenticate due to lack of access. However, the country’s continued patronage of terrorists on its eastern flank with India, including its protection of UN designated terrorists such as Hafiz Saeed and Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi, indicates there has been no fundamental change in its policy. With Pakistan’s salience to American objectives declining in the context of US outreach to Iran and the drawdown in Afghanistan, some scholars are now pressing for a review of Washington’s ties with Islamabad. In a Foreign Affairs magazine piece headlined “An Unworthy Ally,” C Christine Fair and Sumit Ganguly have argued that the time has come for Washington to “cut Pakistan loose,” going as far as to suggest punitive sanctions against Pakistani elite, including visa denials to its top generals and officials who support terrorism. * “Since the current approach has little chance of aligning Pakistan’s interests with those of the United States, the time has come for Washington to change course. If Washington cannot end Pakistan’s noxious behaviors, it should at least stop sponsoring them.” * “Despite Barack Obama’s understanding of Pakistan’s misdeeds … his administration, like his predecessor’s, has failed to develop policies that limit American complicity in them. As a result, Washington has continued to pay Pakistan to do what any sovereign state should do: eliminate terrorists exploiting its territory.” * “All the while, the United States has not required Pakistan to stop backing militant groups, such as the Afghan Taliban and Lashkar-e-Taiba, even as Islamabad battles those militants who have turned against the state. Indeed, Islamabad has created a permanent revenue stream by arguing that so long as it is fighting militants, it should be entitled to US aid. The United States has been willing to comply because it considers the security of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons a core national interest.” * “The strategic demands of today’s South Asia are distinct from those of the Cold War era, but the central dynamic of US-Pakistani relations remains constant. The United States turns a blind eye to Pakistan’s misdeeds because it depends on the country’s leaders to counter US enemies in the region-first the Soviets, now the melange of militant groups active in Afghanistan and Pakistan. As a result, the United States has subsidized both the expansion of Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal and its stable of Islamist terrorists through programs ostensibly created to manage those same concerns.” * “Past attempts to induce Pakistan to change its behavior have largely failed, and there is little reason to believe that a change in course is imminent. Indeed, what little convergence of interests existed between Washington and Islamabad during the Cold War has long since disappeared. After six decades of policy predicated on Pakistani blackmail, it should be possible to achieve US interests with a different approach.” * “A strategy of containment is the United States’ best option. Above all, US relations with Pakistan should be premised on the understanding that Pakistan is a hostile state, rather than an ally or a partner.”
Pakistan hasn’t shared proof of Indian terror: US
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan has not shared with the US any evidence of India’s involvement in terrorist activities on its soil, a US official said.During a visit to Washington, foreign secretary Aizaz Ahmad Chaudhary had said that Pakistan had evidence of India’s involvement in such activities, Dawn reported from Washington. “I am not aware of any such delivery,” US state department spokesman John Kirby was quoted as saying when he was asked at a news briefing if Pakistan had shared any proofs with the US. Kirby, however, refused to comment on India’s claim that it had evidence to prove that Pakistan was involved in terrorist attacks inside India. He urged both countries to resolve their differences peacefully. “We want tensions between India and Pakistan to be reduced. We want them to work together bilaterally to resolve some of these differences,” he said.
PAKISTAN TWO TIMING ON TERRORISM
John Kerry-led state department has funneled billions of dollars in aid to Pakistan — a country its own report in effect calls a terrorism-supporting state.
WASHINGTON: An annual US report on terrorism once again called out Pakistan’s two-timing on terrorism, detailing the country’s patronage of terror groups, but stopped short of citing the government or the army use of terrorism as state policy, or calling for punitive action. Acknowledging that the Pakistani military undertook operations against groups that conducted attacks within Pakistan such as TTP, the 2014 country report on terrorism released on Friday bluntly stated that Pakistan “did not take action against other groups such as Lashkar-e-Taiba, which continued to operate, train, rally, propagandize, and fundraise in Pakistan.” “Lashkar e-Taiba (LeT) and its alias organizations continued to operate freely in Pakistan, and there were no indications that Pakistan took significant enforcement actions against the group,” the report said, continuing a practice of gently indicting Pakistan for terrorism without forcing compliance or punishing it. Instead, the John Kerry-led state department has funneled billions of dollars in aid to what its own report in effect calls a terrorism-supporting state. Most recently, the Pentagon has given a nearly $1 billion arms package to a country many of its analysts say directs killing of American soldiers in Afghanistan. In fact, the report went so far as to say UN-designated terrorist organizations continued to skirt sanctions in Pakistan “by reconstituting themselves under different names, often with little effort to hide their connections to previously banned groups, and the government does not prosecute ‘countering the financing of terrorism’ (CFT) cases.” Although Pakistan added some named groups to its proscribed organizations list, implementation of UNSCRs 1267 and 1988 on terrorism and its financing remained weak, it added, in a series of strictures against a country that many analysts have said is a practitioner of terrorism but which claims to be a frontline state against terrorism and its foremost victim.
A Pakistani delegation led by its foreign secretary which visited Washington recently with the pre-announced intent of bringing this to the notice of the Obama administration did not even utter a peep about it, suggesting such claims were made for domestic consumption. The US report said counter terrorism cooperation with Pakistan during 2014 was mixed, and Pakistan continued to deny visas for trainers focused on law enforcement and civilian counter terrorism assistance. Pakistan’s cooperation with the US on information sharing and law enforcement continues, but needs improvement with respect to kidnapped US citizens, it Delays in obtaining Pakistani visas for training personnel have been an obstacle to counter terrorism assistance for security forces and prosecutors, including assistance planned through the department of state’s anti-terrorism assistance program, most of which was redirected to other regional partners, it said. The report said India has deepened counter terrorism cooperation with the United States, highlighted by a September 30 summit between President Obama and Prime Minister Modi where both sides pledged greater cooperation in countering terrorist networks and in information sharing. The president and prime minister, it said, stressed the need for joint and concerted efforts against networks such as al-Qaida, LeT, Jaish-e-Mohammed, and the Haqqani Network and reiterated their call to bring perpetrators of the November 2008 terrorist attacks in Mumbai to justice. The report also said Indian officials have emphasized the government takes threats posed by ISIS seriously, even though only a small number of Indians are believed to have been recruited into the organization. “Given India’s large Muslim population, potential socio-religious marginalization, and active ISIL (ISIS) online propaganda efforts, there remains a risk of increased ISIL recruitment of Indian nationals,” the report warned. Critiquing India’s efforts to counter terrorism, it said plans were hampered by “poor inter-agency coordination and information sharing.” In addition, local police forces, led at the state level, have limited command and control capacity and suffer from poor training and equipment.
Source: WHN Media Network