A New Look for an Old Strategy

A while back - February of last year, to be precise - when the blog was just getting started, I wrote a post about our relations with Pakistan. An election had just taken place, a former prime minister who had been running again had been assassinated two months earlier (her husband is now the current prime minister), and things were looking a bit better for a troubled country.

At the time I wrote that Senator Biden (now, of course, VP Biden) had a sensible suggestion: increase the economic, not military, aid to Pakistan in order to help the people, as opposed to strengthening the rule of President/General Musharraf. As an aside, I'd suggested the same thing in a class on terrorism earlier that year as a way to combat anti-american sentiment in Pakistan - and it was dismissed as "too long-term." Silly me for thinking that long-term stability for the citizens of Pakistan was a good thing.

At any rate, this discussion is now taking place in the White House and in Pakistan itself - as noted in an article in The New York Times today. The U.S. is offering $1.5 billion a year - an increase from the Bush administration - that is tied specifically to economic development. However, some of the other stipulations are that the U.S. gets a new consulate in Peshawar, the capital of the North-West Frontier Provinces (which is quite obviously a step towards more American military involvement within Pakistan), and that DynCorp - a security service much like Blackwater in Iraq - will continue to have a hand both in protecting Americans in Pakistan and in training Pakistanis in their continuing fight against militants. Interestingly enough, Blackwater is also in Pakistan, though it is now called Xe Services.

These stipulations have prompted considerable backlash among Pakistani politicians - and with good reason. It seems that the stipulations are a step towards an actual occupation of Pakistan. So yes, we are increasing economic aid - but we're simultaneously undermining the sovereignty of the Pakistani state. In recent months the army has made some significant progress in battling militants (especially in the Swat Valley), and this is the reward? The only argument given so far for the new consulate in Peshawar is for increased oversight on how the aid is spent, to ensure that it is used to help the economy and citizens of Pakistan. This is dubious at best. Increasing the number of embassy workers in Islamabad could be argued for in the same manner - but a new consulate in a sparsely populated area, where the fight against militants is at its height? That certainly seems more like a military move than anything else.

At any rate - I do believe it is good that we're increasing economic aid to Pakistan, and I hope it is used as intended. The more controversial stipulations, however, should be stripped. It is more important for the people of Pakistan to see a benevolent United States (whoo, I can barely type those last three words without laughing). Without such strong anti-american sentiment (fueled for years by our support of the dictatorial Musharraf regime, our drone strikes in the NWFP that often kill as many innocent civilians as they do militants, and now security services like DynCorp and Xe Services with little oversight), there would be no foothold for militants. It seems now that we are actually trying to perpetuate the circumstances in which militancy and terrorism is bred.

-the ambassador