'Pakistan spent bulk of US aid on confronting India'

November 21, 2007 02:12 IST

Pakistan has used a significant portion of the US aid since September 11 attack to arm itself for a confrontation with India instead of conducting war on terrorism, says a strategic think tank.

Most of the $10 billion US aid is supposed to compensate the Pakistani government for sending its 80,000 or so soldiers to the Northwest Frontier Province and providing support to the US war in Afghanistan.

However the money has been used for procuring high-tech weaponry to arm the military for its confrontation with India, the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) has said.

"We found that that the Pakistani military has been using that money and the majority of our direct military assistance for the purchase of high-tech weaponry such as the F-16 fighters," senior adviser in the CSIS Frederick (Rick) Barton said.

"It appears that the Pakistan military is continuing to arm more for its confrontation with India than it is for the war on terror because these weapons really don't have that much application for the kinds of low-grade persistent Taliban fighters and al Qaida fighters that you find in the Northwest part of Pakistan," Barton told the National Public Radio.

Urging Washington to make a more strategic use of the money it gives Pakistan, Barton said, "If we had wise approach to war on terror, we would have found ways to align ourselves more with the Pakistan people. Because the only way you can deal this kind of insurgency is to have the people on your side and to not have the people harbouring the insurgents."

One of the key points that the CSIS study pointed out was that the US needs to re-establish a whole new kind of relationship with Pakistan, Barton said.

In the 90s, the US stayed away from Pakistan for 10 years, following Pakistan's nuclear weapons development.

He said Pakistan deserved a great deal of attention, which the US has never done.

"We constantly flush them with money, then head for exists and none of those approaches really work.''

He said only 10 per cent of the aid had gone to education and humanitarian causes and the majority of that went in response to the earthquake where tens and thousands of people were killed.

The US gave direct humanitarian assistance and military assistance and as a result the US public support in Pakistan went up from about 25 per cent to well over 50 per cent.

''None of these polls mean that much, but part of what we want to do as a country is to make it clear that we are on the side of the people, not just the powerful,''said Barton.

He said America's second-largest area of humanitarian expense was in education, but there again the US is trying to do a million different things rather than focusing on particular areas where it might have higher impact.

Barton said during their work they found that what the Pakistani education system really needed was bucking up on the teacher workforce. The reason a lot of people send their children in Pakistan to madrasas is that the local public schools don't exist or if they do, teachers don't show up because they don't get paid.

''If we can get the teacher force working in a constructive way in that country, you will probably be able to reach the 50 per cent of the population that is under 20.''

Barton said that the US could not walk away from Pakistan as it had tried that before and the conditions did not get better. However, the US did need to be smarter in dealing with Pakistan.

''We should look to the provinces. There are four provinces that are not particularly happy with the central government model. We should not be working through Islamabad all the time.

''I think we can a constructive influence on this country and help them through a vital transition. If this transition does not go well, we have huge problems in the most populated part of the world and that isn't a good situation when three of the eight nuclear powers are also right there.''

