Pakistan needs 'urgent' help By Jim Lobe and Ali Gharib
WASHINGTON - The United States and its allies must act urgently to prevent
Pakistan - the only predominantly Muslim nation with nuclear weapons - from
descending into a spiral of economic, security, and political crises, according
to a new report released here by an influential think-tank.
The 27-page report, "Needed: A Comprehensive US Policy Towards Pakistan",
called for at least US$4 billion to $5 billion in new aid for Islamabad of
which $1 billion should be earmarked for the military and the police, to help
ward off the growing threat posed to the central government by Islamic
militants based in the frontier regions with Afghanistan and linked to
al-Qaeda.
"Simply put, time is running out for stabilizing Pakistan's economy and
security," the task force warned. "We cannot stress the magnitude of the
dangerous enough nor the need for greater
action now," it stressed, adding that failure to provide needed assistance
could well result in "state failure".
"If we fail, we face a truly frightening prospect: terrorist sanctuary,
economic meltdown, and spiraling radicalism, all in a nation with 170 million
inhabitants and a full arsenal of nuclear weapons," said Senate Foreign
Relations Committee Chairman John Kerry at a Capitol Hill briefing on
Wednesday, at which the report was released.
"The stakes could not be higher, and [this] report could not be more timely,''
Kerry said.
Kerry, who served as the working group's honorary co-chair along with former
Republican Senator Chuck Hagel, used the report to push for swift Congressional
passage of a bill that would authorize $7.5 billion in non-military aid for
Pakistan over the next five years.
Co-sponsored with the ranking Republican on the Foreign Relations Committee,
Richard Lugar, the bill enjoys strong backing from President Barack Obama, as
well as Vice President Joseph Biden, who introduced a similar bill in the
Senate last year.
The new report comes amid a comprehensive review by the administration over
future US policy towards both Afghanistan and Pakistan headed by former senior
CIA South Asia analyst Bruce Riedel.
The recommendations produced by that review, which is supposed to be completed
within 60 days, are to be implemented by former United Nations ambassador
Richard Holbrooke, who was appointed by Obama to serve as a special
representative for the two restive countries just three days after the new
president took office.
Holbrooke traveled to the region one week later, highlighting how serious the
administration considers the situation in South Asia to be.
Indeed, the administration is hosting a meeting this week of top Pakistani and
Afghan officials, including Pakistan's powerful army chief, General Ashfaq
Kiyani, in order both to gain their input for the review.
The meeting is also aimed at encouraging the two governments to work much more
closely together, and with Washington, in combating the growing Taliban
insurgency on both sides of their common border.
That meeting follows last week's announcement by Obama that he will send 17,000
more US troops to Afghanistan in the coming months to join the North Atlantic
Treaty Organization (NATO)-led force of some 65,000 already deployed there in
hopes of beating back recent gains by the Taliban.
But Holbrooke himself has warned that "there is no way that the international
effort in Afghanistan can succeed unless Pakistan can get its western tribal
areas under control''.
Since Holbrooke made that statement, militants linked to the Taliban and
al-Qaeda appear to have consolidated their control of the Swat Valley in the
North-West Frontier Province, in what most analysts here consider a major
setback to Pakistan's counter-insurgency struggle.
The new report about the situation in Pakistan, and the measures needed to
redress it, is likely to gain considerable attention here, if only because it
was a similar Atlantic Council working group chaired by retired general James
Jones that warned one year ago that Washington and NATO were losing the war in
Afghanistan.
Jones currently serves as Obama's national security adviser.
The new report, however, focuses less on the military situation in Pakistan
than on the non-military challenges faced by the democratically elected
civilian government headed by President Asif Ali Zardari.
It argues that Islamabad, which has been hit especially hard by the global
financial crisis, needs considerably more assistance than what would be
provided under by the Kerry-Lugar bill.
In addition to the $1.5 billion a year offered by the bill, Pakistan requires
another $5 billion a year "to cover critical budget shortfalls", according to
the working group which included, among others, two former assistant
secretaries of state for South Asian Affairs.
One of these is Karl Inderfurth, who served under former president Bill Clinton
and is rumored to be nominated as the next US ambassador to India.
Under a loan approved by the International Monetary Fund late last year,
Islamabad could receive as much as $7.6 billion over three years.
The administration of former president George W Bush provided more than $10
billion in US aid to Pakistan over its eight-year term, but almost all of it
was devoted to military assistance, and most of that was used for the purchase
of weapons systems and equipment better suited to war with India than to
counter-insurgency.
In addition to the proposed non-military aid, the US should provide another $1
billion "to better equip the Pakistan Army for counterinsurgency" and another
$200 million to recruit, train and equip 15,000 more police and paramilitary
forces.
A major aim should be "the elimination of al-Qaeda bases and operations in
Pakistan's border region", the report said.
"Despite its current economic hardships, the United States has poured hundreds
of billions of dollars into Iraq and many billions into Afghanistan in the
past," according to the report. "However, it has had been relatively miserly in
its assistance for Pakistan where the stakes are far larger and more important
to long-term American interests."
The report also called on Washington to "reinforce Pakistan's efforts to
strengthen democracy" and democratic institutions, among other things by
supporting efforts to update its census in ways that will ensure more equitable
distribution of federal resources.
It also stressed that US policy toward Pakistan must be considered in a much
larger regional context and called for Holbrooke to consider convening a
regional conference.
Such a conference would include India, Turkey, China, Russia, Iran, Saudi
Arabia and the other Gulf states, and the European Union to discuss "how
stability and peace can be achieved; how terror can be contained; and how
states in the region can cooperate with each other more effectively".
It described the situation as so critical that action must be taken in "months,
not years".
Jim Lobe's blog on US foreign policy can be read at http://www.ips.org/blog/jimlobe/.)
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