Posted on 07/31/2010 4:09:31 PM PDT by skully
LONDON (AP) — A diplomatic spat with implications for international counterterrorism escalated Saturday as Pakistan’s spy chief canceled a visit next week to London after comments by Britain’s prime minister suggesting that Pakistan exported terrorism.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Truth hurts, doesn’t it? Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, etc. all pretend to be our ally and friend while continually stabbing us covertly every chance they get. I’m waiting for that point in time when we decide we’ve had enough and begin some serious A$$whooping, however, we’ll have to monitor/control all our proud American citizens of muslim extraction so that they don’t go umma on us and start more jihadi activities. Immigration has gotten so complex these days...
How can we get a politician who will stand up and tell it like it is. All ours do is argue about the meaning of is and tell us how much we are all recovering.
‘Pakistan using US funds meant for war on terror to bolster military might’ [$18 billion since 2001]
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2557989/posts
Pakistan has been diverting a large part of US funds meant for the global war on terrorism for conventional weapon procurements from China and other countries. This illegal diversion of US provided funds, far more than what is known in public, is resulting in a massive modernisation of Pakistan’s military beyond its official means, believes the Indian security establishment.
A source said that the findings and concerns of India were shared with the US during Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s US visit in April. This issue formed a substantial part of the conversation between the two sides. Officials later said US President Barack Obama had committed to Singh that security assistance to Pakistan would be monitored and kept under closer observation.
Since the coordinated terror attacks of September 11, 2001 in the US, Pakistan has received at least $18 billion (approximately Rs 90,000 crore) under various US assistance and allowance programmes. At least one assessment by the Indian security establishment says that the Pakistani army may have diverted as much as $14 billion for weapons purchases meant for a military conflict with India.
“Most of the payments allotted to it for the global war on terrorism under major heads are not being utilized for what they were originally meant. We assess that most of it is being diverted to buying conventional weapons. And it could also be diverted to strategic weapon acquisitions,” a senior member of the security establishment told TOI.
Pakistan receives funds under numerous heads, but the big payments come under three major programmes. Under the Coalition Support Funds, Pakistan has received $8.1 billion since 2002. This is officially Pentagon’s “reimbursement” of Pakistan for its support to US military operations in the region.
The Indian security establishment assesses that just 15% of it is being directly utilized in the war on terror. A senior source told TOI that at least 80% of it is going into modernisation of the Pakistan military, especially in purchase of conventional weapons from China and European countries such as Germany and France.
Pakistan has received another $2.1 billion under the Foreign Military Financing programme, between 2002 and now. This entire amount is utilized by Pakistan officially for military weapons purchases from US companies. Pakistan can decide the kind of hardware it needs from US companies and Pentagon then processes the purchases. Pakistan has utilized this entire amount in buying up new F-16 fighters, helicopters, artillery guns etc.
Pakistan Counter Insurgency Capability Fund was started in 2009. In just the last two years, Pakistan has received $1.1 billion from the US under this head. Indian security establishment believes Pakistan will receive at least $1 billion in the coming year too.
Besides these three, there are six other heads under which Pakistan receives security related funds. Those six heads together add up to $1.17 billion. Thus, under security-related heads, Pakistan has received a total of $12.57 billion in these nine years.
Under various heads meant for economic assistance, Pakistan has received $6.04 billion from the US.
There have always been doubts about how Pakistan was spending the whopping assistance that was flowing in from the US. In September 2009, former president Pervez Musharraf admitted that a part of the money given by US for the war on terror was used to strengthen Pakistan’s capabilities to fight India. There have also been reports from Pakistan contradicting Musharraf’s statement. There have also been doubts expressed in the US about the way the unaccounted cash was being utilized. Once credited to Pakistan, there is no way US can keep a check on most of these payments.
In the past few months, the US Congress has tried to step up its oversight on payments to the Pakistan military. The difficulty is the opacity of the military establishment itself and their refusal to open themselves up for scrutiny. In fact, when the Kerry-Lugar Bill suggested similar oversight, the Pakistan army led a campaign to oppose the bill itself. The US backed down. Diplomatic sources said Pakistan has been diverting aid for some time now for conventional weaponry, and apart from China, has been shopping in Australia, Europe etc, though they remain out of the big defence suppliers like Russia and Israel.
According to estimates from Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, Pakistan has bought $2.1 billion worth of arms from China and $746 million worth from France among others. Including from the US, Pakistan has imported $5.2 billion worth of arms between 2001 and 09. A senior Indian official said that seemed to be far below what had really happened, especially on the Chinese front.
Pakistan’s official defence outlay is under two heads: the defence budget of $5.18 billion and Armed Forces Development Plan of $1.29 billion for this financial year.
And he's right. Some of them certainly are.
US now says Pakistani support for Taliban “in the past”
Indo-Asian News Service
Washington, July 30, 2010
With the storm over WikiLeaks revelations refusing to die down, US officials are at pains to suggest that while some people in Pakistan’s intelligence community had supported the Taliban, that situation is changing. “That’s been a problem in the past, it’s a problem we’re dealing with, and [it] is changing,” Vice President Joe Biden said in an interview aired on NBC on Thursday.
“All those leaks predate our policy,” Biden said referring to WikiLeaks revelations that Pakistani spy agency, ISI, supported the Taliban while accepting US funding to fight against them.
“Not one leak is consistent with our policy announced in December.” He added that no US money was diverted from its stated purposes in Pakistan.
Asked to justify US spending in Afghanistan, Biden said the US mission there is not “nation-building,” but to stamp out Al Qaeda so the terrorist group cannot continue to threaten the United States.
Defence Secretary Robert M. Gates and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen condemned the WikiLeaks organization for endangering the lives of US soldiers by publishing over 90,000 classified US military documents.
“These documents represent a mountain of raw data and individual impressions, most several years old, devoid of context or analysis,” Gates said as he announced he has asked the FBI to help Pentagon authorities investigate the leak.
Asked to comment on British Prime Minister David Cameron’s warning to Pakistan not to export terrorism, he suggested: “In the last 18 months or so there has been a dramatic change, in my view, in Pakistan’s willingness to take on insurgents and terrorists.”
Mullen, however, was more forthright in asserting that continued ties between some elements in the ISI and extremist groups were not acceptable to the US even as he gave a clean chit to the spy agency as such.
“I’ve said before and would repeat that it’s an organization that, actually, we have, in ways, a very positive relationship, very healthy relationship between our intelligence organizations.”
“That said, there have been elements of the ISI that have got relationships-a relationship with extremist organizations, and we ...consider that unacceptable,” Mullen said.
“In the long run, I think that the ISI has to strategically shift ...focused on its view of its own national-security interests.”
“And they are strategically shifting,” he said.
At the White House, spokesman Robert Gibbs suggested “WikiLeaks was not something that took up any real measurable amount of time” at President Barack Obama’s monthly review meeting on Afghanistan and Pakistan.
State Department spokesman Phillip Crowley stressed the US is “working with Pakistan to eliminate the safe havens which are a threat to Pakistan and a threat to Afghanistan and a threat to the United States.”
The US was relying on the “kind of effective action by the Pakistani military that we’ve seen in Swat, we’ve seen in South Waziristan, and we want to see continue,” he said.
“And our message to Pakistan is that that offensive, if you will, needs to continue,” Crowley said. But “We have no plans to send US combat forces to Pakistan.”
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