Is US Aid to Pakistan Causing Terrorism?

One “little” item most people probably missed in recent newscasts and elsewhere was Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s announcement of $500 million in funds for infrastructure construction in Pakistan. This $500 million was part of a larger $7.5 billion aid package for Pakistan.

Many American taxpayers will be wondering why the US is giving so much money to Pakistan when we face record budget deficits and a lack of infrastructure at home. The answer is both obvious and disturbing: Pakistan is in a position to blackmail the US into sending it money.

The situation in Pakistan is well known, the country is on shaky ground with a weak central government and powerful army facing a terrorist insurgency allied with Al Qaeda. The situation is made worse by the presence of an unknown number of nuclear weapons and an unknown amount of nuclear material in Pakistan.

All the Pakistani government has to do to shake Uncle Sam down for more dough is to do nothing about the insurgency. Let the insurgents set off a few bombs or kidnap a couple of Americas. Or better yet let them send a few questionable threats about attacking America to the media. The chicken littles in the media and Congress will then demand that the US do something.

With US forces bogged down in increasingly political unpopular wars in Afghanistan and Iraq that the military no longer seems willing to fight there is very little Uncle Sam can do. The only option to do something about Pakistan is to send more money.

The bigger the terrorist threat from Pakistan the more aid money that’s forthcoming. The danger from this situation is obvious the Pakistani government has no incentive to actually control terrorism and every incentive to expand the “terrorist threat.”

It is interesting to note that this aid announcement comes just a few months after a Pakistani born man named Faisal Shahzad tried to set off a crude and ineffective bomb in New York’s Times Square. The official story in the media is that Mr. Shahzad got his bomb training from the Pakistani Taliban and was taking orders from them.

One has to wonder, though if Shahzad was working with Pakistani intelligence in an attempt to give the country more leverage over the US when it comes to foreign aid. After all, the links between the Taliban and Pakistani intelligence are well documented, and the American taxpayer has long been the main source of funding for Pakistan’s military and intelligence communities.

Particularly interesting to note is how amateur and ineffective Shahzad’s bomb was. The Taliban and Al Qaeda are experts at making effective and highly destructive low bombs as events in Afghanistan and Iraq attest. One has to wonder how one of their pupils failed so wretchedly on such an important mission. Could Shahzad have been deliberately trained to fail by somebody?

Increasing US aid to Pakistan can also benefit the Taliban because it is in a good position to siphon off a lot of that money or simply extort or steal it from those Pakistanis who receive it. Thus the US taxpayer could end up financing Islamic extremism in the name of battling “terror” as is already happening in Afghanistan.

The Times Square bombing did come right in time to convince the Congress and the White House that Pakistan needs more “aid” for its war on terror. It seems to be an intriguing coincidence.

The situation in Pakistan is a bad one, there is a government completely dependant upon foreign aid. The Pakistani government’s only recourse is to find ways to force the US to give it foreign aid. Terrorism provides the pretext for American aid to Pakistan so the Pakistani government now has no incentive to get rid of it.

Perhaps it is time that we looked at our policy of foreign aid and decide if it is an effective method of fighting terrorism. The case in Pakistan indicates that foreign aid might actually be the cause of terrorism.