US is paying for #pakistan protection racket #Terrorism

US aid, particularly military aid, flows to Pakistan in huge quantities and senior American government and military figures accentuate the positive, rhetorically at least, in public endorsements of Pakistan and its civilian and military leaderships. Behind the scenes however is a blunt and unflattering characterization of Pakistan, of the corruption and incompetence of its elites, of its erratic behaviour – not least with respect to nuclear weapons – and, above all of Pakistan relations with, and use of, terrorist and insurgent groups as instruments of state policy.

Pakistan supports at least four terrorinsurgent groups – the Afghan Taliban, the Haqqani network, the Hekmatyar network, and Lashkar-e-Taiba – but there is nothing the US can do to affect Pakistan's support for these groups.

US is paying to defeat its own objectives in Afghanistan and paying to support state-backing for regional and global terror movements that pose a real threat to US and wider western interests. The US knows this, Pakistan knows this, but still the aid and supportive rhetoric flows.

Policy-makers questioning the wisdom of continuing with this kind of support would do well to reflect on the outcome of the Bush administration's $11-billion military aid to Pakistan between 2001 and 2008. Most of that money was spent on India-centric weapons, on bridging Pakistan's balance of payments gap and on vastly expanding the Pakistan army's economic and financial assets. Only a small proportion was spent on counter-terrorism and counter-insurgency inside Pakistan. Even the latter contained absurdities like the US paying Pakistan to patrol its own borders, something which, outside the Kafkaesque world of Pakistan, most states take for granted as part of their duty in relation to the maintenance of internal and external state sovereignty.

Given Pakistan diverts military aid away from its principal donor's most pressing security concerns and given the US acknowledgement that Pakistan supports terrorist groups, is it time to ask if US military aid be stopped?

First, despite the rising tide of Islamic extremism and terrorism in Pakistan, the Pakistan army and government, and Pakistani analysts routinely excoriate the West for exaggerating the threat to Pakistan's stability from terrorism and extremism. The argument they make is that Pakistan is robust, that the army and ISI can handle extremism and terrorism, and that the risks of Pakistan breaking up or falling to militant Islam are miniscule. If this rebuttal is accurate then the US can safely withdraw military aid. If it is not, then the US would still be better off putting aid into civilian programmes that undercut radicalization and, above all, into policing, which is the better response to terrorism.

Second, while Pakistan is undoubtedly providing some assistance with the war against al-Qaida, there is evidence also that it is aiding al-Qaida and its affiliates, and that bin Laden and al-Zawahiri are being sheltered somewhere in Pakistan. To the degree that Pakistan has its own interests in combating al-Qaida there is no axiomatic reason why cooperation with the US against al-Qaida should not continue even if US military aid is stopped.

Third, Pakistan regularly reassures the world that its nuclear weapons are safe and that the safety measures it has in place to defend and protect its nuclear weapons are fool-proof. Again, accepting Pakistan's rebuttal as accurate there can be no reason to believe that ending US military aid would, per se, jeopardise the security of Pakistan's nuclear weapons.

Fourth, as the US and Nato begin the drawdown in Afghanistan from July 2011, and as logistical land-routes through the Central Asian states mature over the next few years, the reliance on Pakistan as logistic and over-flight space is certain to diminish and thus the fourth argument for open-ended military aid to Pakistan weakens and falls.

Finally, the US has already all but lost its struggle with China for durable influence in Pakistan. While the US spends billions pursuing short-term interests in the AfPak region, China is laying the foundations for a long-term primary partnership with Pakistan building sustainable infrastructure, pipelines, the giant port at Gwadar, economic and resource investment, and a rapidly increasing intelligence presence. China is tellingly wasting few resources -- at present -- on military aid to the Pakistan army and ISI

Taken together these arguments suggest that US military aid could be stopped without the security situation in Pakistan deteriorating significantly or the role Pakistan plays in relation to the war on terrorism and the war in Afghanistan changing substantively (for good and ill) either. Pakistan complained bitterly about the strings attached recently to US military aid, but if the piper is not playing the tune then why continue to pay the piper?

The United States fears Pakistan's coercive options: that it might enhance its support for terrorism and insurgency still further and become a greater challenge to the US and the West, and that Pakistan might even be incentivized to transfer nuclear weapons or nuclear weapons know-how to terrorist or insurgent groups.

In other words the United States is being subjected to an old-fashioned protection racket by Pakistan: pay up or things could go bad for you. Those making money out of extortion and blackmail always come back for more. It's a measure of the US's waning global strength that it seems to have no option other than to keep paying.