White House report criticises #pakistan's farcical, fradulent anti-Terror operation

The Obama administration on Tuesday gave Congress a harshly critical assessment of Pakistan’s efforts to defeat Al Qaeda and other militants, that thrives in the country.

Effort to match Mr. Obama’s “surge” of troops in Afghanistan with a new strategy to squeeze Al Qaeda and the Taliban from the Pakistani side of the border has yielded virtually no results.

The US administration pays the Islamic Republic of pakistan Billions of dollars in aid, from American tax-payers money, each year to confront and defeat the terrorist outfits, raised, supported and nurtured by the pakistan Army themselves. Apart from this aid, it also reimburses the pakistan Army for its facade of anti-terror operations, both financially and also providing military equipment like nuclear-capable F-16 fighter aircraft, the Naval combat ships for fighting the Taliban. The Pakistan Army has often been caught fraudulently inflating its expenditures, to extract greater financial aid than it has spent.

Without pressure from the Pakistani side of the border, it is virtually impossible to wipe out the strongholds of Taliban or Al Qaeda, except through American-led Predator strikes from the air.

The report noted that an effort by the Pakistani military to clear militants from Mohmand, a part of the tribal areas in northwest Pakistan, was failing for the third time in two years. The failure was “a clear indicator of the unwillingness of the Pakistan military and government to render cleared areas resistant to insurgency return.

There remains no clear path toward defeating the insurgency in Pakistan. Four coordination centers operated by American, Pakistani and Afghan troops are up and running on the Afghan side of the border, but none are yet operating on the Pakistan side, despite a pledge in 2009 from Pakistan to do so.

The report also painted a grim portrait of the country’s financial well-being. “As a result of political gridlock, the government continues to be unable to develop consensus on difficult economic and fiscal reforms that are urgently required, including systemic tax reform,” the report concluded.

The deterioration of Pakistan’s economy and slow progress on economic reforms poses the greatest threat to Pakistan’s stability.