US Media and America’s Aid to Pakistan
By Ahmed Quraishi
Islamabad, Pakistan
You have to love the language the US media uses when discussing American aid to Pakistan.
There is no new aid. But the latest coverage pertains to a report released by the American inspector general’s office on the Kerry-Lugar-Berman aid bill.
The inspector general has released a report criticizing US aid’s limited impact on improving civilian services in Pakistan.
This civilian aid was approved in 2009, $7.5 billion over five years, beginning in early 2010.
The new report ‘questions’ the aid’s impact, which is negligible. That’s not news for us.
But there are bigger myths that surround this aid package to Pakistan in the US media. It’s a classic case of US government spinning to itself and its people and then believing its own spin.
I was reading a Fox News report on this aid that described it as ‘massive’ and quoted unnamed commentators who opposed ‘lavishing’ US aid on Pakistan.
Massive and lavish? Hardly.
This aid package is not massive and not lavish. Pakistan has been undersold to US interests by two US puppets, Pervez Musharraf and Asif Zardari. If Pakistani nationalists were in power, US officials and media would have heard more frequently about more than US$ 64 billion that Pakistan has lost directly and indirectly because of America’s war in Afghanistan.
Washington has hurt Pakistan’s geo-strategic environment and interests in ways far worse than how it abandoned Pakistan after the Soviet defeat in 1991, leaving Pakistan to deal with thousands of militants that CIA gathered to fight the Soviets.
US officials are still hung on 1991 when analyzing Pakistani estrangement but are unaware of the new estrangement that has emerged because of the American mess since 2002.
Compared to a loss of $64 billion in eight years, the Kerry-Lugar-Berman aid package is peanuts. It is not massive nor lavish. It is nothing compared to what US is spending in Afghanistan, Iraq, Egypt and Israel. All of them prove that Washington has been paying lip service to its Pakistani ally.
The list of things America has done is long. Many US officials know about this list but pretend it doesn’t exist because the pro-US government in Islamabad never raises it, leaving the Pakistani public opinion to worry about it.
The result is that the US discourse on aid to Pakistan is couched in myths and will not help further US interests on the long run.
And despite all the noise to the contrary, US doesn’t appear much worried about this. The Obama administration has resorted to gimmicks in how it uses the 2009 aid package. The flow of funds from the package is slow. Every cash installment released is geared toward creating positive headlines than having any real positive impact on the ground. Since 2009 Washington has been making aid announcements to meet various Pakistani needs as if these announcements indicated new aid. But in all of these announcements US officials forgot to mention this was not new aid but a reallocation of Kerry-Lugar-Berman funds.
In short, the US government has been recycling old aid pledges repeatedly to make them look new, and then embellish the story to make aid to Pakistan appear ‘massive’ and ‘lavish’.
This is what the Obama administration did during last year’s epic floods in Pakistan. The much touted US helicopters arrived only when pro-US politicians begged Mr. Holbrooke and Mrs. Clinton to cover up for their incompetence in view of the excellent performance of Pakistani NGOs and the Pakistani military.
This shows the level of US disinterest in genuinely helping its Pakistani ally. No wonder this is a troubled relationship. A pro-US government in Islamabad worsens this relationship by not addressing these issues.
So my advice to US commentators, especially those who toe the official line: Please spare us the spin.
