Crisis in Pakistan...

President Obama announced today that, fulfilling another defining promise of his campaign, all U.S. combat troops will be withdrawn from Iraq by September 2010.

To get a sense of what this means in numbers:

-Roughly 100,000 U.S. combat troops will be pulled out of Iraq within the next 18 months.

But lets just clarify, these are combat troops. About 30,000- 50,000 non-combat troops will remain under a new mission of training, civilian protection and counterterrorism.

More importantly, let's look at the implications behind this move. The withdrawal of US forces in Iraq reaffirms that the US is re-focusing its efforts on Afghanistan. And on this issue, the more and more critical problem is, and I've been meaning to blog about this for a while now, how to handle Pakistan.

The rapidly growing concern for the US government, and I would argue the rest of the world as well, has to be the instability in Pakistan.

Supporters of the Pakistan Muslim League chant slogans during a protest against the Supreme Court's decision to exclude former Pakistan premier Nawaz Sharif and his brother from elected office, in Multan, Feb 27, 2009. Stree protests have erupted in towns and cities across the central Punjab province. REUTERS.

I'm not going to get into the military aspects of the whole Afghanistan-Pakistan situation. I'm more interested in discussing how it has become virtually a failed state and what that can tell us about how Western countries should conduct foreign aid expenditure.

But just to mention briefly its specific significance for the NATO and ISAF operation in Afghanistan:

-Some 75% of NATO supplies to Afghanistan travel through Pakistan in convoys.

-The Afghanistan-Pakistan border has been notoriously difficult to control despite the fact that some 120,000 Pakistani troops have been dispatched to contain the infiltration of foreign Taliban fighters across the border.

Now let's get back to Pakistan itself.


Pakistan is the world's sixth most populous country and the second-biggest Muslim one (the largest being Indonesia). It has been one of the largest recipients of US foreign aid over the past decade recieving around 700 million dollars in US foreign aid each year.

The money was used to support the military rule of General Pervez Musharaf who took power via military coup in 1999. In typical US foreign policy fashion, was deemed that, having a strong fisted leader such as Musharaf in power would not only stabilize the region but give the US some influence over a potentially hostile nation-state.

The situation now is that Pakistan is violently divided. A Taliban insurgency is spreading in its north-west frontier, the (North-West Frontier Province). The vast and thinly populated western state of Baluchistan is also in revolt. In Karachi, a port city of 15million, the militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba (LET) launched their amphibious terrorist assault on Mumbai last November.

The central government in Islamabad, a coalition led by the Pakistan People's Party (PPP), and presided over by President Asif Zardari, is struggling.

Mr Zardari inherited the party from his murdered wife, Benazir Bhutto, and fears that he too will be assassinated. His is almost as unpopular as General Musharraf, widely detested in Pakistan, was. A survey released by the International Republican Institute in December found that only 19% of Pakistanis wanted him for their leader; 88% thought the country was headed in the wrong direction. Recently, the court ruling banning the Opposition Party, the Pakistan Muslim League, leader Nawaz Sharif, has led to violent protests in Punjab, which has forced Mr Zardari to declare emergency rule over the province.

There's no question that the instability in Pakistan, a nuclear armed country, is concerning for the US. But what can they do about it?

Where is the money going?

I had the priviledge of attending a Millenium Development Conference in Montreal in which former US President Bill Clinton gave one of the key speeches.

In particular I remember what he said about Pakistan and US foreign aid expenditure. Referring to the fact that some of the 9-11 bombers were Pakistani and that many of the Al-Qaeda training camps were situation along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, his quote went something like this:

"If I had known then what I know now, I would have requested that Pakistan put some of the money we gave them into building schools and developing social programs, rather than just boosting their military."

Of course, its extremely easy for Clinton to go around the world and give speeches saying this now. But he does highlight a good point.

Part of the reason that anti-western sentiment is so high in Pakistan is because of the economic poverty and inequality.

Pakistan has been ruled by the military for most of its history. The problem with many military regimes, and in particular, the most recent one of General Musharraf, is that there is total NON-TRANSPARENCY in resource allocation.

In particulary, the Pakistani state has totally neglected the regions of Balochistan and the North Western Frontier Province, rendering those regions poverty-stricken. As these areas do not constitute the political elite, and don't have many political leaders, the government has not been responsive to their needs or held accountable in any way.

Unemployment rates in these two regions are far higher than anywhere else in the country hovering at just over 30%.

Is it a coincidence that these places are currently the breeding grounds for Pakistani terrorists? I don't think so.

With no social funding from the government whatsoever, the only organizations providing schools and hospitals to local populations are the fundamentalist Islamic groups who are foreign funded. So, most of these impoverished people attend madrassas and receive health care and medical treatement from pro-Taliban groups. It is no wonder that support for the Taliban is widespread in these areas. They are the only ones helping the people there.

This is why the main concern for the US in their fight against "terrorism" should be that of "failed states".

To make matters worse, the economy in Pakistan is stagnating. After two years of political turmoil and spreading violence, the economy is collapsing. One-third of the textiles industry, which accounts for half of Pakistan's industrial jobs has been cut. In November, Pakistan asked the International Monetary Fund for a $7.6 billion dollar bailout.

So at this point, even if Mr Zardari wanted to turn things around, economically and politically, its virtually impossible that he'll be able to do anything.

That poverty breeds discontent is undeniable. That the proliferation of fundamentalist Islamic groups in populations that are neglected by their own government is a pattern through out the Middle East (the thriving of Hezbollah in the Bekka Valley of Lebanon and the thriving of Hamas in Gaza being two other very clear cut examples of this), should remind the West that foreign aid should not come without conditions.

Finally, this should remind us all that economic equality does matter; dareisay, perhaps more than military might, more than cultural differences, maybe even more than religious might...?