Just Keep Sending Money, Ask No Questions

By Steve Hynd

The AP reports (yeah, I know, sorry) That Pakistan's military has issued a formal statement expressing "serious concern" regarding some clauses of the new Kerry-Lugar bill on aid to Pakistan. The PakTribune was rather more forthcoming about what the military are saying unofficially.

officials said that General Kayani told General McChrystal that like the Pakistani people, the military and intelligence services were furious at the observations made on Pakistan�s security establishment in the Kerry-Lugar Bill. Kayani also protested over the controversial statements made by some US officials in recent days.

�General McChrystal returned from the GHQ with an unambiguous message that the terms set in the Kerry-Lugar Bill on the national security interests of Pakistan are insulting and are unacceptable in their present formulation,� according to an official familiar with the content of the meeting.

Informed official sources said that the Army�s strong reaction to the Kerry-Lugar Bill was shared in detail with the government when General Kayani met Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani on Sunday.

The military has the support of the opposition political parties and the population, but in any case General Kayani is the strongest member of Pakistan's ruling troika and is likely to get his way even if President Zardari acknowledges that Pakistan desperately wants America's money. Meanwhile, Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi is in Washington telling everyone who will listen that Pakistan wants "a long-term commitment" from the United States.

America's money has always previously come without strings for Pakistan, and has always ended up mostly lining the pockets of Pakistan's ruling military and feudal elite:

This week, the Associated Press reported that between 2002 and 2008, only $500 million of $6.6 billion in military aid meant to help Pakistan fight militants was actually spent on its intended purpose. Former president Pervez Musharraf spent the rest on his own pet economic projects and arming his country against India. Such misuse of funds, alleged by current and former Pakistani military and government officials, came as Al Qaeda and the Taliban fortified itself in Pakistan. Despite the fact that Pakistan is the leading recipient of support money to fight terrorism, one general told the AP, �The army got peanuts.��

This is on top of two analyses over the past year that clearly show that Pakistan is playing a shell game with US aid. The Government Accountability Office found last year that, even though support funds are critical to the effort against terrorism, the Defense Department has not provided enough oversight to be able to say how Pakistan is spending US military aid. From 2004 to 2007, 76 percent of US reimbursements to the Pakistani army - a total of $2.2 billion - were paid without adequate documentation of how the costs were calculated.

Even under Kerry-Lugar, as one Pentagon spokesman admitted, "We don�t have a mechanism for tracking the money after we have given it to them.��

The bone of contention for Kayani, however, appears to be the following wording in the U.S. bill:

�An assessment of the extent to which the government of Pakistan exercises effective civilian control of the military, including a description of the extent to which civilian executive leaders and parliament exercise oversight and approval of military budgets, the chain of command, the process of promotion for senior military leaders, civilian involvement in strategic guidance and planning, and military involvement in civil administration.�

The PakTribune notes:

The clause clearly dictates an upside down approach to turn the way the military and civilian authorities function in their well defined domains in Pakistan, an important official source observed.

�I think this is mischief to create a huge civil-military conflict but this will not happen. The prime minister fully understands the game,� the minister said.

So much for misplaced American notions that democracy is on the rise in Pakistan. It's clear that Musharraf was only swapped for a cleverer military dictator who knows how to use a puppet president and civilian government as a lure for Western aid and arms. Of course, the civilian leadership gets their cut - Zardari isn't known as "Mr Ten Percent" for nothing.

Kerry-Lugar is a disaster. It contains no actual mechanism for tracking where the billions of U.S. taxpayer's money get spent while containing ample provision for Presidential wavers of the clauses that Pakistan is most unhappy about. Expect those wavers to be used, as America looks the other way just as it has for years. Meanwhile, the Pakistani ruling elite will continue to pass off a facade of democracy as the real thing while the desperately poor general population get shafted. Pakistan ranked only 144th out of 182 nations in this year's Human Development Index rankings, down on the last two years and below Nepal (143), Bangladesh (139), Kyrgyzstan (102), Uzbekistan (101), Iran (106), Tajikistan (113), Namibia (124) and Botswana (125). Kerry-Lugar does nothing to force change in that, undermining every attempt to diffuse militancy in the poorest parts of the country.