Our Mystery Aid

Spencer Ackerman's been taking a look at how American aid gets delivered to Pakistan and it basically amounts to handing over billions of dollars of cash stuffed into garbage bags. More specifically, "the U.S. gives Musharraf's government about $200 million annually and his military $100 million monthly in the form of direct cash transfers." That's basically untraceable, unaccountable money. Over a billion a year goes direct to the Pakistani military in what CSIS's Rick Barton characterizes as "a sort of a handshake deal between militaries" in which we "we don't have a lot of record-keeping."

Keep that in mind, and then flip back to Joshua Hammer's recent Pakistan article for The Atlantic:

Ayesha Siddiqa, a well-known analyst in Islamabad and the author of Military Inc.: Inside the Pakistani Military Economy, says that the armed forces are major players in real estate, agribusiness, and several other industries. The empire includes banks, cable-TV companies, insurance agencies, sugar refineries, private security firms, schools, airlines, cargo services, and textile factories. The Fauji Foundation, for instance, is a “welfare trust” that is run by the defense ministry and spans 15 business enterprises. It provides cushy jobs for hundreds of retired officers (many retire in their late 40s), pays few taxes, and channels profits into a fund that is intended to benefit retired military personnel. And it is just one of several giant military-run foundations and companies that were set up decades ago and have grown steadily ever since.

The military’s intrusion into commerce is quite visible in Islamabad, if you know what to look for. The logos of the Fauji Foundation and other military-run conglomerates appear on trucks, boxes, and buildings throughout the city. As Hood­bhoy told me, “They own gas companies. They make fertilizer, cement, soap, bottled water. They even make cereals, so when I have breakfast, I can’t get away from them.”

Basically, this money could be going anywhere for any purpose -- it's just a kind of giant bribe to Pakistan's military and political elite (and in a military dictatorship it's not such a key distinction) not something that goes to support particular programs.

Comments

The suspense is killing me. Will the rest of this post be going up soon?

Posted by mad6798j | November 7, 2007 7:26 PM

cash stuffed into garbage bags.

Now, don't exaggerate. Surely they use pallets.

Posted by neil | November 7, 2007 7:30 PM

Burma : China :: Pakistan : United States

Posted by hj | November 7, 2007 7:43 PM

Note the good work by Rep. John Tierney (D-MA) to funnel $75M through USAID for education. Minor Dem victory there.

This could really be the most important storyline of the year, since, you know, there seems like an outside chance that these massive cash transfers could now, you know, come back to bite us in the ass. Makes me think about all the good work we did in the past in neighboring Afghanistan.

Also, remember that the secular/legal elite are clearly not the ones benefiting. Benazir Bhutto might be; she seems pretty cozy with the U.S.

MSM, any interest?

Posted by bob | November 7, 2007 7:45 PM

The Financial Times reported that Centcom chief Admiral Fallon paid a visit to Musharraf shortly before he declared his state of emergency, and that the Pentagon has been pressuring the White House to go easy on Musharraf. Maybe your crackerjack reporter friend Spencer can look into that. Admiral Fallon wouldn't be the first Centcom chief to go native; they say the first call Musharraf made after his initial coup was to the then-current Centcom chief (Zinni?).

Posted by Fred | November 7, 2007 8:06 PM

'tis funny how martial law in Pakistan has suddenly focussed y'all on how the US spends money in Pakistan. Prior to that, with all the investigative reporting instincts that y'all supposedly have, any questions about this were taken to be Indian badmouthing. $10 billion and one failed state later finally y'all wake up. Only **now** is it a scandal.

Posted by Arun | November 7, 2007 8:31 PM

(Taking off idealist hat . . .)

I dunno, this strikes me as one of those ugly things you kinda have to do when you're presented with a situation where a country with nuclear weapons is teetering between islamic revolution, nuclear exchanges with its neighbor, and authoritarianism. You hold your nose, choose the lesser of three or four evils, and put that particular evil in a very strong financial position.

It all ended up going to hell anyway, and dollars to donuts the present administration screwed up whatever half-a-loaf policy we had in place. But that doesn't foreclose the possibility that it could have gone to a worse hell--and sooner--if we hadn't engaged in this sort of ugly realism.

Posted by southpaw | November 7, 2007 8:36 PM

$100 million a month in untraceable cash?

Presumably, somebody on our end is getting a kickback*.

I wonder who, for how much, and what's being done with the resulting slush fund.

* I didn't mean to say "kickback." I meant to say "consulting fee." Sorry.

Posted by lambert strether | November 7, 2007 8:42 PM

We're bribing them over there so we don't have to bribe them over here?

Posted by El Cid | November 7, 2007 8:43 PM

Slate's explainer covered foreign aid generally a while back:

http://www.slate.com/id/2119648/

It seems the UK and World Bank use (or used, anyway) direct cash transfers a lot more than we do (or did).

Given our policy objectives in Pakistan (stability rather than development or humanitarian projects), I'm not sure that food shipments or a big USAID operation with independent third parties would have been a good fit.

Posted by southpaw | November 7, 2007 8:54 PM

Southpaw,

I don't think Pakistan is teetering on the verge of any Islamic revolution, though it has been in Musharraf's interest to encourage those fears. The nutters polled around ~11% in the last national elections, if memory serves, and Musharraf is locking up lawyers now, not terrorists. That said, there is a serious terrorism problem in Pakistan, and the situation in the tribal areas near Afghanistan is totally out of control, with the Pakistani Army either incapable or unwilling to get it under control.

Pakistan is mess, but I agree with you that greasing palms among the Pakistani military post-9/11 was the necessary, and least-bad course of action. The FT pointedly noted today that the $100 million per month continued to flow even during the time when the government of Pakistan had a cease-fire with Al Qaeda & Co.

It's hard to imagine Musharraf being more effective fighting terrorists and radicals when he is expending so much energy locking up the lawyers and judges. He needs to come to some sort of accommodation with Pakistan's civilian elite and then we need to demand a higher ROI on the efforts against Al Qaeda and the Taliban. Perhaps that will require a restructuring of aid in a way that incentives Pakistan to wipe out the nutters. Right now, the Pakis incentive is to keep the nutters around, since as long as they are active in Pakistan dollars from us keep flowing.

Posted by Fred | November 7, 2007 8:57 PM

"Given our policy objectives in Pakistan..."

We have policy objectives in Pakistan? I'd suggest your half-loaf is a single stale end piece...

Posted by Rihilism | November 7, 2007 8:59 PM

1) Meanwhile , over here in the USA, we have a lot of homeless veterans living on the streets. Largely Vietnam veterans for the moment --but being joined more and more by Iraq and Afghanistan veterans. See http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071108/ap_on_re_us/homeless_veterans . the article says one in four of our homeless are veterans.

2) Anyone remember Ronald Reagan saying that the homeless are homeless by choice? Ole Ronnie had trouble working up much sympathy for combat veterans -- maybe because Ole Ronnie spent World War II making propaganda movies in Hollywood for Uncle Sam. That was before Ronnie went into making propaganda movies for General Electric -- and passing hundreds of $Billions in defense contracts to GE.

3) VA tries to sugar coat it by calling it post-traumatic stress disorder.

But it's really the deep depression you get when you do the right thing, serve your country as a patriot -- only to realize you've been fucked like a dog by a pack of liars while draft dodgers like Dick Cheney, George W, Rush Limbaugh, etc prosper and grow rich.

4) I wonder when it will occur to Al Qaeda that they might have a lot of ready-made, combat-trained potential recruits here in the USA. Islam is gaining a lot of converts within our prison system, I hear. Timothy McVeigh was just one veteran. Same goes for John Mohammand -- the DC sniper.

5) If the people fucked by this war were to start killing Neocons like William Kristol, I for one would have trouble working up sufficient outrage to find them guilty if I was on the jury.

Posted by Don Williams | November 7, 2007 9:02 PM

Fred,

I don't claim any expertise on this subject, so I'll assume you're right about the Islamic radicals. And I agree that the present situation is a really really bad outcome where the moderate, liberal pakistanis are taking it on the chin. My point was just that it might not be the worst possible outcome, and I think we agree on that. Hopefully, the US can (and will) use their financial dependence as some sort of leverage . . . though the early signs don't look good.

Posted by southpaw | November 7, 2007 9:10 PM

No, greasing Pakistani military hands was not the best course. Look, from 1947 onwards, Pakistan has sought to milk the US treasury by being the bulwark against some threat to the US.

1947, Margaret Bourke-White
http://iref.homestead.com/Messiah.html

...America needs Pakistan more than Pakistan needs America," was Jinnah's reply. "Pakistan is the pivot of the world, as we are placed" -- he revolved his long forefinger in bony circles -- "the frontier on which the future position of the world revolves.".....This hope of tapping the U. S. Treasury was voiced so persistently that.....

When the threat was external that was one thing. Now when the threat is in part generated by the military itself - Pakistan started raising Afghan mujahideen long before the Soviets invaded Pakistan, and sponsored jihadi groups to operate in India as a part of its strategy, and of course, thereby caught a tiger by the tail - American money inflow produces the incentive to keep the threat alive.

The correct way would be to give Musharraf some token support, but to give aid that would benefit the Pakistani people. Textbooks, medicines, schools, sewage systems, water supplies, you name it. $10 billion would have bought plenty of those. Could have spent some of that money helping Pakistani exporters. Basically, you prop up the Pakistani economy and people, not the Pakistani military.

This was already old in 2005.
http://arunsmusings.blogspot.com/2005/07/current-affairs-truth-of-matter.html
The details have changed today, but the "hoisted by his own petard" nature of Uncle Sam has not.

Posted by Arun | November 7, 2007 9:23 PM

You wanna build contacts, you start raining money. If youse was a real joinalist, ya'd know dat.

Posted by Senescent | November 7, 2007 9:26 PM

Putting your recent posts together, I think I can now see why Bhutto has tried to position herself as Musharraf's successor in spite of the considerable dangers to her life.

Posted by Julian Elson | November 7, 2007 9:36 PM

The Fauji Foundation stuff is also old news, at least to Pakistan watchers. E.g. here is something from 2003:

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2242/is_1670_286/ai_n13807621/pg_4

Posted by Arun | November 7, 2007 9:37 PM

This is from an Indian newspaper, Aug 2003, the Daily Pioneer:

Pakistani Army: Loot at sight

G Parthasarathy

It is difficult for anyone living in a civilised democratic society in which the military is subject to the control of an elected government to understand the pernicious role that the military plays in Pakistan, or the perks and privileges that it claims more or less as a divine right.

The army runs organisations like the 'Fauji Foundation' that own and control sugar mills, cereal production, corn complexes, natural gas supply, polypropylene products, fertiliser production, cement production, power production and oil terminals. The Army Welfare Trust (AWT) is also a similar diversified conglomerate that controls financial institutions like the Askari Commercial Bank, the largest commercial bank in Pakistan. The AWT runs stud farms, rice mills, sugar mills, fish farms, pharmaceutical companies and woollen mills. It has its own general insurance company, welfare savings scheme, power supply company, travel agencies and commercial plazas.

The governing body of the 'Trust' is headed by General Musharraf and its Board includes all senior army officers. Needless to say, all these activities are not undertaken on a level playing field. The army's institutions enjoy tax exemptions, get free land, subsidised electricity and are immune from external audit.

The Pakistani Army is today the largest investor in the Karachi Stock Exchange, controls the largest network of elite public schools, owns the largest construction company and the largest transportation company-the National Logistics Cell-that has the dubious distinction of transporting not only weapons for the ISI and the CIA, but also heroin from Peshawar for export from Karachi.

With cantonments spread across the country (Pakistanis describe their country as a "Garrison state"), cantonment lands are controlled and distributed by the army at nominal prices that bear no relation to market value. Virtually every military officer gets two plots of land in urban centres-one on a concessional rate and the other subsidised, along with a house built on it, on an installment basis. Military officers are also allotted agricultural land along the Indus Basin.
Retiring Chiefs of Army Staff are allotted around 400 acres of agricultural land virtually free of cost.

General Musharraf is often criticised for being an adventurer and opportunist. But there is no reason to question his financial integrity. Yet, when he declared his assets in 1999, he acknowledged
that he and his immediate family owned substantial properties in Karachi, Islamabad, Rawalpindi, Peshawar, Lahore and Gwadar, and agricultural lands Bahawalpur. The estimated market value of the properties he owns is anything between 50 and 80 million rupees. The army has acquired rights in Pakistan by which acquisition of such properties by its officers has been legitimised.

If the activities of the army were confined to money-making alone, there would be little cause for concern and disquiet about the future of democratic freedoms and institutions in Pakistan. General Ziaul Haq often proclaimed that the Pakistani Army had a God-given right not just to defend the country's "geographical" frontiers but also its "ideological" frontiers. He meant that the army would play a decisive role in the country's politics.

General Zia emasculated mainstream political parties like the Pakistan People's Party, supported and armed fundamentalist parties like the Jamiat-e-Islami and created his own faction of the Muslim League made up largely of feudals loyal to him.

After his death, General Mirza Aslam Beg and his ISI chief, Lt General Hamid Gul, found it irksome to salute a woman Prime Minister-Ms Benazir Bhutto. They connived to overthrow her and then funded and supported an alliance of "Islam Passand" parties to ensure her defeat in the next elections.

General Musharraf regularly uses the ISI to intimidate his opponents, manipulates and amends regulations to disqualify politicians he regards as inconvenient and finally gets politicians who cannot hope to win in a free and fair election elected. The army also extends its powers by getting its officers appointed to key civilian posts. In recent days, these have included four Provincial Governors, 15 Ambassadors, and heads of crucial institutions like the National Accountability Bureau and the Federal Public Service Commission.

New Delhi cannot afford to ignore the pernicious role of the Pakistani Army as it moves ahead with its "peace process". The army is not about to relinquish the powers and patronage it enjoys. It is not without significance that, even as General Musharraf proceeded with negotiations with the Opposition Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal alliance that demanded that he set a date to relinquish his uniform, he called a meeting of his Corps Commanders that endorsed his continuing as Army
Chief as long as he desired.

Compulsive hostility towards India is a necessary pre-requisite for the Pakistani Army to retain its perks and privileges. One has only to recall the recent speech by General Musharraf's closest crony during the Kargil conflict, General Aziz Khan. He asserted that because of the religious and social values prevailing in India, relations could not be normalised even if the Kashmir dispute was resolved. General Musharraf himself has aired such views in the past.

These are realities that one hopes will be borne in mind even as our MPs and journalists are welcomed with kebabs and halwa in Lahore Pakistan is today under growing international pressure and perceived as the epicentre of global terrorism primarily because of the mistakes and misjudgments of its rapacious military establishment. Even as
Pakistani nationals are being arrested in New York and Washington for supporting jihad by the Lashkar-e-Toiba and the Al Qaeda, the Indonesian Defence Minister openly alleges that those responsible for the recent terrorist outrage in Jakarta were trained in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Similar allegations are commonplace in a number of world capitals. Pakistan is an international basket case, incapable of economic growth without large doses of foreign aid-aid that India should ensure is made conditional on the dismantling of its terrorist infrastructure.

___

Posted by Arun | November 7, 2007 9:52 PM

Why the heck hasn't this been publicized? It sounds to me like we're funding both Musharraf's strongman policies and rogue terrorists popping out of the Pakistani military, etc.

http://www.political-buzz.com/

Posted by mp | November 7, 2007 10:06 PM

This is from The Dawn (Karachi), May 1997

970428
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When armed forces also own commercial undertakings
-------------------------------------------------------------------
M. Ziauddin

PAKISTAN is probably the only country in the world whose defence forces earn more than half of their keep on their own as the commercial enterprises run by the charitable organisations of the army, navy and air force together contribute more than two per cent to the country’s GNP annually.

It is, therefore, a wonder why, so far the defenders of unrestricted and unscrutinised budgetary allocation for defence have not used this argument to win a billion or two more for the annual budget of our sentinels.

Stranger is it to see successive governments in the country, both military and political, not making effective use of the argument in their negotiations with the donors who have been consistently demanding a reduction in the defence budget.

Not only are our defence forces making money but they are also involved in massive social welfare activities as well. They run hospitals, schools, colleges, grant scholarships, manage vocational institutions and many other training centres. That they do all this exclusively for ex-service men and their families should not in any way lessen the value of these social welfare activities because if they were not doing it, the burden on the civilian budget would then have been more severe than what it is now.

In the private sector, if you put all the military foundations together, they become the single biggest industrial conglomerate. Ittefaq, owned by
the prime minister’s [Nawaz Sharif] family, would come second with declared assets of a little less than Rs 9 billion.

Being a country severely short of resources and facing serious threats as well from across the border probably it could not think of any better way of making both ends meet and still live honourably.

Conceded that the fact that they are earning half of their keep does not obviate the need to rationalise and scrutinise the defence budget. And it also does not obviate the need to keep the defence forces out of politics and far removed from the business of making money and social welfare activities. But one cannot close one’s eyes to a situation which amounts to a reality of nearly Rs 9 billion (net assets) and annual earnings of nearly Rs 2.5 billion.

The army has the Fauji Foundation (FF) and Army Welfare Trust (AWT), the Navy, the Bharia Foundation (BF) and the Air Force, the Shaheen Foundation (SF). The latter two are relatively new and therefore, relatively very small compared to the army conglomerates, the FF and the AWT.

The FF was established as a charitable trust incorporated under the Charitable Endowments Act 1890 in 1952 with an initial fund of Rs 18.2 million and is exclusively devoted to the welfare of ex-servicemen of the armed forces of Pakistan and their families, whose estimated strength at
present is over 7.5 million. Most army officers retire at the ripe young age of 45 while soldiers retire at the age of 35, so the need for an organisation exclusively looking after their welfare.

The Foundations are entirely self-supporting welfare organisations which operate in the private sector and receive no financial assistance from either the federal, or provincial governments, instead all expenditures on their diverse welfare activities are met from funds generated by their own industrial and commercial projects.

The affairs of FF are controlled by an administrative committee composed of the secretary defence as chairman with four senior officers of the army and one each from navy and air force. They are ex-officio members of the committee.

The executive body responsible for the efficient functioning of all the industrial and welfare projects being run by the FF is a board of directors which comprises six directors headed by a managing director.

The FF is run almost entirely by ex-service personnel. The chief executive is traditionally a senior retired army officer of the rank of Lt. General or Maj. General, appointed by the prime minister and nominated by the army chief.

While the army’s control of FF is indirect, the military directly controls the other three foundations with the ministry of defence having no hand in it.

The AWT is controlled by a committee which is headed by the army’s adjutant general and has the army’s three principal staff officers as members. It was set up in 1971.

At present the FF fully owns 10 industrial and commercial projects and has shares in three other projects.

These include three sugar mills and one of the largest fertilizer plants in Asia which gives it a near monopoly in urea in Pakistan.

It also makes breakfast cereals, jellies and custard powder and also runs natural gas fields and a host of other small companies.

It employs nearly 10,000 people full-time and several thousand others as casual employees in sugar mills during the season.

The Foundation runs 12 hospitals, 24 day health centres, 2 wards, 21 dispensaries, 46 mobile dispensaries, 2 mobile units, one artifical limbs
centre, one nursing school, one college each for boys and girls, 64 model schools, one technical library, 4 leadership training projects, 9 technical training centres, 66 vocational training centres, one institute of computer sciences, one overseas employement service and a security service.

The group’s sales for 1994/95 was over Rs 3.5 billion. The net worth of the organisation in that year was nearly Rs 5.5 billion and its total assets were nearly Rs 8 billion.

From inception till September 30, 1995, the FF has spent nearly Rs 5.5 billion on its various welfare measures for ex- servicemen and their dependents.

Welfare expenditure in 1992/93 was 87 per cent of its profits, the next year it was 80 per cent and in the following two years 83 and 80 per cent respectively.

Being run by charitable organisations, all the commercial enterprises fully owned by FF, AWT, BF and SB do not pay corporate taxes and income taxes, although all of them pay sales tax and Iqra tax. Listed companies with outside shareholders, however, are subject to all the normal tax laws.

The AWT runs seven industrial projects, five large agricultural farms, five travel agencies, one restaurant and has invested heavily in real estate.

These include a giant sugar mill, two cement factories, one pharmaceutial unit, a rice mill and a plant making vegetable oil. It has its own commercial bank and a commercial insurance company.

The Shaheen Foundation is much smaller in comparison. It employs about 1,000 people overall and has assets worth nearly a billion rupees. It runs an advertising agency, a knitwear manufacturing plant, computer organisation, and has about 25 per cent share in Shaheen-Cable TV.

It also owns some smaller companies including a duty-free shop. Shaheen also owns Karachi’s poshest office block, the Shaheen Complex, which hosts among others the local branches of the Bank of Yokyo, American Express and the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank.

Apart from AWT, the army runs a giant armament manufacturing industrial complex at Wah. This complex manufactures small arms, all types of ordinance as well as armoured vehicles including the country’s first indigenously built main battle tank, the Al-Khalid.

These factories export nearly $50 million worth of weapons annually. These industries are, however, not run on the lines of AWT and are mainly strategic to reduce the dependency on overseas suppliers. The Wah factories are always headed by a serving general.

No military commercial establishment has been known to have defaulted on loans so far. But credits and loans come easily to these enterprises because in Pakistan, all kinds of doors open for the uniformed without evenknocking.

It is natural that the military would be able to do business in a country that has been ruled more often by generals than civilians. In the years of martial law, the military and the entrenched civilian bureaucracy which are the ruling elite and have a symbiotic relationship helped these businesses to grow and may have crowded out private entrepreneurs.

But it is also a fact, that a disciplined work force and good administration has made these units profitable concerns.

They compete in the open market with better products. In fact some of the products coming out of military units are considered the best in the country.

____

The information was there if you wanted it.

Posted by Arun | November 7, 2007 10:08 PM

One last:- it should help you read between the lines, understand why the military **has** to remain in control in Pakistan (from its point of view), and what gross stupidity American foreign policy consists of - look at what you've been "greasing the palms of after 9/11". Most Pakistani generals could probably buy five of their American counterparts.

Source: The Dawn , Karachi dt 09/10/99

Sindh refuses to surrender Superhighway

ISLAMABAD, Sept 9: Sindh government has formally informed the Centre that handing over of the Karachi-Hyderabad Superhighway to the Fauji Foundation for converting it into a six-lane motorway is not possible as it would deprive the province of a regular source of income, Dawn
learnt from the federal government sources.

The provincial government has written to the effect in response to the federal government's letter that had asked it to hand over the administrative control of the superhighway to the FF before Sept 21, for the purpose of collecting the toll tax.

Posted by Arun | November 7, 2007 10:13 PM

Southpaw: "But that doesn't foreclose the possibility that it could have gone to a worse hell--and sooner--if we hadn't engaged in this sort of ugly realism."

Is there any act of Bush's that you can't find a good side to?

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | November 7, 2007 10:24 PM

I hate to dissent from someone who obviously has a great deal more knowledge than myself. But it seems worth pointing out that a lot of the indicators of why the situation is really bad right now are also indicators that the situation has not been persistently awful since 1999.

From my layman's perspective, I've been watching images of lawyers and students protesting for the rule of law. The current crisis seems to have been precipitated by the growing institutional strength of the Pakistani Supreme Court . . . as well as the potential vitality of the upcoming presidential election. That suggests to me that up until this present crisis, things have been relatively moderate and conducive to the emergence of democratic institutions. If American aid were funding an uncomplicated despotism for the last 8 years, I don't imagine there would still be independent Supreme Court Justices around to fight with it.

Again, this is a very limited and unenlightened defense of a policy that has now gone badly wrong, so please take it with a grain of salt.

Posted by southpaw | November 7, 2007 10:29 PM

Fred: "The nutters polled around ~11% in the last national elections, if memory serves,"

Your memory serves you ill. Recent polls of the population show anywhere from 40-60% supporting increased Sharia law in the country. bin Laden actually polls higher in popularity than Musharraf. And most of the population supports some form of Islamism.

As for Musharraf "wiping out the nutters", nobody has been able to deal with the FATA in hundreds of years.

Not to mention that Musharraf depends on the military and the ISI - and they happen to have a significant percentage of their people supporting the Islamists because they use them against India and Afghanistan.

So, no, "the nutters" aren't going to be "wiped out" anytime soon, no matter how many billions in bribes the US pays the Pakistani military.

I wouldn't be at all surprised to find that scores of millions of those dollars - although certainly not all of them, since Pakistan IS corrupt - are going straight to the Taliban.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | November 7, 2007 10:29 PM

Southpaw: "Again, this is a very limited and unenlightened defense of a policy that has now gone badly wrong, so please take it with a grain of salt."

We do and we will.

What part of almost unlimited corruption since 1947 don't you get? What part of "the Pakistani military is heavily behind Islamist extremists" don't you get? What part of a Pakistani ISI officer sending $100K to Mohammad Atta prior to 9/11 don't you get?

The fact that there are opponents to Musharraf and the military in the legal profession in Pakistan doesn't exactly inspire great confidence that things have been just great - except, of course, for virtually unlimited corruption - since 1999 or any other year you'd care to pick.

Especially since, in case you've forgotten, those legal professionals are now practically rioting in the streets and are being arrested and imprisoned (again).

I wonder, since Tianamen Square was a protest, do you think China is now "democratic" because some tanks didn't run over a guy?

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | November 7, 2007 10:40 PM

Hack-

It sucks out there. I don't know how many different ways to say it. It's FUBAR.

But since we woke up one morning and Pakistan and India had nuclear weapons . . . our options have been pretty limited. And all I'm saying is that the US policy of using realpolitik to keep a lid on what was always a pretty shitty situation may not be worthy of the derision it's getting around here. The society that policy fostered (or at least failed to spoil) is actually reacting pretty admirably to Musharraf's despicable power seizure.

What's the better policy? What's the Care Bear Stare policy we should have employed? Food aid? Regime change? USAID and a thousand independent contractors? How do you get to a stable and friendly and democratic Pakistan?

Posted by southpaw | November 7, 2007 10:58 PM

southpaw: giving a dictator a $100 million a month allowance (a) gives him a lot more clout and (b) make him more impervious to public opinion.

Remember, **any** country can become as ungovernable as Iraq currently is if people become sufficiently unhappy, and a dictator keeps a lid on things with carrots and sticks. Pakistan has returned to civilian rule in the past when the military guy ran out of steam. If he runs out of carrots he will go; most dictators cannot last on repression alone.

Funding a dictator means the pressure has to rise much higher and the ensuing explosion is much worse when the dictator is displaced.

(Notice that a dictator of an oil-rich country has an infinite supply of carrots, and so what applies to Pakistan will not apply to the oil-rich states of the Middle East. It might, however, apply to Egypt.)

Aiding the Pakistani economy (e.g., by helping its garment exports) would also likely postpone the day of reckoning for its dictator. After all, discontent is less if more people are gainfully employed. But it serves US interests more because it is not perceived as the power propping up the dictator, and because there may be a smoother and more peaceful political evolution to something better.

People who do have something to lose tend to behave moderately.

Posted by Arun | November 8, 2007 1:03 AM

Fred: "The nutters polled around ~11% in the last national elections, if memory serves,"

Your memory serves you ill. Recent polls of the population show anywhere from 40-60% supporting increased Sharia law in the country.

In the last National Assembly election in 2002, the nutter coalition -- the Muttahhida Majlis-e-Amal Pakistan -- took 11.3% of the popular vote; that's what I was referring to.

With respect to Pakistani attitudes today, according to The Pew Center, Pakistanis have lower opinions of Musharraf and the U.S. now than in recent years, but, their support for terrorism has also declined significantly (probably because they have been suffering from it themselves). So again, I don't see Pakistan teetering on the edge of an Islamic revolution. The majority of Pakistanis seem to dislike both Musharraf and the Islamic nutters.

Posted by Fred | November 8, 2007 1:29 AM

Fred is right to draw distinctions between polls measuring "attitudes" and actual election results. Pakistan is not, by any reasonable measure, "teetering on the edge of an Islamic revolution."

I think our aid should be a lot more targeted, and include a lot more accountability. But simply bitching/cutting off aid won't help. One of the results of cutting Pakistan off after their nuke breakout was to evolve a whole generation of field-grade Paki officers who don't have any meaningful experience of the US or contacts with our military--not a good outcome.

I suspect the current "crackdown" has been worked out in advance with Bhutto as part of the transition scenario--sort of a Pakistani "surge" preliminary to a governmental restructuring. In any case, Pakistan is another example of Frankenstein states created from the body parts of collapsing empire, and will for the foreseeable future be, like Bismarck's Prussia, "not a state with an army, but an army with a state".

Posted by Robert Powell | November 8, 2007 3:46 AM

greasing palms among the Pakistani military post-9/11 was the necessary, and least-bad course of action

Not true. The US has been greasing the palms of ISI in a major way since Carter and that has gotten us the Pakistan we all love and know. Far from being clever realpolitik, the US policy towards Pakistan has been and continues to be a a major foreign policy failure, were the right didn't know what the left hand was doing, but the underlying attitude was: when in doubt, always side with ISI.

I can only suggest to everybody reading Steve Coll's fantastic book "Ghost Wars" on this matter, the man knows what he's talking about.

Posted by novakant | November 8, 2007 4:40 AM

United States Government: Ooo, look, lunatic Islamic extremists in Pakistan! Let's give them billions of dollars so that they can kill people in Afghanistan! Should be loads of fun, and it's all happening in a faraway country of which we know nothing!
Lunatic Islamic Extremist: Thanks awfully, dear heart. Hope you don't want the surface-to-air missiles back; I've sold them to the Chinese. Now, mind if I take a few flying lessons in Florida?
United States Government: Be my guest, O spectacularly bearded one!
World Trade Centre: THUD!!
Pentagon: KASPAM!!
United States Government: Great heavens, who expected that to happen?

Meanwhile, back in 1979

United States Government: Dear General Zia, we cannot help noticing that although your government is splendidly tyrannous, you do lack some credibility in the nuclear weapons department. Any plans to sort that out?
Pakistani Government: Well, we have this chap called Professor Khan. You wouldn't mind looking the other way for a bit while we import a few doodads and whatchamacallums, do you? He seems to need them.
United States Government: Sounds fair enough to us! Have a few whangdoodles while you're about it -- don't forget to grind off the anodized coating, though! (What a lark this is!)
Hills in India: KABOOOM!
Hills in Pakistan: KABOOOM!
Hills in North Korea: KAPHLWUGGLE!
International Atomic Energy Agency: AAAIIIEEE!
United States Government: Great heavens, who expected that to happen?

Posted by MFB | November 8, 2007 5:33 AM

Perhaps it is invested in subprime mortgage investment vehicles?

You would have imagined at the least that it would be in the form of credits for the purchase of American-made weapons.

Posted by bob h | November 8, 2007 7:09 AM

Pakistan was not a mistake:
http://xyz-abc.sulekha.com/blog/post/2007/08/partition-was-not-a-mistake.htm

Posted by Arun | November 8, 2007 8:09 AM

Matt, thanks for plugging our Pakistan report. A Perilous Course: US Strategy and Assistance to Pakistan can be found here: http://www.csis.org/images/stories/pcr/070727_pakistan.pdf. You've got a couple of loyal readers in the Post-Conflict Reconstruction (PCR) Project at CSIS, so it's great to see our work popping up here.

Posted by Shannon (CSIS) | November 8, 2007 9:25 AM

What is wrong with US foreign policy? OBL is currently based in Pakistan. Pakistani tribal areas bordering Afghanistan were and remain the world HQ for radical Islamic terrorism. Pakistani army created the Taliban which ultimately facilitated 9/11. Pakistan actively supports terrorism directed against India. Pakistan lied to the US and purchased nuclear technology from China while receiving huge amounts of US aid. Later Pakistan sold this technology to rough nations like Iran, North Korea, and Libya. And Pakistan is supposedly our number one friend on GWOT. It is a total joke.

Stop mollycoddling dictators now!

Posted by 2cynicalbyhalf | November 8, 2007 9:37 AM

Neil: "Surely they use pallets." With the dollar heading for Monopoly money status, soon it'll have to be Dumpsters.

Posted by James Wimberley | November 8, 2007 9:47 AM

"More specifically, "the U.S. gives Musharraf's government about $200 million annually and his military $100 million monthly in the form of direct cash transfers." "

Wouldn't it be more cost effective to just drop cheap hookers, whiskey and play stations onto the fundamentalists?

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Posted by Antoinette Thomas | November 21, 2007 1:40 PM