Playing us like a fiddle

Well, we're paying a billion dollars a year to Pakistan, which is orchestrating the Taliban insurgency. So, it's actually US-taxpayer money that is paying for the insurgents, who are then killing, at the moment, Canadian troops. Now if I were the government of Germany or France, I'd have a hard time putting my troops in that kind of equation. I would demand from Washington, that Washington require a lot different behavior from Pakistan.
[snip[

Has anybody done very strict accounting on where [aid to Pakistan] is going? I suspect that if you start looking at some of the receipts, you'll find that there's money missing. I mean, I find it really amazing that, for example, recently, there was a cross border raid, that killed an Al Qaeda commander named Al-Libi in Beluchistan province of Pakistan. Now, the entire Taliban top command, or at least the top command of the part that's operating in the south, is based on Beluchistan province. People know exactly where they are. Why has we never required those guys heads from Islamabad? Or why have we not considered taking them out ourselves? It's been very clear to me, watching since 2002, that Pakistan has been buying us off, by a well-timed delivery of an Al Qaeda operative, which has then caused us to look the other way about the Taliban.
Sarah Chayes on Bill Moyers Journal, Feb. 22, 2008

 Ms. Chayes is isolating the problem with having Pakistan as our so-called ally. We give them billions of dollars without accountability.

We ask them for help in the tribal areas. They say its too hard. The militants do something that demands a response. We demand action. Pakistan goes through the motions - things go wrong.Then some Al Qaeda guy we've never heard of is killed - and then Pakistan goes back to what they were doing: Nothing.


The NYT has a story that suggests this is more than just Ms. Chayes' opinion:

C.I.A. Outlines Pakistan Links With Militants

A top Central Intelligence Agency official traveled secretly to Islamabad this month to confront Pakistan’s most senior officials with new information about ties between the country’s powerful spy service and militants operating in Pakistan’s tribal areas, according to American military and intelligence officials.

The C.I.A. emissary presented evidence showing that members of the spy service had deepened their ties with some militant groups that were responsible for a surge of violence in Afghanistan, possibly including the suicide bombing this month of the Indian Embassy in Kabul, the officials said.

The decision to confront Pakistan with what the officials described as a new C.I.A. assessment of the spy service’s activities seemed to be the bluntest American warning to Pakistan since shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks about the ties between the spy service and Islamic militants.

So, are we finally getting serious with Pakistan? What's it going to take to get the ISI to follow orders?