Washington: A former US diplomat had claimed that the US anti-terror military aid which had been given to Pakistan though US had been used by Pakistan into buying equipment to fight India. He also described Pakistan as a country which is “on the edge in many ways of being a failed state”.
Ronald Neumann, former US Ambassador to Afghanistan, said the State Department on Terrorism ranks Pakistan as having the highest level of terrorist incidents of any country in the world.
He said, “Almost all of those incidents are not related to any aspect of Afghanistan. Many of them take place in areas that have nothing to do with the FATA area.”
He claimed, “It is an economy which basically faces a crisis because of demographic pressures, because this is a country that spends less on education than virtually every country in the world. It is a country which is always on the edge in many ways of being a failed state.”
Neumann said, “It’s also a country where we don’t seem to tie our strategy in Afghanistan. It virtually went unmentioned in the quadrennial defence review. There’s no mention of it in the West Point speech. And we’re cutting aid very seriously.”
While responding over the question of Congressman Joe Wilson, He said, “Most of that military aid never went to counterinsurgency; it went to buying equipment to fight India. And as is the case in Afghanistan, on the economic side, in spite of efforts by the Congress over the last 10 years, we have never had a single report from USAID to explain what the benefits or impact of the economic aid to Pakistan has been. And quite frankly it’s not quite clear what the (aid) programme did.”
Bureau Report
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