Fitzgerald: Pakistan: A Brief And True Relation

The misuse of American aid, and the dawning understanding, among some in the Senate, led to the Pressler Amendment. But unfortunately, those who had over slow time begun to really understand Pakistan's treachery, such as Senator Glenn, did not have a way to pass on that understanding to their successors. The Senate had no institutional memory, and lessons learned by some in Congress were forgotten when they left the scene.

And the Pressler Amendment itself was largely ignored by the Executive Branch, and the State Department as part of that branch, as those who consult the Congressional record and read the outraged words of Senator Glenn and others will soon discover.

But what happened? Pakistan was a friend of America and hence a friend of the West. This led to the naive acceptance of A. Q. Khan into laboratories in Germany and then the Netherlands, where this metallurgist was given access to all kinds of nuclear know-how secrets, secrets which he systematically stole and brought back to Pakistan, where the Pakistani military and intelligence worked with him hand-in-glove. (Or are we to believe that A. Q. Khan did everything himself? Built "the Islamic bomb" by the dozens himself?) Pakistan could divert resources to bomb-building because of American aid. American taxpayers helped to build, helped make possible, Pakistan's nuclear weapons. You helped, and so did I. But we didn't know we were helping. We trusted our government to be properly mistrustful, assumed our government did not consist, at the highest levels, of people so unbelievably ignorant of Islam and naive about such people as the Muslim generals and zamindars who run Pakistan. You see that we were wrong.

Pak army covertly supports four rebel groups, confirm leaks

Pakistan's Army and ISI are covertly sponsoring four militant groups, including LeT, and will not abandon them for any amount of US money, the American envoy to Islamabad wrote in a secret review in 2009, diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks show.

According to a report in the Guardian today, the review said that Pakistan had received more than USD 16 billion in American aid since 2001, but "there is no chance that Pakistan will view enhanced assistance... as sufficient compensation for abandoning support to these groups", Ms Anne Patterson wrote in the review of Afghanistan-Pakistan strategy in September 2009.

Secret cables, which were leaked by WikiLeaks, show that US diplomats and spies believe Pakistan army and its Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) continue to quietly back four militant groups ~ the Afghan Taliban, its allied Haqqani and Hekmatyar networks on the western Afghan frontier, and LeT on the eastern border with India.

Some ISI officials "continue to maintain ties with a wide array of extremist organisations, in particular the Taliban, LeT and other extremist organisations," US secretary of state Mrs Hillary Clinton wrote in December 2009. Resolving the 63-year-old Kashmir conflict "would dramatically improve the situation", Ms Patterson said.

She also underpinned the need for the US to reassess India's role in Afghanistan and the growing Indo-US relationship. "We need to reassess Indian involvement in Afghanistan and our own policies towards India, including the growing military relationship through sizeable conventional arms sales, as all of this feeds Pakistani establishment paranoia and pushes them closer to both Afghan and Kashmir-focused terrorist groups while reinforcing doubts about US intentions," she said.

The latest cache of WikiLeaks documents also lay bare the deep concern of the US over the safety of Pakistan's nuclear weapons and the fact that Islamabad is producing them at a "faster rate than any other country in the world".

Painting a damning picture of its "ally", American officials expressed serious misgivings about the possibility of elements within the Pakistan establishment smuggling enough material out to eventually make a rogue nuclear weapon.

n a March 2009 briefing to FBI director Robert Mueller, the embassy noted that ISI chief General Shuja Pasha, “continues to profess a determination to end ISI's overt and tacit support for proxy forces”.
The cables, The Guardian said, betray much American frustration and anger at alleged Pakistani duplicity. “Engagement with the Pakistani military has been frustrating,” one dispatch said.

“Transparency is often nonexistent. Offers of assistance go unanswered or are overruled at headquarters, even as Pakistan's maintenance and training are inadequate.”

US Vice-President Joe Biden described relations with Pakistan as “transactional” and “based on mutual distrust”. The cables also contain warnings that Pakistan is rapidly building its nuclear stockpile despite the country's growing instability and “pending economic catastrophe”.