The Bush administration seems to have a disconcerting habit of sending huge sums of U.S. tax dollars to the Middle East, without checks or accountability of any kind, and then suddenly discovering they have no idea where our money ended up. One of the more notable examples is Pakistan.
The LAT reported last month that billions of dollars the administration sent to Pakistan, ostensibly for counter-terrorism measures against al Qaeda, never reached their intended target. So, where did it go?
After the United States has spent more than $5 billion in a largely failed effort to bolster the Pakistani military effort against Al Qaeda and the Taliban, some American officials now acknowledge that there were too few controls over the money. The strategy to improve the Pakistani military, they said, needs to be completely revamped.
In interviews in Islamabad and Washington, Bush administration and military officials said they believed that much of the American money was not making its way to frontline Pakistani units. Money has been diverted to help finance weapons systems designed to counter India, not Al Qaeda or the Taliban, the officials said, adding that the United States has paid tens of millions of dollars in inflated Pakistani reimbursement claims for fuel, ammunition and other costs.
“I personally believe there is exaggeration and inflation,” said a senior American military official who has reviewed the program, referring to Pakistani requests for reimbursement. “Then, I point back to the United States and say we didn’t have to give them money this way.”
No, but we apparently did anyway.
The $5 billion was provided through a program known as Coalition Support Funds, which reimburses Pakistan for conducting military operations to fight terrorism. Under a separate program, Pakistan receives $300 million per year in traditional American military financing that pays for equipment and training.
Civilian opponents of President Pervez Musharraf say he used the reimbursements to prop up his government. One European diplomat in Islamabad said the United States should have been more cautious with its aid.
“I wonder if the Americans have not been taken for a ride,” said the diplomat, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
It would not, alas, be the first time.
The whole report is worth reading — it highlights the broad and fairly transparent fraud through which the Pakistanis gamed the system, while the military and counter-terrorism forces went without the resources that we were supposedly providing.
During a recent visit to the border, an American official found members of the Frontier Corps “standing there in the snow in sandals,” according to the official. Several were wearing World War I-era pith helmets and carrying barely functional Kalashnikov rifles with just 10 rounds of ammunition apiece.
“It is not making its way, for certain, we know, to the broader part of the armed forces which is carrying out the brunt of their operations on the border,” the senior American military official said.
There’s talk of hearings in the Senate Armed Services Committee. Stay tuned.