U.S. To Send $100M In Emergency Aid For Pakistan: Official

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US to send 100 mln dlrs in emergency aid for Pakistan: official

http://rawstory.com/news/afp/US_to_send_100_mln_dlrs_in_emergenc_05192009.html

5/19/2009

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is to announce Tuesday the release of 100 million dollars in emergency aid to help displaced civilians in Pakistan, a State Department official said.

Clinton, who was due to make the announcement around 11:15 am (1515 GMT) at the White House, intends to "help them with their needs" in tents, food, water and other supplies, the official told AFP on the condition of anonymity.

The humanitarian aid does not require the approval of Congress because it is drawn "from existing funds," the official added.

US officials earlier announced the intention to aid more than two million people whom UN officials said were forced to flee the northwest of the country in the face of a Pakistani military offensive against the Taliban.

A second US government official who asked not to be named told AFP the Pentagon planned shortly to announce another 10 million dollars in humanitarian aid, for a total of 110 million dollars.

The official said he expected tents to be bought in the United States but other supplies would be bought in Pakistan.

"Some of the things they will buy locally to give the Pakistani economy a jump," he said.

Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said Monday that the Defense Department was drawing up preliminary plans to fly food, water and tents to help those displaced by the Pakistani army's offensive against the militants.

"The Pakistanis could use some basic humanitarian assistance that the United States is prepared to provide," Whitman told reporters.

A request was pending from Islamabad for humanitarian aid and final details were being worked out through the State Department, he said.

The aid would include packaged Halal meals, water trucks and tents, he said.

"We're looking at providing assistance in those three categories, and potentially in other areas," he said.

"We want to be there to help them," Whitman added. "We want to demonstrate that we are good partners."

Islamabad ordered the offensive under mounting US pressure, after the insurgents took up positions just 100 kilometers (60 miles) from the Pakistani capital, having broken out of their hub in Swat.

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US Shares Responsibility for Pakistan Crisis, Clinton Says

http://www.cnsnews.com/public/content/article.aspx?RsrcID=48392

By Patrick Goodenough, International Editor
Wednesday, May 20, 2009

A Pakistani volunteer climbs a pole to fix electricity disrupted by a dust storm in a camp constructed for those who have fled fighting in Pakistan's troubled Swat Valley, on Tuesday, May 19, 2009. (AP Photo)(CNSNews.com) – Declaring a “qualitatively different” U.S. approach towards Pakistan following three decades of “incoherent” policy, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton Tuesday announced $110 million in emergency assistance for the South Asian nation, including aid for civilians fleeing a military offensive against Taliban militants in the northwest.

The United Nations refugee agency said Tuesday that more than 1.4 million people in the North West Frontier Province (NWFP) have been registered as displaced since May 2, describing the flood as “the largest and swiftest to take place anywhere in the world in recent years.”

It said the newly-registered internally displaced persons (IDPs) took the total number of those who have fled their homes in the Swat valley and surrounding areas since last August to more than two million.

Clinton told a White House briefing that the U.S. funds would provide tents, food, generators and other supplies, some of which would be flown in by the U.S. military for distribution by Pakistani forces. Other provisions would go through international aid organizations.

She said the assistance was being provided not only because it was the right thing to do, but also because “we believe it is essential to global security and the security of the United States.”

The surge of IDPs followed the launch of a military offensive in late April. President Asif Ali Zardari acted after U.S. officials stepped up warnings that Islamabad’s willingness to tolerate and negotiate “peace” deals with the militants was endangering both Pakistan and the wider region.

The latest in a series of peace accords, struck by the NWFP government last February and approved by Zardari in mid-April, permitted the Pakistani Taliban to enforce Islamic (shari’a) law in Swat, in return for an end to its violent campaign there.

But Taliban fighters then spilled beyond Swat into surrounding NWFP districts, including an area just 60 miles from Islamabad.

Refugees from the fighting in Buner, a district adjoined Swat and seized by Taliban fighters last month, crowd on top of trucks and buses on Tuesday, May 19, 2009. (AP Photo)Clinton said that Pakistan had started to take the threat seriously, attributing the mood shift to the Taliban’s move closer to the capital and also citing national revulsion at the appearance of a video recording of the beating of a young woman.

(The clip, broadcast on Pakistan television and widely viewed online, showed a burqa-clad woman, said to be a 17 year-old Swat resident, held down by three men as a fourth whipped her – a shari’a punishment – while a crowd watched.)

“There is a real national mood change on the part of the Pakistani people that we are watching and obviously encouraged by,” Clinton said. “And I think it has to do with a recognition that this is no longer about a part of their country that seems quite distant from population centers … that this is a potential direct threat to their way of life in Pakistan.”

‘Incoherent’
In comments that made headlines in Pakistan overnight, Clinton also called U.S. policy towards Pakistan over the past 30 years “incoherent – I don’t know any other word to use.”

She recalled U.S. support for and funding of Islamists fighting the Soviet occupation in Afghanistan, saying this had been done in partnership with Pakistan. With the Soviet withdrawal, however, “we basically said, thank you very much” and disengaged.

“Their democracy was not secure and was constantly at risk of and often being overtaken by the military, which stepped in when it appeared that democracy could not work.”

She said while it was fair to apportion responsibility to Pakistan, the U.S. should also ask what role it played in the situation now facing the Pakistanis.

Clinton said President Obama’s “new approach” was “qualitatively different than anything that has been tried before.”

“It basically says, we support the democratically-elected government, but we have to have a relationship where we are very clear and transparent with one another” about the extremist threat.

U.S. aid to Pakistan was first suspended by President Carter in 1979 in response to Islamabad’s covert nuclear activities. It was restored after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, but again suspended, by President G.H.W. Bush, after the Soviet withdrawal.

In a speech at the United Nations General Assembly last September, Zardari said the world had “turned its back on Afghanistan after the Soviet defeat,” leaving Pakistan with three million Afghan refugees in camps that “soon became breeding grounds for intolerance and violence.”

“We were left to deal with the consequences, and one of the greatest consequences was the birth of al-Qaeda and the Talibanization of Afghanistan and parts of our tribal areas,” he said.

In fact, Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency is widely believed to have helped to establish the Taliban movement which emerged in the early 1990s, defeated other warring factions and seized control of Kabul in 1996, allowing al-Qaeda allies to shelter there.

Pakistan was one of just three countries – the others were Saudi Arabia and the UAE – to have diplomatic relations with the Taliban “emirate,” a policy only dropped under U.S. pressure following al-Qaeda’s attacks on 9/11.

Even after 9/11 and the Taliban regime’s subsequent overthrow by U.S.-led forces, the ISI allegedly retained links with the militants. Regional security analysts say the agency used the Taliban and other jihadist groups as instruments of foreign policy in both Afghanistan and against rival India, especially in Kashmir, the Himalayan region divided between Pakistan and India and claimed by both.

As recently as last summer, the ISI was suspected – by the U.S., Afghan and Indian governments – of being behind the bombing of the Indian Embassy in Kabul.

While a violent Taliban insurgency against U.S., NATO and Afghan forces has picked up in recent years inside Afghanistan, across the border in Pakistan’s tribal belt and NWFP militants have congregated under the banner of Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), a like-minded Pakistan “arm” of the jihadist movement.