Earlier this month, this United States government repealed its "Coalition Support Fund" of about $300 million dollars in aid to Pakistan aimed at bolstering Pakistan's military operations against the many Islamist terror groups within its borders.
As reasoning for this massive cut, the Trump administration is claiming that the US has received "lies and deceit" from Pakistani officials in return for the aid money and that Pakistan is sheltering Taliban fighters who are fleeing US forces in the war in Afghanistan. However, according to data gathered by the Council of Foreign Relations, even with the $300 million reduction in funding, the US is still filtering over $200 million to Pakistan in the form of foreign aid.
If any of this aid is affiliated with counter-terrorism efforts, it should also repealed since Pakistan has proven on multiple occasions that it is unable to keep regular terrorist attacks from killing scores of its citizens and the country is also accused of harboring high profile jihadist masterminds.
The US Department of State Travel Advisory currently lists Pakistan as "reconsider travel due to terrorism." Pakistan's most populous city, Karachi, has been listed as a "high-threat" location due to, among other dangers, presence of "extremist elements."
As bad as this sounds, many of the individual terrorist attacks that have taken place on Pakistani soil are even more horrifying. On December 16th, 2014, over 140 people, mainly children, were killed in a Taliban-sanctioned bombing/shooting at an army public school in Peshawar, Pakistan.
In March 2016, over 70 people were murdered by the terrorist group Jamaat-ul-Ahrar ( a faction of the Taliban), when they sent suicide bombers into an amusement park in an effort to kill Christians as they were celebrating the coming of Easter. Just this past July, nearly 150 people were killed and nearly 200 were injured when another suicide bomber attacked a political rally in Balochistan, Pakistan.
These attacks are simply a few among dozens of terrorism cases in Pakistan. Even according to the terrorists themselves, the Pakistani government is useless when it comes to stopping this violence. The terrorist spokesman for Jamaat-ul-Ahrar has boldly stated, regarding the amusement park bombings, that the Pakistani prime minister "can do what he wants, but he won't be able to stop us."
When the US spends hundreds of millions, even billions, of dollars on foreign nations, they naturally should expect some results in return, thousands of people dying in continued terrorist attacks over the years.
Not only has the Pakistani government been totally unable to stop brutal attacks on its people, it also often fails to apprehend jihadist masterminds hiding in their borders. Some terrorists were also in such obvious locations that it almost seems that Pakistan might be giving them shelter.
After the May 2011 Navy SEAL raid that killed Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad, Pakistan, it was revealed that the Pakistanis only helped in the raid because the US threatened to expose them for sheltering bin Laden for five years. While the Pakistani government vehemently denies these claims, the fact that bin Laden's compound was less than a mile from one of Pakistan's most prominent military academies is definitely very suspicious.
Bin Laden wasn't the only high-profile terrorist either. A recent report from the prestigious research group Brookings Institution states that the leader of the Pakistani terrorist group Lashkar e Tayyiba (a jihadist group that functions mainly in India and Kashmir), Hafeez Saeed, "operates openly" in Pakistan and has publicly denounced the US, India, and Israel within Pakistani territory.
Is the Pakistani military just terrible at fighting terrorism? Or are they complicit in helping these terrorist evade capture? Either way, they don't deserve any foreign aid for such a pathetic performance.
