WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The United States said on Tuesday it would give Pakistan $110 million to help the estimated two million people who have fled fighting between the Pakistani army and the Taliban in the Swat Valley.
Militant violence in nuclear-armed Pakistan has surged over the past two years, raising doubts about its stability and alarming the United States, which needs Pakistani action to help defeat al Qaeda and stabilize neighboring Afghanistan.
After sharp U.S. criticism that Pakistan was abdicating its authority to Taliban militants in Swat, the Pakistani military earlier this month began an offensive to retake the picturesque valley, which is 60 miles from the capital Islamabad.
The White House said that the United States would provide $100 million in humanitarian aid such as food, tents, radios, generators and other items and that the U.S. Defense Department would give a further $10 million in unspecified assistance.
"Providing this assistance is not only the right thing to do but we believe it is essential to global security and the security of the United States and we are prepared to do more as the situation demands," U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told reporters at the White House.
Clinton also described the last three decades of U.S. policy toward Pakistan as "incoherent," saying that the United States had worked with Pakistan to arm the Mujahideen fighters who helped drive the Soviet Union from Afghanistan in the 1980s only to effectively abandon both countries.
She said that U.S. President Barack Obama was determined to forge a long-term partnership with Pakistan to confront al Qaeda militants who are believed to have fled Afghanistan, where they plotted the September 11 attacks, to Pakistan.
'INCOHERENT' POLICY
"I think that it is fair to say that our policy toward Pakistan over the last 30 years has been incoherent," Clinton told reporters. "I mean, I don't know any other word to use."
"We have walked away from Pakistan before with consequences that have not been in the best interests of our security, and we are determined that we are going to forge a partnership with the people of Pakistan and their democratically-elected government against extremism," she added.
Patrick Duplat, responsible for Pakistan at the Refugees International aid group, welcomed the U.S. aid but said more money was needed.
"Clearly it is a welcome announcement. One hundred million dollars is very positive," he said, but he noted that with an estimated 2 million people now displaced within Pakistan, 1.5 million just in the last three weeks, more money was needed.
He also said the United States was partly responsible for the exodus from Swat.
"It is Pakistan's war but no doubt the United States has a special responsibility in it because it has encouraged the government to crack down on Taliban militants," he said.
South Asia analysts cast the humanitarian aid as partly a way to blunt anti-American sentiment in Pakistan and the view of some Pakistanis that the United States was partly to blame for the problem by urging the offensive
"The United States cares deeply about the stabilization of Pakistan and it is convinced that the internal insurgency represents probably the single biggest danger to that and to U.S. interests in the region," said Teresita Schaffer of the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank.
"It is true that the U.S. had encouraged the government of Pakistan to take action, but if you were that government and you saw a bunch of people basically trying to usurp your authority and slit the throats of your cops, (I would think you) would have ample motivation to reassert the authority of the state," Schaffer added.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20090519/pl_nm/us_pakistan_usa
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