Pakistan Largest Recipient of US Military Aid

Pakistan largest recipient of anti-terror funds: report
By Anwar Iqbal: Dawn, May 24, 2007

WASHINGTON, May 23: Pakistan is the largest recipient of US assistance from a fund created to support Washington’s war on terror, says a new study released on Wednesday. In the first four years after 9/11, Pakistan received more than $3 billion from the Coalition Support Fund.

The report by the Centre for Public Integrity, a Washington-based non-profit organisation, claims that at one point, Pakistan was billing the US government for almost $200 million per quarter for assistance in hunting down terrorists on the Afghan border.

Because of CSF, Pakistan now ranks as one of the largest recipients of US military aid and assistance, rivaling long-time US favorites Israel and Egypt.

“With the possible exception of Iraq reconstruction funds, I’ve never seen a larger blank check for any country than for the Pakistan CSF programme,” Tim Rieser, a key adviser to Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy and the majority clerk on the Senate Appropriations Committee’s subcommittee on foreign operations, told the surveyors. “CSF is a backwater of lax oversight and poor accountability.”

The report claims that when Senator Jack Reed, another Democrat, returned from an October 2006 trip to Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan, he noted that “the US Defence Representative Office [in Islamabad] recommends changing the Coalition Support Fund program to paying for specific objectives that are planned and executed, rather than simply paying what the country bills.”

The CSF program was created in the series of emergency supplemental appropriations that Congress passed after the 9/11 attacks.

Unlike ordinary US military training and financing programs, such as the International Military Education and Training program or the Foreign Military Financing program, which provide grants, CSF reimburses approved governments for the cost of fuel, ammunition, security and airlift and the like for counter-terrorism operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The report says that in some countries, human rights have suffered as authoritarian regimes are rewarded for their strategic and political importance. Often times, military aid was given with little oversight by Congress, it said.

The change in priorities often came at the cost of human rights and fiscal accountability, according to the report.

US Military Aid Breakdown - For details, click here

For Complete report, click here

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Pakistani Peacekeepers face gold smuggling probe; Dawn, May 24, 2007

KINSHASA, May 23: The UN said on Wednesday it was investigating claims that its peacekeepers in the Democratic Republic of Congo traded gold and weapons with militia groups they were supposed to be disarming.The statement from the UN mission in the DRC, known as MONUC, followed a BBC probe broadcast on Wednesday that said a team sent to probe the claims involving Pakistani UN peacekeepers faced intimidation.

The broadcast said the UN buried its report to “avoid political fallout.” The UN said an investigation began in 2006 and has yet to be completed.

The Pakistani team at the centre of the claims was working in and around the town of Mongbwalu two years ago to help restore peace between various groups.

Petronille Vaweka, a local official, said that she had tried to inspect cargo on a plane at Bunia airport but found her way blocked by Congolese armymen, who the BBC says were also involved.

“I knew they had gold because the price of gold increased when the Indians went to Mongwalu,” she told the BBC’s World Service programme Assignment.

“When we wanted to verify what was inside the plane the pilot refused to allow us to enter the plane…It was a big scandal.”

The BBC report, which said Pakistanis drew in Indian traders from Kenya as the transactions increased, quoted locals who said they saw evidence of peacekeepers’ links to the gold trade.

Local trader Evarista Anjasubu said he knew of transactions between Pakistani officers and two notorious FNI militia leaders, called Kung Fu and Dragon, who controlled the gold mines.

“It was gold that was the basis of their friendship. So the gold extracted from the mines went directly to the Pakistanis. They used to meet in the UN camp in Mongbwalu, in a thatched house,” he was quoted as saying.

William Swing, the representative to the UN secretary general in DR Congo, told the broadcaster he would “categorically deny” that troops rearmed militia and that there was “absolutely nothing” to the charge.—Reuters

Qudssia Akhlaque from Islamabad adds: Pakistan said that authorities would probe the charges against its troops working in the UN peacekeeping mission.

Foreign Office Spokesperson Tasnim Aslam said Pakistan’s permanent mission in New York had been informed by the UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO) that the BBC had contacted them for a story on some allegations.

For BBC report "UN Troops Traded Gold for Guns", click here