US to boost military aid to Pakistan

The US has announced that it will increase its military, intelligence and financial aid to Pakistan, under the pretext of helping Islamabad fight militants along its Afghan border.

US Vice President Joseph Biden, who is scheduled to visit Pakistan next week for meetings with Pakistani Army Chief of Staff Gen. Ashfaq Kayani and other senior government officials, will personally keep them abreast of Washington’s plans to boost its military, intelligence and economic help, The Washington Post reported on Friday.

The move comes as some Washington officials have recently complained that Pakistan is not adequately responding to the rising militancy along its porous border with neighboring Afghanistan.

Biden is expected to urge Pakistani leaders to launch a ground offensive in North Waziristan, where the stepped-up pace of non-UN-sanctioned drone attacks has inflamed anti-US sentiments due to a rising death toll among civilians during the attacks.

The Pakistani government believes such attacks have proved counterproductive in the US-led war against terrorism, condemning the strikes as an infringement on its sovereignty.

According to the article, US President Barack Obama and his top national security advisors have recently brushed aside proposals by some military and intelligence officials, who have called for permission to allow American troops to conduct ground offensives against militants in the area.

Heavily reliant on Pakistan’s cooperation in snuffing out the growing militancy along the volatile Afghan border, Obama and his aides have pointed out that the United States could ill afford to threaten or further alienate a country whose help is deemed necessary in the US-led war against the pro al-Qaeda militants hiding in those areas.

Under mounting US pressure, the Pakistani military chief says he will order ground offensives in the tribal area, noting, however, that he cannot spare additional troops from Pakistan’s army against the backdrop of the fact that the country’s soldiers are overstretched, the article said.

Kayani has also alluded to lack of equipment to carry out operations in Northern Waziristan, amid growing discontent in Islamabad over several delays in the arrival of US aid, which will amount to more than $3 billion in 2011.

Pakistani officials, moreover, say that Washington has failed to deliver their requests for helicopters and other military equipment.

Relations between the United States and Pakistan have recently frayed over unsanctioned US drone strikes in North Waziristan, which have left hundreds of civilians dead.

On Jan 2, the Islamabad-based NGO, Conflict Monitoring Center, said in its annual report that as many as 2,052 people — many of them civilians— were killed in US drone attacks in northwestern Pakistan during the 5-year period between 2004 and 2009.

The document cited the Brooking Institute’s research, which suggested that with every militant killed, nearly ten civilians have also lost their lives.

The center further argued that the CIA-operated strikes are considered an ‘assassination campaign turning out to be a revenge campaign.’

It also labeled 2010 as the deadliest year ever for causalities related to such attacks in Pakistan.