Aid to Pakistan comes with a price

America can keep its money, said the Pakistan Observer in an editorial. The U.S. Congress recently passed the Kerry-Lugar bill, which tripled aid to Pakistan, giving us $1.5 billion a year for the next five years. But the measure contains so many conditions—and so many “derogatory remarks”—that all Pakistanis should feel “humiliated.” One condition of the increase in aid is that Pakistan must demonstrate that its military and intelligence organizations are not supporting extremists; another is that we must allow American investigators access to our nuclear scientists. The bill even insists that we revoke the passport of national hero Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan, whom the U.S. suspects of selling nuclear secrets to rogue states. But these are all internal matters about which the U.S. has no right to dictate. It’s obvious that “the Indian lobby,” so powerful in the U.S., had a hand in writing some of the offensive language. Pakistan should reject the aid. We don’t need a present wrapped in an insult.

It is galling to see the “extent of political leverage the superpower is able to exercise over us,” said Talat Masoon in the Islamabad News. But frankly, we don’t have much choice but to take the money. “Due to gross mismanagement, spread over years, Pakistan has ceased to be a viable state without foreign assistance.” Besides, the Kerry-Lugar bill is only trying to foster the kind of Pakistan that most of us want: a strong democracy not dominated by the military. Let’s just hope the unfortunate wording of the bill doesn’t “further fuel anti-Americanism” in Pakistan. Already, a majority of Pakistanis view the U.S. as the greatest threat to our security—greater even than our longtime enemy, India.

Why shouldn’t we criticize America? asked the Islamabad Nation. It failed to win its “so-called war on terror,” succeeding only in driving the Taliban into Pakistan. Now it is pelting our territory with bombs, killing and maiming our civilians. And the military assistance America is giving us is hardly a real help to our military—it’s merely counter­insurgency equipment intended to fight the Islamists, not the armor or planes we need to counter India. “For this puny amount of aid Pakistan has been totally destabilized and rent asunder.” No one should have any “doubts about the hostile U.S. intent toward this country.”

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The Americans really blew it, said Simon Tisdall in the London Guardian. “By linking the cash to tighter civilian control of Pakistan’s military, Washington was trying, clumsily,” to strengthen the government of President Asif Ali Zardari. But the effort backfired. Most Pakistanis now see Zardari as a sellout, a puppet of the U.S. The leader of the Pakistani Taliban, Hakimullah Mehsud, said in a recent video that his group would stop its terrorist activities against the Pakistani state “if the government stopped behaving like a U.S. lackey.” Right now, it looks like more Pakistanis agree with the Taliban than with their own government—and that’s a recipe for “civil war.”