A “fundamental change” is needed in the US-Pakistan relationship to stem the rise of extremism in Pakistan by rebuilding trust between the allies, analysts said on Thursday.
“We need a fundamental change of approach. We need to move far beyond a transactional approach,” David Kilcullen, who helped devise the troop “surge” strategy implemented in Iraq by General David Petraeus, told the House Armed Services Committee.
The US has long paid bills the Pakistani government submitted for counterterrorism operations but US President Barack Obama has vowed to set benchmarks for the first time on Pakistan’s progress in fighting extremism.
“Implementation of the strategy benchmarks to measure progress and accountability are all critical,” said the panel’s chairman, Democratic Representative Ike Skelton.
Republican lawmakers have resisted efforts to make aid dependent on specific performance criteria.
John McHugh, the ranking Republican member on the committee, said he was “concerned” that the benchmarks “are counterproductive and, in fact, cut against our overall, long-term strategic objectives in Pakistan.”
David Barno, a former commander of US forces in Afghanistan, said the US “cannot continue to provide Pakistan with assistance and hope that simply they will take action against extremists.”
Rather than the regional strategy advocated by the Obama administration to deal jointly with Afghanistan and Pakistan, Barno said the US should have a separate plan for Pakistan.
Pointing to “deep mistrust” between Pakistan and the US, Pakistani analyst Shuja Nawaz told the panel that “the US must ensure that its aid is not seen solely in support of its battle in Afghanistan and directed largely toward the border region of Pakistan.”
“This aid must not be seen by the people of Pakistan as short-term and aimed at propping up any single person, party or group,” said Nawaz, director of the South Asia Center at the Washington-based Atlantic Council.
Obama has placed nuclear-armed Pakistan at the center of the fight against al-Qaeda as the US dispatches 21,000 additional troops to Afghanistan under a new regional plan that focuses on flushing out militant sanctuaries in Pakistan and boosting civilian efforts to build up both Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Barno called Pakistan the “greatest global strategic challenge” currently facing the US and warned that “a meltdown of government and society in Pakistan would rapidly become the preeminent national security threat facing the United States.”
His comments came as White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said the Obama administration is “extremely concerned” about advances by the Taliban in Pakistan.
In a bid to expand their control, the Taliban have moved into the Buner district, some 100km from Islamabad. Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari signed a ceasefire deal with the militants earlier this month that imposes strict Islamic law in the northwestern Swat Valley.
It began as a satirical online project. Now millions of young people in India are flocking to it as an outlet for their frustration. A parody political party called the Cockroach Janta Party, with the insect as its symbol, has exploded across India’s social media by turning absurdist humor into protest. Memes and short videos mocking corruption, joblessness and political dysfunction have flooded social media sites, where millions of users are embracing the cockroach — known for its ability to survive harsh conditions — as a tongue-in-cheek symbol of endurance. The online movement’s rise has been unusually rapid. The Cockroach Janta Party (CJP)
SPEAKING OUT: After Siranudh Scott’s allegations surfaced, celebrities and public figures took to social media to share their own experiences of sexual misconduct and abuse A high-profile alleged sexual abuse case within a wealthy Thai beer brewing family has prompted a wave of painful accounts from survivors of unconnected abuse in the conservative nation. Siranudh Scott, a member of the billionaire Thai family that founded the ubiquitous Singha beer brand, posted an emotional video this month accusing his elder brother Sunit of repeatedly abusing him when he was a teenager. Sunit, who is in his 30s, later denied the allegations in a video posted online, but Singha parent Boonrawd dismissed him from his executive role with the company on Tuesday last week. “I felt I needed to speak
A Hong Kong astronaut is to join a Chinese space mission for the first time as part of a three-person crew launching today, as Beijing edges closer to its goal of landing people on the moon. The Tiangong space station — crewed by teams of three astronauts that are typically rotated every six months — is the crown jewel of China’s space program, boosted by billions in state investment in a bid to catch up with the US and Russia. The Shenzhou-23 mission is to blast off at 11:08pm from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwestern China, carrying three astronauts to
UPGRADED ALERT: The risk inside DR Congo is now considered ‘very high,’ while neighboring countries face a ‘high’ threat as the outbreak continues, the WHO said Ebola is spreading faster than responders can track it in eastern Congo, where health workers managed to follow up with barely one in five identified contacts in a single day. Authorities in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DR Congo) reported 83 confirmed infections, 746 suspected cases and 1,603 identified contacts as of Thursday, but health workers were able to follow up on only 342 contacts that day — about 21 percent of the total under monitoring — data released by the DR Congo Ministry of Public Health on Friday showed. The figures suggest the response is falling behind the outbreak itself,
RSS