After the United States has spent more than $5 billion in a largely failed effort to bolster the Pakistani military effort against al Qaeda and the Taliban, some American officials now acknowledge that there were too few controls over the money. The strategy to improve the Pakistani military, they said, needs to be completely revamped.

Bush administration and military officials said they believed that much of the American money was not making its way to frontline Pakistani units. Money has been diverted to help finance weapons systems designed to counter India, not al Qaeda or the Taliban, the officials said, adding that the US has paid tens of millions of dollars in inflated Pakistani reimbursement claims for fuel, ammunition and other costs.

The $5 billion was provided through a programme known as Coalition Support Funds, which reimburses Pakistan for conducting military operations to fight terrorism. Under a separate programme, Pakistan receives $300 million per year in traditional American military financing that pays for equipment and training.

Pakistan’s military relies on Washington for roughly a quarter of its entire $4 billion budget.
Early last week, six years after President Bush first began pouring billions of dollars into Pakistan’s military after the attacks of September 11, 2001, the Pentagon completed a review that produced a classified plan to help the Pakistani military build an effective counterinsurgency force.

The plan, which now goes to the US Embassy in Islamabad to carry out, seeks to focus American military aid toward specific equipment and training for Pakistani forces operating in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas where Qaeda leaders and local militants hold sway.

This spring, American intelligence officials said the Qaeda leaders hiding in Pakistan’s tribal areas had reconstituted their command structure and have become increasingly active. Backed by al Qaeda, pro-Taliban militants have expanded their influence from the remote border regions into the more populated parts of Pakistan this year and mounted a record number of suicide bombings in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

The United States since 2001 has deposited more than $5 billion in reimbursements into the Pakistani government’s general budget account, the largest single portion of some $10 billion in aid to Islamabad in that time. Also included in that larger amount is $1.9 billion in security assistance, which Pakistan has used in part to buy new radios for troops, night-vision goggles and refurbished Cobra attack helicopters.

Inflated invoices

American officials say they believe that some of the invoices are inflated by as much as 30 percent.
“The claims that they submit are probably in some cases exaggerated and the amounts inflated,” said the senior American military official who had reviewed the program. “When it comes to reimbursement for the cost of food, bunker material, barbed wire fences, those are much more susceptible to inflation.”