Peeved over Pakistan’s failure to act decisively against the militant Haqqani Network that continues to mount terrorist attacks on Afghanistan from its soil, the United States is understood to have withheld for now a $300 million disbursement in military aid.
While there was no immediate official confirmation either from the Pentagon or the State Department, The Washington Post reported on Friday that Islamabad had recently been informed about the likely withholding of the final tranche of $300 million for this year in the absence of sufficient action against the Haqqanis.
US Defence Secretary Ashton Carter took the stand that the matter has not come to him yet for consideration.
“That hasn’t come to me yet, quite honestly. I’ve seen those reports. So let me get back to you when we’ve had a chance actually to consider that,” he told a questioner.
Release of military aid instalments to Pakistan from what is called the Coalition Support Fund can happen only after the US Defence Secretary certifies to Congress that Islamabad is going all-out against the Haqqani Network that continues to carry out lethal attacks against high-profile targets in Afghanistan.
Citing a senior Obama administration official, the Post said the US is concerned that the Haqqanis, earlier driven out from Miran Shah in North Waziristan, have reconstituted elsewhere in Pakistan from where they are plotting their attacks.
“That is dangerous to US forces, disruptive to progress between Afghanistan and Pakistan…. and goes against commitments that the Pakistani Government has made,” the official has been quoted as saying.
The US decision is likely to sour ties all over again “in the run-up to Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s scheduled visit to White House in October”, Dawn commented, but there has been no official word from the White House so far on the subject.
Although Pakistan has received “reimbursements” of as much as $13 billion since 2001 for its support to the US war operations in Afghanistan, the Congress subjected parts of this year’s release of $1.1 billion to a Pentagon certification that Islamabad is taking sufficient action against the dreaded insurgent group. Pakistan received the previous tranche of $337 million last month.
The hitch over the final tranche, first reported by Pakistan’s Dawn newspaper, comes in the wake of recent terror strikes in Kabul that prompted the Ashraf Ghani regime to voice concern over the nexus between Pakistani intelligence agencies and the Haqqani network.
At the State Department, spokesman John Kirby said spoke of Prime Minister Sharif’s commitment that Pakistan will not allow its soil to be used as a safe haven for militants to attack other countries. “There are common challenges in the region that we want to continue to work with Pakistan to combat,” he said.