U.S. faulted for lack of coherent Pakistan plan
The Government Accountability Office says the Bush administration has not monitored billions in aid to Pakistan and nor has it come up with a comprehensive plan to deal with terrorist groups there.
WASHINGTON — The Bush administration has not drafted a comprehensive plan to destroy a resurgent Al Qaeda or other militant groups in the tribal areas of Pakistan and has not adequately monitored the billions in U.S. taxpayer dollars sent to the Pakistani government to combat the groups, according to a sharply critical report by an independent government watchdog agency issued Thursday.
The Government Accountability Office said the administration's effort has been so ineffective that the U.S. ambassador to Pakistan has resorted to drafting her own plan for the largely lawless rural region because no one in Washington sent one.
Meanwhile, the tribal region, which borders Afghanistan, has become such a haven for Al Qaeda and other Islamic extremist groups that it now poses what may be the greatest terrorist threat to Americans both at home and abroad, the GAO report says, citing recent testimony from top U.S. officials.
A number of private sector and government agencies, including the Sept. 11 commission in 2004, have called for a comprehensive plan for fighting terrorist threats from the tribal areas, according to the nonpartisan GAO, which is the investigative arm of Congress. Such a plan was also mandated by congressional legislation in 2007, and one reason that the National Counterterrorism Center, or NCTC, was created in 2004, the GAO report says.
But the NCTC, the White House's National Security Council and other executive branch departments have never developed a plan that covers all elements of national power -- diplomatic, military, intelligence, development, economic and law enforcement support, GAO auditors found.
The GAO report also says that $5.8 billion of the $10.5 billion in U.S. aid to Pakistan from 2002 to 2007 was spent on operations in the tribal areas and that 96% of that funding reimbursed Pakistan for military operations that have proved largely unsuccessful.
Other U.S. officials and outside experts have reached similar conclusions regarding what they call lax oversight of American counter-terrorism aid to Pakistan, saying much of it has been used for military hardware better suited for its decades-old conflict with neighbor India than against small and mobile militant forces hiding out in mountain redoubts.
But the GAO report goes further, saying that virtually no steps were taken in Washington to assess how the funds were being spent, even as formal U.S. intelligence assessments warned that Al Qaeda was regrouping.
