U.S. Withholding $800 Million in Aid to Pakistan as Ties Reach ’Low Point’

The U.S. is withholding about $800 million in military aid to Pakistan over actions by the nuclear- armed country since the U.S. raid that killed Osama bin Laden, said White House Chief of Staff Bill Daley.
“They’ve taken some steps that have given us reason to pause on some of the aid which we’re giving to the

military, and we’re trying to work through that,” Daley said yesterday on ABC’s “This Week” program. “Until we get through these difficulties, we’ll hold back some of the money that the American taxpayers have committed to give.”
After crises this year worsened long-standing tensions, the countries’ relationship is “at its low point” following the May 2 U.S. raid that killed the al-Qaeda leader in a Pakistani army garrison town, Admiral Mike Mullen, the chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, said in an interview with the U.S. military-affairs website This Week in Defense News that was broadcast yesterday.
In those 10 weeks, Pakistan has arrested an army major for allegedly helping the Central Intelligence Agency target bin Laden, according to U.S. officials cited by the New York Times and other newspapers, and has expelled more than 100 U.S. military personnel.
Recent criticisms of the Pakistani military by U.S. officials cited by the Times amount to “a direct attack” on Pakistan’s security, its armed forces spokesman, Major General Athar Abbas, said in an interview two days ago, Reuters reported.
Anger and Humiliation
The announced aid cutoff may deepen “a feeling of anger and humiliation” that political analyst and retired Pakistani army Lieutenant General Talat Masood says has grown in the country’s military this year. Tensions have risen steadily since January, when a CIA contract employee, Raymond Davis, shot dead two Pakistani men he said were trying to rob him in Lahore.
“We have not received any formal intimation or letter from the U.S. informing us” of a decision to withhold aid, Abbas said by phone to Bloomberg News. He said Pakistan’s operations against Taliban guerrillas in the country’s northwest will be unaffected because the country has conducted them since 2009 “without any external support whatsoever.”
The New York Times, which reported the deferral of military aid earlier, said the amount being withheld represents more than a third of the $2 billion in security assistance given to Pakistan. It includes about $300 million to cover some of the costs of posting more than 100,000 Pakistani soldiers along the Afghan border as well as training assistance and military hardware, the newspaper reported.
Withholding Visas
A full description of the U.S. assistance on hold is classified, said Navy Captain John Kirby, a spokesman for Mullen. Night-vision devices, helicopter spare parts, radios, and equipment to counter guerrilla-made bombs are delayed because Pakistan is withholding visas for U.S. personnel required to assist with them, Kirby said in an e-mail yesterday.
Since the bin Laden raid by U.S. Navy commandos, American officials have questioned whether some in the Pakistani military were helping to hide the al-Qaeda leader, and whether Pakistan’s investigation of the incident may be aimed more at those who might have helped the U.S. find him. The U.S. didn’t notify the Pakistani government before the raid out of fear that someone might tip off bin Laden.
“Obviously there’s still a lot of pain that the political system in Pakistan is feeling by virtue of the raid,” Daley said. “Something that the president felt strongly about. We have no regrets over.”
Support for Taliban
Another irritant in relations is Pakistan’s covert support for the Taliban and allied groups fighting U.S. troops in Afghanistan, say analysts such as Imtiaz Gul, chairman of the Center for Research and Security Studies in Islamabad. “Pakistan is tied in to these groups because it wants to use them to gain influence over Afghanistan in coming years,” and thus block its foe, India, from gaining sway there, Gul said by phone last week.
Mullen said April 20 that Pakistan’s main military spy agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate, still “has a longstanding relationship” with a Taliban faction led by Jalaluddin Haqqani that a recent Defense Department report called “the most significant threat” to U.S. forces in eastern Afghanistan.
Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin said in May the U.S. should curtail more than $1 billion in annual economic aid to Pakistan unless the Islamabad government stops harboring groups such as Haqqani’s.
Mullen said July 7 there are indications that suggest the Pakistani government sanctioned last month’s abduction and killing of Saleem Shahzad, 40, a journalist who had written about the infiltration of militants in the military.
Daley echoed Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s statement last month that U.S. interests give it no option but to work with Pakistan. “The Pakistani relationship is difficult, but it must be made to work over time,” Daley said on ABC.
Pakistan has been “an important ally in the fight on terrorism,” he said.

Pakistan shuts down U.S. 'intelligence fusion' cells

Pakistan also tells the U.S. to cut back its troops in the country, in a move amid deepening mistrust after the U.S. raid to kill Osama bin Laden and a CIA contractor's shooting of two Pakistani men. Joints Chiefs Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen heads to Pakistan for talks. In a clear sign of Pakistan's deepening mistrust of the United States, Islamabad has told the Obama administration to reduce the number of U.S. troops in the country and has moved to close three military intelligence liaison centers,

setting back American efforts to eliminate insurgent sanctuaries in largely lawless areas bordering Afghanistan, U.S. officials said. The liaison centers, also known as intelligence fusion cells, in Quetta and Peshawar are the main conduits for the United States to share satellite imagery, target data and other intelligence with Pakistani ground forces conducting operations against militants, including Taliban fighters who slip into Afghanistan to attack U.S. and allied forces. U.S. special operations units have relied on the three facilities, two in Peshawar and one in Quetta, to help coordinate operations on both sides of the border, senior U.S. officials said. The U.S. units are now being withdrawn from all three sites, the officials said, and the centers are being shut down. It wasn't immediately clear whether the steps are permanent. Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, flew Thursday to Pakistan for a hastily arranged meeting with Gen. Ashfaq Kayani, the head of the Pakistani army. A Pentagon official said the two will probably discuss Pakistan's demands for a smaller U.S. military presence. The closures, which have not been publicly announced, remove U.S. advisors from the front lines of the war against militant groups in Pakistan. U.S. Army Gen. David Petraeus spearheaded the effort to increase the U.S. presence in the border areas two years ago out of frustration with Pakistan's failure to control the militants. The collapse of the effort will probably hinder the Obama administration's efforts to gradually push Pakistan toward conducting ground operations against insurgent strongholds in North Waziristan and elsewhere, U.S. officials said. The Pakistani decision has not affected the CIA's ability to launch missiles from drone aircraft in northwest Pakistan. Those flights, which the CIA has never publicly acknowledged, receive assistance from Pakistan through intelligence channels separate from the fusion centers, current and former officials said. The move to close the three facilities, plus a recent written demand by Pakistan to reduce the number of U.S. military personnel in the country from approximately 200, signals mounting anger in Pakistan over a series of incidents. In January, Raymond Davis, a CIA contractor, shot dead two men in Lahore who he said were attempting to rob him. He was arrested on charges of murder but was released and left the country in mid-March, prompting violent protests in several cities. Soon after, Pakistan ordered several dozen U.S. special operations trainers to leave the country in what U.S. officials believe was retaliation for the Davis case, according to a senior U.S. military officer. Then, on May 2, five U.S. helicopters secretly entered Pakistani airspace and a team of U.S. Navy SEALs killed Osama bin Laden and four others at a compound in Abbottabad, a military garrison city near the capital, Islamabad. The raid deeply embarrassed Pakistan's military and inflamed anti-U.S. sentiment across the country. Javed Hussain, a retired Pakistani brigadier, blamed the decision to close the three intelligence centers on the mistrust that has plagued U.S.-Pakistani relations in recent months. Washington's decision to carry out the raid against Bin Laden without informing Pakistan's security establishment brought that mistrust to a new low, he said. "There is lot of discontent within Pakistan's armed forces with regard to the fact they've done so much in the war on terror, and yet they are not trusted," Hussain said. "Particularly after the Abbottabad raid … the image of the armed forces in the eyes of the people has gone down. And they hold the U.S. responsible." The two intelligence centers in Peshawar were set up in 2009, one with the Pakistani army's 11th Corps and the other with the paramilitary Frontier Corps, which are both headquartered in the city, capital of the troubled Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province. The third fusion cell was opened last year at the Pakistani army's 12th Corps headquarters in Quetta, a city long used by Taliban fighters to mount attacks in Afghanistan's southern provinces. U.S. troops have staffed the Quetta facility only intermittently, U.S. officials said. The closures have effectively stopped the U.S. training of the Frontier Corps, a force that American officials had hoped could help halt infiltration of Taliban and other militants into Afghanistan, a senior U.S. military officer said. The Frontier Corps' facility in Peshawar, staffed by a handful of U.S. special operations personnel, was located at Bala Hissar, an old fort, according to a classified U.S. Embassy cable from 2009 that was recently made public by WikiLeaks. The cable, which was first disclosed by Pakistan's Dawn newspaper, hinted at U.S. hopes that special operations teams would be allowed to join the paramilitary units and the Special Services Group, a Pakistani army commando unit, in operations against militants. "We have created Intelligence Fusion cells with embedded U.S. Special Forces with both the SSG and Frontier Corps" at Bala Hissar, Peshawar, the 2009 cable says. "But we have not been given Pakistani military permission to accompany the Pakistani forces on deployments as yet. Through these embeds, we are assisting the Pakistanis [to] collect and coordinate existing intelligence assets." Another U.S. Embassy cable said that a "U.S. Special Operations Command Force" was providing the Frontier Corps with "imagery, target packages and operational planning" in a campaign against Taliban insurgents in Lower Dir, an area of northwest Pakistan considered an insurgent stronghold. In September 2009, then U.S. ambassador, Anne W. Patterson, wrote in another classified message that the fusion cells provided "enhanced capacity to share real-time intelligence with units engaged in counter-insurgency operations" and were "a significant step forward for the Pakistan military." The intelligence fusion cell in Quetta was not nearly as active as the facilities in Peshawar, current and former U.S. officials said. Pakistan has long resisted pressure to intensify operations against Taliban militants in Quetta. The city, capital of Baluchistan, is outside the tribal area, which explains Pakistan's reluctance to permit a permanent U.S. military presence, a U.S. official said. Despite the ongoing tensions, Pakistani authorities have agreed to allow a CIA team to inspect the compound where Bin Laden was killed, according to a U.S. official. The Pakistanis have signaled they will allow U.S. intelligence analysts to examine documents and other material that Pakistani authorities found at the site. A U.S. official briefed on intelligence matters said the reams of documents and electronic data that the SEALs seized at the compound have sparked "dozens" of intelligence investigations and have produced new insights into schisms among Al Qaeda leaders.

Rebels Say Libyan Troops Are Leaving Misurata

Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi’s forces began to withdraw from the besieged western city of Misurata on Saturday, a rebel spokesman said, the first stage of a plan announced by the government to turn the fighting over to tribal supporters.

Rebel leaders in the east claimed victory, and fighters fired automatic weapons in the air and supporters blared car horns in celebration here in the provisional rebel capital. But the news of a withdrawal could not be independently confirmed, and there were still reports of heavy fighting in Misurata on Saturday.

Even if the government follows through with the plan it laid out publicly on Friday, it remained far from clear whether the tribes would take up the fight. It was also unclear to what extent the army was forced out militarily by the rebels or whether their withdrawal was a temporary diversion of forces to the Tunisian border, where the rebels seized a strategic crossing last week.

Libya’s deputy foreign minister, Khaled Kaim, said Friday that the army had been given an ultimatum to put down the rebellion in Misurata, or to withdraw and leave the battle to tribal fighters. Mr. Kaim said the tribes would either negotiate a settlement with the rebels, or fight them instead of the military.

Still, a siege that has pounded the city for nearly two months and taken hundreds of lives appeared to have been broken, and the rebels took the news as a defeat for Colonel Qaddafi’s forces.

“What we are hearing from Misurata is very positive,” said Jalil el-Gallal, a spokesman for the rebels’ Transitional National Council, their de facto government here in Benghazi.

Government soldiers captured in Misurata on Saturday said they had been in the process of retreating when they were taken by rebel forces. “We have been told to withdraw,” a wounded Libyan soldier, Khaled Dorman, told Reuters. “We were told to withdraw yesterday.”

However, Agence France-Presse quoted a doctor at the main Hikma Hospital as saying that fighting was continuing and that 10 people had been killed on Saturday. Reuters said it was unclear how far the Libyan Army had withdrawn.

Mr. Gallal denounced the move as an attempt by the Qaddafi government to provoke a tribal conflict. “Qaddafi is trying to project the view they are leaving it to the tribes, which is a great concern to us,” he said. “It is a familiar tactic that he has used for a long time, but I think people understand now that he wants to start a tribal war.”

Mr. Gallal said that much of the long-range artillery used by the Libyan military against rebel forces in Misurata had been based in neighboring towns like Tarhuna and Zliten, where rival tribes are based, in an effort to stir up tribal animosity.

“It won’t work,” he said. “Any city he will withdraw from he won’t be able to control again. It’s suicidal on his part.”

Rebel forces were also reported still in control of a border crossing with Tunisia that they had seized on Thursday, according to journalists who were there on Saturday. Libyan authorities claimed to have retaken the crossing. Control of a border with Tunisia would greatly aid the rebellion in Libya’s western mountains, which are 600 miles or more from rebel positions in the east.

In eastern Libya, however, there has been little military activity as a stalemate persists, with the front line between the main rebel forces and pro-government militias still somewhere between Ajdabiya and Brega, as it has been for several weeks.

In Washington, Pentagon officials said Saturday that an armed Predator drone had carried out its first strike on ground targets in Libya since President Obama’s order last week deploying the weapon to the NATO mission. Officials declined to disclose the target.

On Friday, the top American military officer, Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the situation was headed toward a stalemate, especially in the east. “At the same time, we’ve attritted somewhere between 30 percent and 40 percent of his main ground forces, his ground force capabilities,” Admiral Mullen said during a visit to American troops in Iraq on Friday. “Those will continue to go away over time.”