From $700mn to $150mn: US likely to slash aid to Pak

Washington losing patience with old ally

The US is likely to drastically reduce Pakistan’s security-related aid, from $700 million this year to $150 million next year, an indication, experts say, that the country may finally be giving up on its difficult ally’s ability to walk the talk on counter-terrorism.

The defence spending bill for 2019, headed for President Donald Trump’s desk for his signature, perhaps as early as next week, does not link future payments of security-related aid to Pakistan to the country’s counter-terrorism efforts as had become the practice in recent years, going back to at least 2015. Missing from the current document are words and phrases that had come to be associated with financial assistance to Islamabad such as the “Haqqani Network”, “safe havens” and “counter-terrorism”.

But Pakistan will have to pay for this reprieve, should it think of it as such, with drastically reduced security-related funding. That could be as low as

$150 million, according to experts who have followed US funding for Pakistan, a non-NATO ally that is now called by most American officials and lawmakers a “duplicitous” ally or “frenemy”.

The National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) 2019, as the

defence spending bill is known, cuts the flow of defence-related security aid for Pakistan, abulk of which earlier went under the Coalition Support Fund (CSF) as reimbursement for expenses incurred in support of the US-led international coalition in Afghanistan.