US aid cut as relations get more embittered

Pakistan’s continued support for resurgent militant groups hostile to the United States, coupled with warming US military and business relations with India, is sharply diminishing Islamabad’s strategic importance as an ally to Washington, US military, diplomatic, and intelligence officials and outside experts said.

The US has cut both military and economic aid to Pakistan sharply in recent years, reflecting mounting frustration among a growing number of officials with the nuclear-armed country’s support for the Taliban in neighbouring Afghanistan.

That frustration has dogged US-Pakistan ties for more than a decade, but has spiked anew as the militant Islamic group has advanced in parts of Afghanistan that US and allied forces once helped to secure, US officials and analysts say.

‘‘We’re seeing a very definitive and very sharp reorienting of US policy in South Asia away from Afghanistan-Pakistan and more towards India,’’ said Michael Kugelman, a South Asia expert with the Woodrow Wilson Centre, a Washington think-tank.

The US relationship with Pakistan has long been a transactional one marked by mutual mistrust, marriages of convenience, and mood swings.

The long-standing US frustration with Pakistan’s refusal to stop supporting the Taliban, especially within the US military and intelligence community, is now over-riding President Barack Obama’s administration’s desire to avoid renewed military involvement in Afghanistan, as well as concerns that China could capitalise on fraying ties between Washington and Islamabad, the US officials said.

Obama said last month he would keep US troop levels in Afghanistan at 8400, shelving plans to cut the force in half by year end.

American civilian and military aid to Pakistan, once the thirdlargest recipient of US foreign assistance, is expected to total less than US$1 billion (NZ$1.36b) in 2016, down from a recent peak of more than $3.5b in 2011, according to US government data.

The decrease also comes amid budget constraints and shifting global priorities for the US, including fighting Islamic State militants, a resurgent Russia and an increasingly assertive China.

In March, Republican Senator Bob Corker, chairman of the Senate foreign relations committee, said he would seek to bar $430 million in US funding for Islamabad’s purchase of fighter jets. Earlier this month, Secretary of Defence Ash Carter refused to authorise $300 million in military reimbursements to Pakistan. The approval of such funding has been mostly routine in the past.