Rescuing US assistance programme
By Shahid Javed Burki
Monday, 26 Dec, 2011
WILL Pakistan be able to go alone if it was shunned by the United States? What will be the cost to America of a breakdown in relations with Pakistan? These questions were asked by a report issued recently by Woodrow Wilson Centre, a Washington-based think-tank. Titled Aiding Without Abetting: Making US Civilian Assistance to Pakistan Work for Both Sides.
The report was the work of a group of 17 development experts, some of them of Pakistani origin. As the title suggests the report looked at the impact on both Pakistan and the United States if the Kerry-LugarBerman (KLB) act signed into law by President Barack Obama in October 2009 did not deliver on its promise. The KLB was developed to satisfy Pakistan`s quest for a relationship with the United States that was not subject to Washington`s political whims.
In the work done by me for the report I estimated that the impact of a total shutdown of American economic assistance to Pakistan will be minimal. It will push down the rate of growth by no more than 0.14 per cent a year. However, a breakdown of relations will have consequences for other financial flows to the country.
America`s net aid flows may not amount to a great deal but its influence on other sources of finance could be significant.
Pakistan`s decision to walk out of the IMF programme will put a serious squeeze on the government`s financial situation. Large repayments to the Fund will begin in early 2012. Unless the country taps other sources, these payments will very quickly deplete the foreign exchange reserves. It is in this environment that American aid to Pakistan should be viewed. This wasthe context in which Woodrow Wilson group wrote its report.
The report`s 28 recommendations could be divided into four parts. The first deals with the fragility of the situation in Pakistan. The report underscored the point that while Pakistan could fail as a state, it was too large a country and too strategically placed to be allowed to fall apart.
In this context the report looked carefully at the country`s current circumstances. `Pakistan already a fragile state, faces a tidal wave of internal stresses that could belie the myth that the country always muddles though. This looming `tsunami` is centred in `settled` or `main` Pakistan where most Pakistanis live, and not in the tribal belt bordering Afghanistan,` wrote the report`s authors.
The crisis the country was facing was fueled by a number of circumstances. These included economic, political, and social divisions that have been complicated by Islamization.
There are socioeconomic pressures building from below after decades of dominance and neglect by a narrow elite in the military and civilian establishments that retains a monopoly over the best education, agricultural land, urban real estate, and jobs and access to scarce capital. A legacy of 20 years of zigzagging policies that have left the country politically and economically underdeveloped and un-reformed, The current situation is precarious.
Added to this is a youth wave that is about to engulf the urban areas.
Half of Pakistan`s 180 million people are 21 years old or younger. Rural inmigrants were piling into slums that often lack access to clean water, basic health care and reasonably well paying jobs.
Given a very poor domestic resource situation, Pakistan for the timebeing has to rely on external assistance that would be sustained over a period of time and would eventually allow the country to stand on its own feet. That was what the KLB was meant to achieve.
The KLB act was divided into two parts or `titles`. The first title spelt out the democratic, economic and development assistance, the second dealt with security assistance. There were no programme specific conditions attached to the flow of assistance under the first title but the resources under the second title came with a number of conditions related to Pakistan`s participation in the struggle against Islamic extremism.
The worsening of relations between the two countries seems to have persuaded a significant number of American legislators to ask the executive branch of the government to attach stringent conditions to the aid that was promised to the country $ 7.5 billion over a five year period. In other words, there is an effort in Congress to attach to economic aid the same kind of conditions that were used for security assistance.
The report argued against such an approach. The Wilson group recommended that the United States `should continue to implement KLB without adding securityor econom ic-related-reformconditions but advocate reforms. [It should press] Pakistan to return to an arrangement with the International Monetary Fund`.
The Woodrow Wilson Center group also recognised that the Americans were poorly managing their aid programme in Pakistan. Its report had a series of recommendations on improving both the design of the programme as well as its execution. It suggested that Washington should `continue budgetary support for theBenazir Income Support Programme` but do so only `if it is tightened to exclude political manipulation and move beneficiaries toward eventual independence.
An effort should be made to `partner with local civil society organizations to improve input from aid beneficiaries, local citizen watchdog groups, and impacted populations throughout the life of a programme.
Recognising that the current programme was being run by people who stayed in Pakistan for short periods on account of security concerns, did not always of good knowledge of development issues and looked constantly back at Washington for guidance, the Wilson Center recommended that there should also be an effort by the American officials managing the aid programme to `recruit more seasoned technical experts, extend Pakistan tours, and devolve authority and accountability.
The Wilson group`s final set of recommendations concerned the building of capacity to handle the making of public policy as well as implementing aided programmes. It suggested that one of the objectives followed should be to `make vocational training the main US contribution to education in Pakistan.` It also recommended the aid programme should `help fill Pakistan`s government`s most critical expertise at the federal and provincial levels but with `payback` conditions for beneficiaries.
The Wilson Centre, in other words, argued for a serious mid-course correction for the KLB programme. The failure of KLB will have consequences for Pakistan`s relations with other countries in the West. Public opinion in many countries that Pakistan once counted as its friends was rapidly souring. Without support from the public, policymakers in countries such as Britain, Canada, France and Germany will not be able to provide significant amounts of assistance to Pakistan.
One example of the growing impatience with Pakistan in a country other than the United States is indicated by an editorial in National Post, a conservative Canadian newspaper, that called the authorities in Ottawa to stop aiding Pakistan.
`Every dollar that we spend on civil projects in Pakistan is another dollar that the country`s security establishment has available to it for providing material support to the Taliban and the Haqqani network in the Afghanistan-Pakistan borderlands.
In replacing Pakistan on its country-of-focus list [the Canadian International Development Agency] can pick from plenty of other countries that are not supporting the terrorists who are planting the roadside bombs that kill our troops,` wrote the newspaper. The collapse of the KerryLugar-Berman effort therefore would have serious consequences for Pakistan. It would spread discomfort about Pakistan beyond the United States.
Rescuing US assistance programme | ePaper | DAWN.COM