Obama proposes $1.2 bn aid for Pak Army

The News - WASHINGTON: US President Barack Obama on Monday proposed $1.2 billion in funding next year to help train and equip Pakistani security forces to fight Taliban militants.

Created by the US Congress last year, the Pakistan Counter-insurgency Capability Fund set aside some $700 million in 2009 to train and equip the Pakistan Army and other security forces.

The president also requested $1.322 billion for Pakistan from what is known as the Economic Support Fund (ESF), a House Democratic aide, who had seen detailed budget documents, told Reuters. 

This fund promotes economic and political stability in strategically important regions where the United States has special security interests. That’s a proposed increase of $289 million, or not quite a third, in economic aid from that fund to Pakistan from a year earlier, and is consistent with the US promises to step up economic aid to Islamabad.

Economic support funds are provided on a grant basis and are available for many economic purposes, like infrastructure and development projects. The House aide did not know how the new funds would be spent in Pakistan. The administration also asked Congress to approve $296 million for Pakistan from a programme called the Foreign Military Financing, the House aide said. These are grants given to foreign governments to finance the purchase of American-made weapons, services and training. 

Obama also proposed another two years of hefty spending in Iraq and Afghanistan, seeking the approval of the US Congress for about $160 billion this year and again in fiscal 2011 to pay war costs.

The war spending proposed by Obama is only slightly less than in each of the last two years of the administration of President George Bush and carries considerable political perilfor the Democratic president, who took office in 2009.

Obama announced in December he was adding 30,000 more US troops to the Afghan war effort to join the 68,000 already fighting the Taliban. To pay for this surge, Obama on Monday asked for an additional $33 billion in the fiscal 2010, on top of about $130 billion that the Congress has already approved for the Afghanistan and Iraq wars through Sept 30, 2010.

His proposed budget will also include a request for $159.3 billion for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq for the fiscal 2011 that begins on Oct 1. Obama’s budget released on Monday also includes a “placeholder” estimate of $50 billion for the year 2012 and beyond. But the budget documents of the Obama administration noted that these estimates do not reflect any policy decisions about specific military or intelligence operations. So, those decisions are yet to come.