A Senate committee outraged over Pakistan imprisoning a doctor who led the U.S. to Usama bin Laden engaged Thursday in some dollar diplomacy by voting to cut aid to the country by $33 million.
The amount equals $1 million for every year of Dr. Shakil Afridi’s 33-year-long sentence for high treason.
The doctor ran a vaccination program for the CIA to collect DNA and verify bin Laden’s presence at the compound in Abbottabad where U.S. commandos found and killed the Al Qaeda leader in May 2011.
“All of us are outraged at the imprisonment and sentence of some 33 years, virtually a death sentence to the doctor,” said Arizona Sen. John McCain, the ranking Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee. “It frankly outraged all of us.”
The punitive move came on top of deep reductions the Appropriations Committee already had made to President Obama’s budget request for Pakistan, a reflection of the growing congressional anger over its cooperation in combating terrorism. The overall foreign aid budget for next year had slashed more than half of the proposed assistance and threatened further reductions if Islamabad failed to open overland supply routes to U.S.-led NATO forces in Afghanistan.
Pushing aside any diplomatic talk, Republicans and Democrats criticized Pakistan a day after the conviction in Pakistan of Dr. Afridi.
The United States has called for Afridi’s release, arguing that he was acting in the interest of the U.S. and Pakistan.
“We need Pakistan, Pakistan needs us, but we don’t need Pakistan double-dealing and not seeing the justice in bringing Usama bin Laden to an end,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., who pushed for the additional cut in aid.
He called Pakistan “a schizophrenic ally,” helping the United States at one turn, but then aiding the Haqqani network which has claimed responsibility for several attacks on Americans. The group also has ties to al-Aida and the Taliban.
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One Response
The problem is that the democratically elected government of Pakistan is not fanatically Islamic and is trying to help the US against the Taliban (and since the elections were fair, presumably they speak for most Pakistanis). The military is run by fanatic Muslims and ignore the civilian leadership, and on its own has helped the Taliban, al Queda and supported terrorist attacks against India (such as the attack on the Indian parliamanet and the attack on Bombay in which several Jews were killed). In might be tempting to suggest the US should simply ally itself with India, and get rid of Pakistan once and for all, and the Pakistani military activities would be a rather open “casus belli”, but most of the people in Pakistan are opposed to the fanatics, so we would be wiping out a leading concentration of pro-western Muslims.