A leading global think-thank has suggested that the United States must cut down its military aid to Pakistan and make it conditional if the latter fails to take appropriate action against terror groups that pose danger to Washington as well as the region.
According to the International Crisis Group (ICG), which undertakes research on violent conflict, role of the US is very important in creating pressure on Pakistan to make it rethink ‘its support to the Taliban's Quetta Shura and the Haqqani Network’.
In its first ‘Watch List 2017’ of the year, the think-tank said that Pakistan is unwilling to facilitate talks between Taliban and Afghanistan and continues to support proxies.
"This most notably is the case of Pakistan, whose relations with Afghanistan continue to be strained. Islamabad remains unwilling to facilitate talks between the Taliban and Kabul, and continues supporting its Afghan proxies, allowing them to recruit, fundraise, as well as plan and conduct operations from safe havens inside Pakistan," the report said.
"The US role will be central, including by conditioning continued military support to Islamabad on Pakistan working with Kabul to bring the insurgents to the negotiating table and rethinking its support to the Taliban's Quetta Shura and the Haqqani Network, now fully integrated into the insurgency's command structure," it added.
The US, it said, is best ‘placed to pressure Pakistan to reverse its support for Afghan proxies’.
Without naming Pakistan, a part of ICG's report -- titled 'Afghanistan: Growing Challenges’, said the country's neighbours ‘are more aggressively promoting what they perceive to be their own national security interests’.
It further noted that the growing ties between the land-locked nation and India are views as ‘provocative by Islamabad’.
“Therefore, it's down to the US to act against Pakistan to force it to abandon support to terror,” it said.
According to US government data last August, American civilian and military aid to Pakistan, once the third-largest recipient of US foreign assistance, is expected to total less than USD 1 billion in 2016, down from a recent peak of more than USD 3.5 billion in 2011.
The ICG report event said that the aid to the Islamic nation may come down even more in future with the Donald Trump administration hinting at a ‘tougher stance’.
Ahead of his Islamabad visit earlier this month, US National Security Adviser (NSA) Lt General HR McMaster had made strong observation against Pakistan’s continuous support to proxy forces and giving its leaders sanctuary.
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