US pledges more cooperation with Pakistan on aid programs, even as money drips in slowly

US faces hurdles in aid spending in NW Pakistan

ISLAMABAD — The U.S. is spending far less than it wants on developing Pakistan’s Taliban-riddled tribal areas, but expects to ramp up its projects there and throughout the country while relying more on Pakistani institutions to handle billions more in aid dollars pledged for the coming years, officials said Wednesday.

Of $750 million promised over five years for the impoverished tribal areas, only about $150 million has been spent since the program took off in 2007, said Robert Wilson, the mission director for the U.S. Agency for International Development in Pakistan.

Security concerns in the tribal belt — where the Taliban and al-Qaida have sanctuaries, the army is waging multiple offensives, and the government has little presence — have hindered U.S. aid efforts, as have bureaucratic hassles in Washington and Islamabad.

In fact, the U.S. rarely discusses its tribal area programs in detail because labeling specific projects as American-funded could make them targets for militants. The Americans also have to rely on local partners to carry out the projects because foreigners are heavily restricted from the tribal zone, making monitoring the projects difficult.

Still, improving the lives of Pakistanis living in the tribal belt is considered crucial to reducing militancy in the region — and lowering the risk of a terrorist attack on the U.S. being planned there.

During a press conference Wednesday, Wilson confirmed that programs under way in the regions include road construction, building wells, flood protection projects and other small-scale “community-building” efforts. The U.S. also has spent millions trying to build the capacity of government bodies tasked with administering the tribal areas.

As the U.S. prepares to pump in $7.5 billion over the next five years in aid programs targeting the whole country, it will prioritize signature projects in areas such as water, agriculture and energy, said Rajiv Shah, the new U.S. AID administrator. Those intertwined sectors have suffered in recent years in this South Asian country, where some cities lack electricity up to 12 hours a day.

Shah said the U.S. intends to rely less on American-based private contractors to carry out the programs and more on Pakistani government and other local groups, such as non-profit organizations. But building the capacity of those groups to responsibly spend large influxes of U.S.-taxpayer money will be a top priority, Shah said.

“Our commitment is genuine and will be very long term,” Shah said.

The U.S. isn’t just relying on humanitarian aid to reduce militancy in the tribal areas.

It frequently fires missiles at militants hiding in the region, including one strike Wednesday that intelligence officials said killed at least four suspected insurgents in the Anbar Shaga area of North Waziristan tribal region.

North Waziristan is home to a number of militant organizations bent on fighting U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan.

At least three suspected militants also were wounded in Wednesday’s strike, said the two Pakistani officials on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak on the record. The militants apparently stopped the car to say their prayers.

Pakistan publicly protests the missile strikes as violations of its sovereignty, but it is widely believed to share intelligence for at least some of the strikes. The U.S. rarely acknowledges the covert missile program, but American officials have in the past confirmed it has eliminated several top al-Qaida and Pakistani Taliban leaders.

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Associated Press writer Rasool Dawar contributed to this report from Mir Ali.