'S Asia poses biggest threat to US'

An influential US lawmaker, who heads the Congressional Committee that has jurisdiction over matters pertaining to the subcontinent, has warned that South Asia poses the biggest terrorist threat to the United States.

Congressman Gary L Ackerman, New York Democrat, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on the Middle East and South Asia, declared, "South Asia is arguably the place from which America faces the greatest terrorist threat."

At a hearing he convened titled, US Foreign Assistance to South Asia: Is There a Strategy to Go With All That Money, he said, "It was in Afghanistan that Al Qaeda plotted and carried out the attacks of 9/11. It is in the tribal areas of Pakistan where Al Qaeda and the Taliban have reconstituted themselves and from where they attack our forces, as well as those of both Afghanistan and Pakistan."'

"Yet since the beginning of the year there has been a series of reports all which suggest the United States has no overall strategy for dealing with Afghanistan, Pakistan or the terrorist threat that emanates from both," he said.

Ackerman said in the case of Pakistan, the Government Accountability Office, the watchdog agency of the US Congress had found that, "The United States has not met its national security goals to destroy the terrorist threat and close the safe haven in Pakistan's FATA (Federally Administered Tribal Areas) region."

In a stinging rebuke of the Bush administration, he said, "While the administration does not seem very adept when it comes to strategy, either having one or implementing one, the Bush administration is very good at spending money, lots of it and mostly on guns."

"In terms of foreign assistance, and even in terms of US policy," Ackerman said, "South Asia was a backwater until September 2001. From that point forward, US assistance and attention to the region sky-rocketed. Since America was attacked, South Asia has become second only to the Middle East in terms of US military assistance."

The lawmaker said over the last six years, the US "has spent $15.6 billion on training for the Afghan National Army and Police, yet the army is still incapable of operating on its own and the police are so bad that most Afghans are more afraid of them than they are of the Taliban."

"In Pakistan, over the same six year period," Ackerman said, "The Bush administration has provided $1.5 billion in Foreign military Financing and $5.56 billion in Coalition support Funds -- the former to buy radars, and anti-submarine planes to track the non-existent al Qaeda air force and navy and the latter disappeared into the Pakistani Treasury for unspecified services allegedly rendered."

Ackerman said that yet Pakistani officials complain, "and have done so to me directly, that they lack the capabilities and training to conduct effective counter-insurgency operations."

Thus, he said, "We shouldn't be too surprised that the GAO supports that claim and found that: 'Pakistani security forces lack counterinsurgency capability;' that the Pakistan Army 'is neither structured nor trained for counterinsurgency;' and that 'serious equipment and training deficiencies exist in the Frontier Corps."

Ackerman asked, "What did the Bush administration spend all that money on? " and added, "If the situation weren't so dire and our need for success not so absolute, I'd suggest that additional appropriations to security forces in either nation was throwing good money after bad."

According to the lawmaker, who also pointed to the other nations in South Asia that are "in various stages of civil war, reconciliation, or government transition," India was the only country in the region which was "a giant sea of relative tranquility surrounded by chaos and instability."