our friend pakistan
Pakistan is one of the largest recipients of U.S. security assistance.
* The United States has pledged $1.5 billion of Foreign Military Financing to Pakistan from 2005-2009.
* The United States supports Pakistan’s defense needs through sales of advanced systems.
* Last year, the President also announced the United States’ intention to move forward with the possible sale of F-16 fighter aircraft to Pakistan.
— White House press release, March 2006
Western diplomats [in Afghanistan and Pakistan] and Pakistani opposition figures say that Pakistani intelligence agencies — in particular the powerful Inter-Services Intelligence and Military Intelligence — have been supporting a Taliban restoration, motivated not only by Islamic fervor but also by a longstanding view that the jihadist movement allows them to assert greater influence on Pakistan’s vulnerable western flank.
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One former Taliban commander said in an interview that he had been jailed by Pakistani intelligence officials because he would not go to Afghanistan to fight. He said that, for Western and local consumption, his arrest had been billed as part of Pakistan’s crackdown on the Taliban in Pakistan.
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“The Pakistanis are actively supporting the Taliban,” declared a Western diplomat in an interview in Kabul. He said he had seen an intelligence report of a recent meeting on the Afghan border between a senior Taliban commander and a retired colonel of the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence.
— NY Times reporter Carlotta Gall, January 21, 2007