WASHINGTON: The panel reviewing US policies for Afghanistan and Pakistan is likely to recommend massive civilian and military aid to Pakistan, a media report said on Friday.
 
The panel will recommend ‘intense engagement’ with Pakistan, including a massive, long-term increase in economic aid and more helicopters to fight Islamic militants, the Washington Times said.
 
President Barack Obama is soon expected to announce a new US strategy for Pakistan and Afghanistan and the panel he appointed recently to review the plan is busy giving final touches to it.
 
According to the report, the new strategy will recommend ‘intense engagement’ with Pakistan, including a massive, long-term increase in economic aid and more helicopters to fight militants.
 
A participant in the 60-day review of US policy said a key focus of the new strategy is shoring up Pakistan, which the participant called the root of much of the instability next door.
 
‘You will see intense engagement of Pakistan to keep civilian rule intact, to keep the economy from tanking and to increase assistance for counterinsurgency, especially helicopters,’ a review participant said.
 
One element of the new US strategy is a massive increase in nonmilitary aid to Pakistan. In 2008, nonmilitary aid totaled nearly $800 million.
 
The review participant said the Obama administration supports a bill introduced last year by Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr., a Delaware Democrat who is now the vice president, and Sen. Richard G. Lugar of Indiana, the ranking Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
 
The legislation calls for increasing annual US nonmilitary aid to Pakistan to $1.5 billion and guaranteeing it for at least five and potentially 10 years.
 
‘The 10-year time frame ... is intended to address persistent Pakistani fear that the US is interested only in a short-term tactical ... relationship,’ said a statement provided by the foreign relations committee.
 
Last year’s bill did not set a figure for military aid - reportedly more than $10 billion since 2001 - but conditions it on US certification that ‘Pakistani security forces are making concerted efforts to prevent al Qaeda and associated terrorist groups from operating in the territory of Pakistan.’
 
Frederick Jones, a spokesman for the Foreign Relations Committee, said the chairman, Sen. John Kerry, Massachusetts Democrat, intends to reintroduce the legislation soon.
 
‘The co-sponsors of the previous bill were Secretary of State Clinton and now President Obama,’ Mr. Jones said. ‘So one can assume from their previous support that they will be supportive of the new legislation.’
 
The Obama administration has been closely monitoring Pakistan's domestic political situation and recently helped broker an end to a crisis caused by President Asif Ali Zardari's attempted crackdown on opponents and his refusal to reinstate Pakistan's chief justice, the newspaper noted.
 
‘Pakistan is the core of the problem,’ said John A. Nagl, president of the Center for a New American Security, a Washington think tank. ‘It serves as the base for al Qaeda and important groups of the Taliban. As a weak democracy with nuclear weapons, anything we can do to stabilize Pakistan is an effort well spent.’
 
‘Pakistan is both a sponsor of terrorism, insofar as it provides sanctuary to the Taliban and other terrorists who harbor al Qaeda, and a victim of jihadist terror,’ Bruce Riedel wrote in the publication Current History before taking up his post as the head of the Obama administration's Afghanistan-Pakistan review.

‘In the global struggle against terrorism, Pakistan thus poses paradoxes and enigmas. Understanding these - and developing a strategy to deal with them - may constitute the single most important foreign policy challenge facing the United States.’