As Pakistan's army battles the Taliban for control of Swat, there is a growing chorus in Washington for new military and development assistance to shore up Islamabad. The United States has few other tools at its disposal, and an infusion of emergency aid appears likely. Though perhaps necessary to defuse the immediate threat, it is unclear how additional funding will help Pakistan resolve its congenital identity crisis. More broadly, events in Swat are a powerful reminder that internal social and political dynamics drive underdevelopment.
Shortly before the latest convulsion, Pakistan's ambassador to the United States invoked the Marshall Plan as a precedent for $30 billion in new aid to defeat extremism in his country. Understandably, Ambassador Husain Haqqani did not mention Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton's revelation that $5 billion in taxpayer funds had already been squandered in Afghanistan.
Adding to the confusion, in his March 27 speech on Afghanistan, President Obama called for increased funding for the inspector general of the U.S. Agency for International Development. While stronger oversight is always desirable, an inspector general mostly reports on problems after the fact. That the president even mentioned USAID's inspector general as part of his Afghanistan strategy shows once again that Washington focuses too much on money and process, and too little on substance.
The United States spends $22 billion annually on foreign assistance, and aid effectiveness has become a hot topic for hearings and commissions. Mrs. Clinton lamented that much of the Afghanistan money paid for expensive contractors working on projects that were ill-conceived, poorly executed or both.
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