“Come March or April,” one official said, “I fully expect catastrophic failure of a large part of their helicopter fleet.” For years, how money from the Coalition Support Funds was disbursed to the Pakistani government was veiled in secrecy. The size and scope of the payments to Pakistan was held so closely that one senior American military officer in Afghanistan said that he did not know that the administration was spending $1 billion a year until he attended a meeting in Islamabad in 2006.
“I was astounded,” said the officer, who would not speak for attribution because he now holds another senior military post. “On one side of the border we were paying a billion to get very little done. On the other side of the border—the Afghan side—we were scrambling to find the funds to train an army that actually wanted to get something done.”
But by mid-2007, the $1 billion-a-year figure became public, largely because of the objections of some military officials and military experts who noted that during an ill-fated peace treaty between the military and militants in the tribal areas in 2005 and 2006, the money kept flowing. Pakistan continued to submit receipts for reimbursement, even though Pakistani troops had stopped fighting.
Even then, however, American officials say there was little effort to rethink the purposes of the aid, or impose stricter controls. Defence department officials in the US embassy in Islamabad check the claims and ensure the receipts are well substantiated, officials said. The Pentagon’s comptroller and state department then also certify the claims.
Dov Zakheim, who served as the Pentagon’s top financial officer until 2004 and helped set up the programme in late 2001, said that while he was at the department, the military carefully checked whether Pakistan carried out the operations it claimed and typically approved only 80-90% of each invoice.
But by July 2006, the Pentagon comptroller and central command were concerned enough about insufficient accountability to dispatch a team to Pakistan to lay out new requirements for more detailed invoices, a Pentagon spokesman said.
And by that fall, senior military officials at the embassy in Islamabad were telling visiting American lawmakers that the support fund programme need to be revamped to pay for specific objectives. Today, American officials say they believe some of the invoices are inflated by as much as 30%.
“The claims that they submit are probably in some cases exaggerated and the amounts inflated,” said the senior American military official who had reviewed the programme. “When it comes to reimbursement for the cost of food, bunker material, barbed wire fences, those are much more susceptible to inflation.”
Even efforts to send Pakistan about 20 refurbished Vietnam-era Cobra attack helicopters, for instance, have cost more than expected and have fallen behind schedule, and in the end, left Pakistani forces dissatisfied with the quality of the 12 aircraft that have arrived, a senior Pentagon official said.
One retired Pakistani military official said the American system of paying reimbursements did not allow for any forward planning.
He expressed irritation that the Americans offered help, but not advanced American attack helicopters and drones, which are vital for counter-insurgency in the inaccessible tribal areas.