Republican Nikki Haley fires a barrage of salvos at Pakistan over US aid

In her continuing tirade against Pakistan, Indian-American Republican leader Nikki Haley said that the country harbours a dozen terror organisations. On her Republican presidential nomination trail, Haley has been spelling out her foreign policy ideas where she has criticised the US for giving aid to the “bad guys”.

In a recent tweet, Haley said: “Pakistan is home to at least a dozen terrorist organizations”, hashtagging “CutEveryCent”.

She has made it clear in her speeches that she will cut US foreign aid to Pakistan if she wins the election. She said: “A weak America pays the bad guys: Hundreds of millions to Pakistan, Iraq, and Zimbabwe last year alone”, adding, “a strong America won’t be the world’s ATM”.

 

Pakistan, which is hovering on the verge of a financial collapse due to poor governance, corruption and unstable governments is chasing the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for a bailout loan. The IMF has asked Islamabad to shore up its finances by imposing harsh taxes and raising power tariffs.

Pakistan has also appealed to UN agencies, China and some of the Gulf countries to lend money to it citing a humanitarian crisis.

The South Asian country has been receiving billions of dollars in aid from the US for its ostensible support in the war on terror as it helped Washington provide access to a landlocked Afghanistan after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. However, a duplicitous Islamabad also harboured the very same terrorists which the US was hunting.

 

A outstanding example was al Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden who was found in Rawalpindi – right under the Pakistani army’s nose all the while that the US was searching for the terror leader in Afghanistan.

Former president Donald Trump shut the tap on that flow as the Americans realised how Pakistan made a fool out of them. Haley has even claimed that she convinced Trump to cut nearly $2 billion annual military aid to Pakistan as this country trained insurgent groups to kill American soldiers.

However, with Joe Biden taking over charge at the White House, the US restored some of that aid, promising maintenance for Pakistan’s fleet of America-made F-16 fighter jets. Last year the US ambassador to Pakistan also made a much-publicised visit to Pakistan occupied Kashmir (PoK) but that bonhomie was short-lived as Pakistan slipped into instability due to floods, violence by terror groups as well as squabbling politicians.

Haley has been candid about Pakistan’s fast friend China as well. In an op-ed in the New York Post, she said that the US spent $46 billion in foreign aid last year, given to countries like China, Pakistan and Iraq. American taxpayers deserve to know where that money is going and what it is doing, Haley wrote.

On her campaign trail, Haley is clear that if she becomes the president, she will not pay a single rupee to Pakistan.

Also read: Is US Ambassador Blome’s visit to POK a signal to India and China?