United States will provide $250 million to Pakistan for shelter and resettlement of the Temporarily Displaced Persons (TDPs) of North Waziristan as well as reconstruction projects in Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA). This was agreed during talks between high officials of the US and Pakistan here on Tuesday. The Pakistani side was led by Adviser to the Prime Minister on National Security and Foreign Affairs Sartaj Aziz and the US' by Secretary of State John Kerry.
The amount of US $250 million, which was announced during a joint press conference by Secretary Kerry, will be made available to bolster the government of Pakistan's efforts towards responding to the needs of return and rehabilitation of over 700,000 Temporarily Displaced Persons (TDPs) from FATA in emergency food, aid, shelter, health, education, and livestock support. "We'll continue discussions as needs emerged," Kerry said.
In a background briefing senior State Department officials said that the on-going military operation is costing Pakistan a huge amount of money and the government of Pakistan has estimated the amount over and above $2 billion. According to the State Department officials, Pakistani officials during the talks noted that the cost of the North Waziristan operation has been extremely significant in terms of IDPs rehabilitation, refugee-related issues and rebuilding process.
Another State Department official said "the amount of US $250 million has already been appropriated and it was not new money, but it is the money that was either going to go elsewhere or that we're redirecting." The official said the US will continue to partner with Pakistan to reconstruct schools, hospitals, water supply systems and bridges in FATA to restore a sense of normalcy and assist in the return of IDPs or TDPs to their home communities.
To a question whether Pakistani leadership is actually changing its orientation and willing to go after groups like Lashkar-e-Tayba (LeT) and the Haqqani network, the official said that "certainly, and saying publicly and privately that they were not making any sort of distinction between terrorist groups is something that we've heard more uniformly, more robustly than we've ever heard".
"The rhetoric that we heard and what we've heard over the course of the last months since the Peshawar attack was absolutely the case that this has unified the country in a way that they've repeatedly described as their 9/11, that this kind of broke - that it created a consensus in the country that had never been there in the same way," the official said.
The official further said that "the Pakistani officials even though explained why the negotiation period before the North Waziristan operation was important to try and then fail, and that created a certain amount of consensus for the North Waziristan operation."
"The Peshawar attack had truly united the country, and the way that the country has reacted since then, basically all the major parties - including the opposition party, some of the religious parties - in trying to put together a national action plan and trying to figure out how they would deal with terrorism," the official added.
"We'll have to see kind of what develops, but I think that you can't deny that the North Waziristan operation has had some significant impacts that - which they have to continue to solidify and strengthen," the official said. There is no denying that the continued co-operation on al Qaida continues to be extremely strong, including some significant actions taken over the course of the last month or two," the official added.
"I think individually, the intelligence relationship, the military relationship, diplomatic relationship are all stronger than they've been for quite some time. And the fact that it's - that they're - it's all happening simultaneously, and then with a galvanising event like this, I think that they're - they told us very, very explicitly, from both military and civilian leadership, that they were in this fight till the end," the official said, adding "we'll have to see, but if, in fact, they are doing that, that's a commitment we want to support."
Referring to the case of Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi, the prime accused in the Mumbai attack case, the official said that "over the course of the last two weeks and the very strong position that the government has taken to make sure that he [Lakhvi] continues to be detained."
"The fact that Haqqanis have been disrupted...We have to see if it's permanent or not, and they've talked about how they have gone after the Haqqanis. But it's no secret that we continue to suggest that more has to be done on that in particular and that it's very important to us, as it should be important to Pakistan and is very important to Afghans," the official added. On Afghan Taliban, the official said that the US officials have talked about kind of a range of issues, including where they can be supportive on reconciliation. "So these are all very active strands of discussion. There's some progress that's out in the public domain, and we'll have to see what continues to develop over the course of the next few months," the official added.