British Taxpayers Give £1.4 Billion in Foreign Aid to Pakistan—While Americans Warn of Terror Threat
British taxpayers will give £1.392 billion in foreign aid to Pakistan, a nation accused today of “exporting violence” to Afghanistan by a top US military officer.
The £1.4 billion total, to be paid over before the end of 2015, is the same amount that Pakistan has put aside to buy a new fleet of Chinese made submarines. It will also allow Pakistan to proceed with its purchase of two squadrons of Chinese J-10 fighters for $1.4 billion (£900,000,000).
The US military’s Admiral Mike Mullen told a congressional subcommittee today that the Pakistani government actively supported the Islamist “Haqqani” network and other al Qaida-aligned groups.”
He said Pakistan’s government has chosen to “use violent extremism as an instrument of policy,” adding that “by exporting violence, they have eroded their internal security and their position in the region. They have undermined their international credibility and threatened their economic well-being”.
The UK foreign aid spend has risen by 50 per cent under the coalition government, and now costs every household in Britain £479 extra tax per year.
In 2008, then prime minister Gordon Brown revealed that three quarters of all terrorist plots investigated in the U.K. were linked to Pakistan-based Muslims, and gave offered £6 million to help Pakistan “tackle the causes of radicalisation.”
He also pledged help for Pakistan’s bomb-disposal teams, forensic investigators and airport security. “Three quarters of the most serious plots investigated by the British authorities have links to al-Qaeda in Pakistan,” he said.
* A report on the BBC website today said that a south London mosque is at the centre of allegations it helped promote of acts of terror and hate in Pakistan.
“Leaflets circulating in Pakistan calling for the murder of members of the Ahmadi Muslim sect directed readers to a website naming Stockwell Mosque,” the BBC said.
“The website mentioned on the leaflets in turn advised people with queries to contact the mosque in Stockwell.”
Prominent Pakistani Supreme Court Lawyer Muji ur Rehman was quoted by the BBC as saying that Muslims are “carrying fundamentalist ideology from here (London) back to Pakistan, when instead we would expect them to come with their liberalism instead.”
