Buying love in the tribal areas of Pakistan

NY Times:

The United States plans to pour $750 million of aid into Pakistan’s tribal areas over the next five years as part of a “hearts and minds” campaign to win over this lawless region from Qaeda and Taliban militants.

But even before the plan has been fully carried out, documents and officials involved in the planning are warning of the dangers of distributing so much money in an area so hostile that oversight is impossible, even by Pakistan’s own government, which faces rising threats from Islamic militants.

Who will be given the aid has quickly become one of the most contentious questions between local officials and American planners concerned that millions might fall into the wrong hands. The local political agents and tribal chiefs in this hinterland on the Afghan border have for years accommodated the very groups the American and Pakistani governments seek to drive out.

A closely scripted visit to the hospital here, used for a pilot project by the United States Agency for International Development, showed the challenges on full display. The one-story hospital here was virtually empty on a recent day.

Local people had no way to get there. Three of the 110 beds were occupied. Two operating tables had not been used in months. Many doctors had left because the pay was too meager and security too precarious, said Dr. Yusuf Shah, the chief surgeon.

Sher Alam Mahsud, the local political boss who escorted this reporter on a rare visit, said he wanted all the American aid money “delivered to us.” But the precarious security does not allow the Americans to assess the aid priorities firsthand, or to provide oversight for the first installment of $150 million allocated by the Bush administration.

“Delivering $150 million in aid to the tribal areas could very quickly make a few people rich and do almost nothing to provide opportunity and justice to the region,” said Craig Cohen, the author of a recent study of United States-Pakistan relations at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. Yet it is here in Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas, or FATA, as the region is formally called, that Washington is intent on using the development aid as a counterinsurgency tool, according to a draft of the Agency for International Development plan given to The New York Times by an official who worked on it.

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Skepticism of this program in this area is easy to understand. You need an anthropologist just to get a handle on the strange culture of those who inhabit the area. The strangeness goes beyond some of the weird religious beliefs of Islamist extremist who make up much of the population. Tribal customs more than the rule of law dominate the society. The Taliban are embraced as family which means they are protected.

But, it is not just political, it is a revered custom. For example, when the SEAL who survived the ambush in Afghanistan was taken in and nursed back to survival mode, the family that took him in protected him from the Taliban who wanted to take him and the Taliban honored the custom and did not force the issue.

I am doubtful that money will buy us much love here, but we need to find a way to break through the cultural embrace of the Taliban and al Qaeda or we will have to break this culture to stop the terrorist attacks that are planned here by the people they protect.