The United States of America has decided to transfer $1.5 billion was meant for Pakistan military and Afghanistan’s political crisis. Washington decided to build the Mexican border wall by reassigning the funds. The US chief negotiator said that the peace talks with Taliban are not taking place as planned. The difficult situation in Afghanistan has resulted in great causalities to the US army. The decision was announced by the US defence Secretary Patrick Shanahan.
Mr. Shanahan said, “We reprogrammed $1.5 billion toward the construction of more than 120 miles of border barrier without impacting readiness,”. He further added, “The funds were culled from a variety of sources, to include unexecuted prior year funds, the suspension of reimbursements to Pakistan, and costs reductions in a series of contracts,” The steps taken by US is done to compensate the funds that the Trump government did not receive last year.
The funds for building the wall, more than $600 million, coming from an Afghan security forces account. The US is also taking $78 million from the Coalition Support Fund, which is money used to reimburse Pakistan for logistical and military support for American military operations in Afghanistan.
The Trump government after carrying out operations in Afghanistan has decided to boost the building of the Mexican wall which would stop the illegal infiltration from the state of Mexico. It is well known that the US government is trying its best to form a stable political situation in Afghanistan which has been in doldrums since Taliban took over major portion of the country under its periphery. US, which for past decades has devoted its forces to help establish peace in Afghanistan, recently decided to pull out the entire US army from the country, and have promised a peaceful retrieval. Moreover, despite Trump’s great efforts to reduce terrorism in the country, the Afghanistan’s government is not putting an effort to eliminate the Taliban regime. Similarly, in Pakistan, in order to fulfil its motive, the United States was ready to invest in logistics for the Pak military that would help American military operations in Afghanistan.
In case of Pakistan, the Trump government has time and now either reduced the aid to the country or has completely declined any financial support. Lately the US, in the wake of the Pulwama attacks and the subsequent international condemnation of the same, had decided to reduce aid to Pakistan to ‘almost nothing’, which was its key beneficiary for military and logistical support. Pakistan since 2002 has been receiving funds from USA as its share of compensation being US’ coalition partner in its fight against terrorism. In light to the operational support provided to US forces in Afghanistan since 2002, Pakistan has received nearly $14.5 billion from the US in the pretext of counter-terror operations. It is a wise move as links of Pakistani army with the terror groups in the country have surfaced many times. Last year the United States of America military had cancelled $300 million aid to Pakistan for what it termed as the latter’s failure to take decisive and strict action against militant groups. This cancellation in aids and grants to Pakistan was part of a bigger move which was announced to curtail the nefarious activities of Pakistan in helping the Haqqani network and the Afghan Taliban.
By disapproving the aid to Afghanistan, United States has finally decided to take care of the problems it faces on the Mexican border. Trump government time and again has stated the fact that it will not harbour terrorism in Afghanistan and Pakistan. It is necessary for the other global players to also take actions against terrorism that is breeding on grounds of the two countries. America has dedicated itself to its motive of removing extremism across the globe which has been an integral part of its global agenda from Bush to Trump’s regime. The fact that today the United States of America plays an important part in the global economy and politics, is not a secret. Each step taken by the US on the economic as well as the political fronts does affect the other side of the world as well. It hence becomes imperative to see what further actions will the US government take to help remove terrorism across different nation
