FOREIGN POLICY/NIKKI HALEY/PAKISTAN/TERRORISM/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “The Trump administration said it would freeze all security assistance to Pakistan until the country takes a tougher stance against terror networks on its territory, a move that reflects new tensions and could lead to problems in supplying U.S. troops in neighboring Afghanistan.
‘Pakistan has played a double game for years,’ U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley said this week as she announced the U.S. would continue to withhold $255 million in already budgeted military aid. She said while working with the U.S., the country is also harboring terrorist groups that target American troops in Afghanistan. The U.S. originally suspended that payment in August.
The Trump administration went further on Thursday, vowing to freeze more than $1 billion in other forms of security assistance, bringing the total of security funds that could be held back to at least $1.3 billion, U.S. officials said. The freeze doesn’t affect more than $220 million in economic support and health-related funding, and the U.S. can make exceptions to the freeze on a case-by-case basis.
U.S. officials said the suspension of funds was motivated in part by frustration that Pakistan wouldn’t grant Washington access to a member of the Haqqani network captured by Pakistani forces late last year when they freed a Canadian-American family held hostage by militants, and was also denying the U.S. access to other people of interest… Pakistani officials say the country’s already stretched armed forces would be overly strained by starting a war with the militant Haqqani network, Instead, they say, Islamabad is ‘pushing’ the Haqqani network fighters and leadership across the border into Afghanistan.”
-Felicia Schwartz, Nancy A. Youssef, and Saeed Shah, “U.S. to Withhold All Security Assistance to Pakistan,” The Wall Street Journal online, Jan. 4, 2018 06:59pm