A Pakistan Crackdown

On New Year’s Day, Donald Trump fulminated on Twitter that the United States had “foolishly given Pakistan more than 33 billion dollars in aid over the last 15 years, and they have given us nothing but lies & deceit, thinking of our leaders as fools. They give safe haven to the terrorists we hunt in Afghanistan, with little help. No more!” Three days later, his administration announced it would suspend military aid to Pakistan on the grounds that the country’s government shelters and funds the very terrorist organizations that the aid money was designed to help Pakistan fight.

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All true, but it doesn’t convey the essence of what Pakistan has done for years—what Trump tweeted so succinctly if undiplomatically. The country doesn’t simply tolerate terrorist organizations or go after them with insufficient fervor; it actively funds and abets these groups for both nationalist and ideological reasons. As Tom Joscelyn and Bill Roggio of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies have tirelessly documented, Pakistan zealously backs our enemies even as it takes our money.

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