The US have never stopped funding Pakistan. During the Soviet-Afghan War, the US, in a bid to counter Soviet expansion, carried a covert CIA initiative that funneled billions of dollar through Pakistan's ISI to arm & train Afghan mujahideen fighters to repel the Soviet forces.
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By channeling billions in funds and arms through Pak’s ISI—Washington enabled the unchecked empowerment of radical Islamist factions. One of the primary beneficiaries was Gulbuddin Hekmatyar’s Hezb-e Islami, a group known for its extremist leanings and internecine violence.
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However, this short-term alliance created long-term monsters. Many of the foreign fighters recruited through this pipeline were trained in Pakistan-based camps and indoctrinated with a radical interpretation of Islam. These networks didn’t dissolve after the Soviets withdrew.
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Instead, they metastasized. These mujahideen formed the backbone of the Taliban in the 1990s, provided sanctuary to Osama bin Laden & alQaeda grps that later orchestrated 9/11 attacks. Ironically, the very fighters once hailed by U.S turned their guns on their former patrons.
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After 9/11, Pak became a key ally of US in the War on Terror, receiving huge aids. While publicly supporting U.S. efforts against al-Qaeda & the Taliban, elements within Pakistan's military continued to provide support to these sub state actors including the Haqqani network.
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The discovery of Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad in 2011 finally strained relations with Pakistan. Before that US was the largest supplier of arms and aids to Pakistan. No other nation has received such foreign assistance to equip its millitary infrastructure in the world.
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US, being the largest donor to the IMF,continues to give loans & bailouts for Pakistan's deep state which maintains an umbilical relationship with terror networks. In doing so, Washington effectively bankrolls a revanchist state that has made terrorism as a tool of statecraft.
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For all its performative outrage against global terrorism, Washington’s duplicity in underwriting a state that operationalizes militant extremism as geopolitical leverage is staggering. It reflects a willful blindness that compromises both peace and stability it claims to uphold.
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