[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 160 (2014), Part 3]
[House]
[Pages 4557-4560]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                            AID TO PAKISTAN

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 3, 2013, the Chair recognizes the gentleman from California 
(Mr. Rohrabacher) for 30 minutes.
  Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Speaker, for 2 months, public attention has been 
riveted on Ukraine. Today, I suggest it is harmful to our security to 
just focus on Ukraine and ignore the battle against radical Islam and 
the ensuing threat of China that is far more dangerous to us than which 
direction Crimea goes.
  Yesterday, Secretary of State John Kerry requested that Congress 
approve aid to Pakistan. That is foreign aid to Pakistan. The 
administration is requesting $881.8 million for aid to Pakistan. The 
Congress and the American people should pay attention to this request.
  Since 9/11, the United States has given Pakistan over $25 billion, 
with over $17 billion of that going to the Pakistani security services, 
services that target and kill American soldiers through helping those 
elements in that part of the world that kill American soldiers and 
terrorize civilian populations.
  Our generosity has only emboldened Pakistan's military clique--that 
clique that actually rules the country, that clique that gave refuge to 
Osama bin Laden.
  Most importantly, Pakistan has not been acting as our friend--not 
just that clique, but the government itself of Pakistan; and we don't 
need to be supplementing the countries and supporting the countries and 
giving aid to the countries that are hostile to America's interests and 
hateful of our way of life.
  It is a charade to believe that our aid is buying Pakistan's 
cooperation in hunting down terrorists, as Secretary Kerry stated 
yesterday. Frankly, that is wishful thinking, but that is not facing 
the reality of what we confront in South Asia.
  A Pakistani commission reported on the bin Laden raid--the raid that 
brought bin Laden, the murderer of so many Americans, to justice--and 
the Pakistani commission points out negative developments in U.S.-
Pakistan relations in recent years, and it is, in their view, ``a 
growing American threat'' to Pakistani interests.
  These are not the sentiments of a regime that wants to work with us. 
These are not the sentiments of friends.
  Remember, when our SEAL teams went to get Osama bin Laden, the 
Pakistani Government took the wreckage of one of our helicopters--a 
stealth helicopter, cutting-edge technology that was used in that 
raid--and gave it to the Communist Chinese.
  Of course, the Pakistanis call the Chinese their all-weather friend, 
and we are supposedly just their fair-weather friend; yet we should be 
giving, according to this administration, over $881 million more in 
aid, on top of the billions that we have already given the Pakistanis.
  Indeed, a study by the Pew Research Center's Global Attitudes Project 
found that 81 percent of those surveyed in Pakistan were favorable to 
Communist China--Communist China--which represses its own Muslim 
population, murders Christians, and is a dictatorship of a clique--of a 
crony capitalist clique that controls that country.
  When 81 percent of those surveyed in Pakistan are favorable to that 
country, while only 11 percent are favorable to the United States, 
should we be spending money that we are borrowing from China, in order 
to give money to a country that likes China more than it likes the 
United States, and we end up giving money to the country and to the 
people that don't like us?
  Well, no. We should cut off our aid to Pakistan because it is not an 
ally, and any money we send to them only strengthens their ability to 
act against us and against our friends in Afghanistan and elsewhere.
  We cannot buy the friendship of the people of Pakistan, nor can we 
buy the friendship of the Government of Pakistan. These are people who 
feel that their core interests and their values go totally against what 
we believe in and who we are, as a country.
  At a time of tight budgets, we should reserve our aid for friends and 
allies. We should never give assistance to those who target and kill 
Americans or even support those elements that do target and kill 
Americans. Perhaps we could reexamine our motives and our ability to 
provide such assistance throughout the world.
  Obviously, we can't be supporting our enemies like this; but even 
with our friends in friendly countries, we are having to borrow money 
from China and elsewhere, in order to give money, as aid, to other 
countries. That makes no sense to me.

                              {time}  1245

  We need to restructure our aid situation. Yes, America does have a 
moral

[[Page 4558]]

obligation to try to help others in need, but perhaps we should focus 
on emergency situations and limit our aid to those countries who have 
tsunamis or earthquakes or other catastrophes in which much of their 
population is in grave danger or is suffering. That type of foreign aid 
is something we can be proud of, and we can channel it to any group of 
people in the world who are ordinary people who are in danger. We can 
then reach out and show our generosity, and perhaps we will receive 
some gratitude from people who are in a desperate situation rather than 
transferring our money to governments that are often anti, against, 
everything America stands for.
  How do we know that Pakistan still has a government that considers--
at least a clique that runs their government and that tells their 
government--that considers the United States less than a friend, 
perhaps an enemy? It is very easy to see.
  We should never forget. And the real bellwether for this is the 
treatment of Dr. Afridi. As we ponder our policies, let us not forget 
Dr. Afridi, the heroic Pakistani doctor who was instrumental in the 
effort to capture or kill bin Laden. Dr. Afridi was arrested on May 22, 
2011, 3 weeks after the United States raid which brought Osama bin 
Laden to justice. He has been in a Pakistani jail ever since. He was 
initially held beneath the ISI's headquarters in Islamabad. There he 
was tortured and kept blindfolded for 8 months and handcuffed for a 
year, leaving physical damage on this heroic friend of America.
  This man is a hero who risked his life to bring to justice the 
terrorist monster who organized the 9/11 attack that killed 3,000 
Americans. Dr. Afridi risked his life to bring justice, and we leave 
him in Pakistan in a dungeon. We abandon him. We leave him to rot in 
that dungeon. In May 2012, Dr. Afridi was moved to the Peshawar Central 
Jail after being sentenced to 33 years in jail.
  Dr. Afridi told FOX News he helped the CIA out of love for the United 
States and swore that he would help America again despite the fact that 
these people were torturing him. We have not only abandoned him, but 
Congress is considering, as I say, giving even more, hundreds of 
millions of dollars. In fact, the total amount of aid that they want to 
give to Pakistan this year is $1.3 billion in American aid to Pakistan.
  This is an abomination. It is shameful. It is cowardly. It is a 
cowardly betrayal of a man who risked his life for us. Who else, who 
will stand with us in the future if we treat our friends this way?
  America all so often treats our friends in a shabby way, abandons 
them at a time, and then our government has the gall to request that we 
give aid to those people who are the tormentors of Dr. Afridi. In fact, 
these are the men who we know this government in Pakistan is run by and 
controlled by a clique of people who hid Osama bin Laden, gave refuge 
to the murderer of 3,000 Americans for years, and then, of course, they 
claim they didn't know he was there--there--right next to the school 
where they train all of their military officers.
  Pakistan is supporting America's enemies who are attacking American 
soldiers in Afghanistan and have targeted and, of course, brutally 
murdered other Americans and brutally murdered other people throughout 
that region who are hostile to their radical Islamic terrorist agenda.
  Secretary Kerry says that we must give support to placate the 
positive elements in Pakistan. It sort of reminds me of when somebody 
was saying back before World War II, we better try to get with Hitler 
because there are some really bad guys in the Nazi Party, even worse 
than Hitler. Give me a break. Hitler was an evil man, and the people in 
Pakistan, the clique that runs that country and engages in terrorism is 
an evil clique, and we should not be providing them the resources they 
need to build their military capabilities.
  Well, Pakistan's fight against militancy is, of course, against our 
military. It is very evident because what we have got is attacks being 
conducted by what? By people who are stationed, whose operations they 
are operating out of areas in Pakistan. And that has been going on for 
years. Well, trying to give them money, from the United States to the 
Pakistani Government, is not buying us friendship, and it is not buying 
future or even current peace.
  By the way, the money that we give them that isn't being used to 
attack Americans and friends of ours is being used to butcher their own 
people and suppress the opposition within Pakistan to this brutal 
regime. They are terrorizing; the Pakistani Government is terrorizing 
whole populations of their country like the Balochis and the Sindhis.
  The Balochis and the Sindhis are people that would prefer not to be 
under the heel of a Pakistani Government run in Islamabad. The Baloch 
people live in an area of South Asia now claimed by Pakistan, Iran, and 
Afghanistan. But in Pakistan in particular, they comprise an important 
segment of the population, and they live in the least developed 
province. Unfortunately, it may be the least developed province, and it 
is where the poorest of all Pakistanis reside. All of that, if you take 
a look at being the poorest and least developed, but you also look at 
one other factor, it is the richest in natural resources of all the 
provinces of Pakistan. So what we have is a looting of Balochistan by 
that clique that runs the Pakistani Government in a way that does not, 
of course, benefit the people of Balochistan.
  Until the arrival of the British Empire, the Baloch people had 
organized themselves into sort of a confederation of tribal chiefs. 
That is where the power was, very similar to Afghanistan's tribal and 
village system. And these people, the Balochi, who recognize themselves 
as a national entity, they would like to control their own destiny 
again. But the Balochi people have been terrorized and beaten into 
submission by the Pakistani military.
  We provide the Pakistani military with the weapons and the resources 
they need to conduct their terrorism not only against their neighbors, 
not only against Christians throughout the world, but against their own 
people. The Pakistani military has been unrelenting in its attacks and 
targeted terror raids against the Baloch population. Baloch aspirations 
for independence have been checked by force and by denying basic human 
rights and the unleashed brute force against them by a basically state 
terrorist repression of their people by their own government.
  One particularly grotesque method of intimidation of the Baloch is 
called ``kill and dump.'' That is when the body of a man or woman who 
has disappeared from a village is later dumped in the middle of that 
village. And who do you think is doing this? We are talking about the 
Pakistani military authorities who are conducting this type of 
terrorism on their own people, even, as we have said, the same people 
who gave safe haven to bin Laden who had massacred 3,000 Americans, the 
same people who offered their territory as a staging area to launch 
attacks into Afghanistan supporting the Taliban.
  This abysmal human rights record is the record of the Pakistani 
Government, and it is shameful. It is shameful that we are even 
considering giving a government like this more American aid, and we are 
even going to have to borrow that aid from China to give it to them.
  It is even worse, of course, because American foreign and military 
aid contributes to the security forces which, of course, are killing 
the Baloch. We are not just giving foreign aid; we are giving military 
aid as well. The Baloch people have a right to self-determination and 
not to live under the control of Islamabad if that is what they choose. 
At the very least, no military aid should be given to Pakistan to be 
used against its own people, whether they be Baloch or Sindhi or any 
other minority.
  I have already proposed legislation, H.R. 1790, to end all aid to 
Pakistan, and have also offered amendments to both the Defense and 
State Department authorization bills to end this aid, but what needs to 
be seriously discussed is not just ending aid. We need

[[Page 4559]]

to seriously discuss a fundamental shift in America's policy towards 
South Asia, a strategy. We have had the same strategy since the cold 
war, but those policies that we established during the cold war no 
longer make sense.
  In the 1960s, China fought battles in both India and the Soviet 
Union. The India-Soviet alignment at that point alienated the United 
States during the cold war, and what resulted was clearly an 
adversarial relationship with India.
  When the Soviets invaded Afghanistan in 1979, the U.S. and Pakistan 
worked together to support the Afghan insurgents who were then battling 
against Soviet occupation troops. Yes, during the cold war, Pakistan 
was an ally, but the cold war is over. And even then when we fought 
with them, when they helped us support the mujahideen fight against the 
Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, they channeled our money, they 
channeled the lion's share of our support to radical Islamist 
terrorists who should never have had any support from the United 
States. Much of it went to a fellow named Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. This man 
is horrendous. He has a horrendous record. Even then they knew that, 
when this man was in college, he would throw acid into the faces of 
young women who refused to wear burkas. And we were giving our aid to 
Pakistan who gave it to a man like that?
  Well, the cold war is over, and there is no reason for us to give 
them aid that they can pass on to terrorists any more. Yes, the cold 
war is over, and since the Soviet Union's collapse in the early 1990s, 
basic elements of American security have fundamentally changed.
  The Pakistani-China friendship since that time has deepened. And who 
is our adversary today? It is no longer--Russia gets in the news, but 
who is really our threat? Radical Islam and an emerging China that is 
much more aggressive than the Russians could conceive of being.
  It is ever more intense and is now clearer that an alliance with 
India against Pakistan is in the interest of the United States because 
Pakistan is clearly moving in the direction of becoming a self-declared 
enemy of the United States even as we give them military and other 
types of aid. Pakistan's gut hostility towards India and its shaping of 
its now ever-increasing alliance with China puts them not only as an 
enemy to India, but as an adversary at the very least, an adversary to 
the United States.
  Pakistan is in partnership with terrorist groups like the Taliban, 
and that is very clear to people who are active in that part of the 
world. We should not be treating this enemy as a friend. In fact, we 
should reach out to India and try to reestablish, just to establish--
perhaps not reestablish, but to establish a positive relationship that 
will lead to a stronger stance for peace and stability in that part of 
the world as we offset the terrorist support that is coming from 
Pakistan.

                              {time}  1300

  We should not be treating an enemy country like Pakistan as a friend. 
It will not make them our friend. It will, instead, make them disdain 
us. They will disdain our giving people money who are our enemies. They 
will look at it as we are cowardly; and it is an example of such 
cowardice. We are giving billions to a military and a government that 
is controlled by a military clique that despises us and is cooperating 
with those who would destroy us. Not one cent to Pakistan. The money 
going to Pakistan is going contrary to our interests, to our security, 
and to the stability of South Asia. Let us double our efforts to work 
with India and other countries in South and Central Asia that truly 
desire to be America's friends.
  And nowhere, of course, is our hesitancy to do that, to reach out and 
to try to support our friends, nowhere is that hesitancy more evident 
than now and what we are doing with Egypt. I would call the attention 
of the American people to what is going on in Egypt. In terms of the 
long run, it is far more important to American security and the 
stability of the world and world peace what is going on in Egypt right 
now than what is happening in the Crimea right now.
  The Egyptian army is the most potent force standing between radical 
Islam and its objective to terrorize and subjugate whole populations 
throughout the Middle East and thus put themselves into a position of 
facing down and defeating Western civilization.
  We are talking about radical Islamists who believe in what they 
believe in. Just as in the cold war, the communists believed in that 
gobbledygook. But the fact is, radical Islam sees that, and they see 
Western civilization as the enemy, and the United States as the 
foundation of Western civilization, and they see any government that is 
trying to be democratic as their adversary and enemy.
  It is clear the Egyptian people understood that when they rejected 
the radical overtures of the former regime that was in power in Egypt. 
They rose up against that government, the Morsi government, and right 
now whether or not Egypt is a sucked into a turmoil and whether radical 
Islam takes over that country, it is now in the hands of a very few 
leaders of that country who are we shunning. It is clear that our 
reluctance to back the stance of Egypt is emboldening the radical 
Islamic terrorist elements who now will target Egypt because we are 
hesitant to get behind General al-Sisi and the Egyptian military, who, 
by the way, are committed to bringing back democratic elections and 
having democratic elections and a democratic process as compared to the 
regime that they will be replacing, which was dedicated to establishing 
an Islamic caliphate and was in the process of trimming back the 
democratic capabilities of the Egyptian people.
  How ironic is it that if Egypt falls, there will be chaos and radical 
Islamic expansionism in that part of world, and how important it is for 
us not to have that for world stability and our own national security. 
How ironic is it that we are holding back, but Russia, under Mr. Putin, 
just last month provided, maybe 2 months ago, went over to Egypt and 
provided $2 billion worth of military aid to help them defeat radical 
Islam. Russia's proposed arms deal with Egypt and its endorsement of 
Egypt's military ruler, General al-Sisi, and his efforts to run for 
President is a signal to the Arab leaders that, unlike the United 
States, Russia will back those courageous enough to take on the radical 
Islamic threat to human freedom and human progress.
  The Egyptian people were saved from Islamic extremist rule. They were 
saved by a small group of people who we are putting roadblocks in the 
way of General al-Sisi. We actually convinced the Egyptian military to 
be dependent on the United States over the years, and now, when they 
are in a crisis, we are refraining from selling them the helicopters 
and the spare parts they need to thwart the radical Islamic terrorists 
who threaten a battle in the Sinai desert. If we let the Egyptian 
military down and we send that signal, we abandon them, as we have 
abandoned Dr. Alfridi. No one in the world will ever trust us again. 
There will be a major expansion of radical Islamic terrorist regimes, 
and the world we know will be far less stable and far less secure. Our 
country, and other democratic countries in the world, will be in 
dramatic danger.
  The Egyptian people were saved from Islamic extremist rule by a very 
courageous group of people. We can't let them hang out on a branch by 
themselves. And yes, the United States and the rest of the world were 
saved by the actions of a small group of people who stood up as Morsi 
and the former government was cutting away the freedom of those people 
and establishing this radical Islamic caliphate. Well, a small group of 
courageous people stood up to side with the people who had gone into 
the streets to oppose that and said, No, we are not going to let this 
government superimpose this type of regime. It is contrary to the will 
of the Egyptian people. And they have, I might add, put Egypt back on a 
course towards free elections.
  Egypt, of course, is one of the most strategic countries. Yet, as I 
say, we don't hear our administration, this administration, coming here 
to plead the

[[Page 4560]]

case about giving aid to those brave people in Egypt who are fighting 
radical Islamic terrorism. Instead, they are requesting hundred of 
millions of dollars, yes, over a billion dollars in aid to Pakistan, 
which is aiding radical Islamic terrorists and siding with China.
  Well, if you think that none of this makes sense, you are right, it 
doesn't, but it is up to us, the American people, to hold our own 
government accountable, to make sure that we do not give aid to our 
enemies and to make sure that our government is doing things that make 
sense. We should be sticking with our friends and opposing our enemies. 
How much more common sense does it take, although our government has 
not been operating that way. It is up to us, the American people, to 
make sure that we do not give aid to Pakistan and we support those 
people who would have Western democratic government in Egypt, and to 
support the people like the Baloch and the Sindhis, who are struggling 
under the oppression of radical Islamic terrorist regimes, to try to 
find their own way and have their own government and have their own 
democratic system
  With that, Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

                          ____________________