Pakistan uses US like limitless ATM: Ex-CIA contractor

Washington: Pakistan treats America like a “limitless ATM” and most of the United States aid to the country goes to the military’s kitty, a private US defence contractor who was responsible for one the worst bilateral tensions, has said.

“For Pakistan, no amount of money ever seemed to be enough. The economic aid it received from the United States became a drug it alternately loathed and could not live without,” Raymond Davis said in his book “The Contractor”.

Mr Davis, 42, was arrested in Lahore in 2011 on the charges of killing two Pakistani citizens and thus kicked off a huge diplomatic crisis between the two countries.

Having a first-hand experience of how the system works in Pakistan, the CIA contractor wrote that most of the US aid ended up with the Pakistan military and not with the civilians.

“As dysfunctional as the relationship between the United States and Pakistan was, it was made worse by the fact that most of the aid typically ended up in the hands of the Pakistani military, while much of its population continued to languish in poverty,” he said.

Mr Davis writes that the real power in Pakistan lies with the military. “While Pakistan is said to be a parliamentary federal republic with a president who serves as head of state and a Prime minister who runs the government, everyone knows that the real power lies with the military.”