From the U.S. Government Accountability Office, www.gao.gov

Transcript for: Watchdog Report #14: US Development Assistance in
Pakistan’s FATA Region
Audio interview by GAO staff with Charles Johnson, Director,
International Affairs & Trade
Associated Report Number: GAO-10-289

Released on: April 15, 2010

[ Background Music ]

[ Narrator: ] Welcome to GAO's Watchdog Report, your source for news and
information from the Government Accountability Office. It's April 15th,
2010. Pakistan's Federally Administered Tribal Areas comprise a
mountainous region about the size of Maryland along the Afghanistan
border. Because terrorist organizations have operated there in recent
years, this region has received substantial U.S. attention and
investment. A group led by Charles Johnson, a director in GAO's
International Affairs and Trade team, examined the status of American
Development Assistance in the region. GAO analyst, Jeremy Cluchey, sat
down with Charles to learn more.

[ Jeremy Cluchey: ] Why is Pakistan's Federally Administered Tribal
Areas region, or FATA, of such strategic importance to the United
States?

[ Charles Johnson: ] The FATA, as it's referred to, is of significant
importance to the U.S., mainly because that is actually where the
Taliban, Al Qaeda, and other extremist groups have launched attacks in
Afghanistan and even on Pakistan's citizens themselves, and more
importantly, have planned out efforts to attack the United States
homeland. So from a strategic importance level, it is one of our
national security priorities for this country.

[ Jeremy Cluchey: ] Can you talk a little bit about the U.S. pledge of
development assistance to this region?

[ Charles Johnson: ] Back in roughly 2007 or so, the U.S. president met
with the president in Pakistan at the time, and the President, along
with the Secretary of State, pledged to provide about $750 million in
development assistance to Pakistan. Since that time, the U.S. Congress,
as well as this administration, has enhanced that nonmilitary related
efforts in the form of providing additional assistance—up to $7.5
billion is planned over the next five years. I think what we have done
in the past is we—referring to the United States government—have focused
a lot on providing military assistance and reimbursing the Pakistani
military for efforts on our behalf. But our U.S. strategic goal calls
for a comprehensive approach, a call for this have all of our elements
of national power, not just military.

[ Jeremy Cluchey: ] To what extent did GAO find the U.S. is on track to
fulfill this pledge?

[ Charles Johnson: ] On our most recent report, we're reporting that the
United States has actually allotted roughly about $728 million of the
$750 million that was pledged by the United States in terms of
development assistance. We raise issues in our report about the ability
of the United States government to oversee some of that funding.

[ Jeremy Cluchey: ] Can you talk about some of the mechanisms that are
being used to gauge the impact of U.S. development assistance in the
region?

[ Charles Johnson: ] There are several mechanisms on the way to gauge
our impact in the region in terms of success towards implementing
development projects. There are a couple of agencies involved for the
United States, one being our state department, which does a lot of our
international law enforced narcotics works over there. Some of that work
involves doing boarder security-related work, developing roads in
Pakistan. They, in many cases, have gone on and done some direct
monitoring themselves. The counterpart agency, which is our USAID aid
agency—which is a lead for development projects overseas—has actually
had to rely on third party nationals, or foreign service nationals, to
do that, and also to rely on implementing partner reports in terms of
gauging the success of their programs. I think there has been a mixed
story in terms of success. Many of the long-term programs, some of those
have not had as much success in terms of meeting their performance
targets, while some of the quick impact programs that our AID agency
implements has had much more success—those are programs that are done at
the community level, that the community buys into the community asides.
We give them grants and they implement those programs, such as digging
and building wells and things of that nature. And those have been a lot
more successful than the long-term programs.

[ Jeremy Cluchey: ] What are some of the recommendations that GAO is
making to improve the implementation and monitoring of development
assistance in the FATA?

[ Charles Johnson: ] Let me first note one of our key recommendations.
One of our key recommendations is that the U.S. government, along with
the Pakistani government, needs to develop joint strategic
implementation plans. Those plans will help us determine what the
specific goals are and provide a baseline for which we need to assess
the progress, in terms of our abilities to monitor how well these
programs are going and whether they're meeting their particular needs of
the various FATA geographic locations. There are seven tribal areas
within this region that may have different priorities. So we think these
joint strategic plans will help make sure we're in line with the
priorities in those particular regions. In addition, I would also like
to note that we think that there needs to more in terms of documenting
some of the third party information as I noted earlier, that the U.S.
relies on from the implementing partners from Pakistani government need
to do a better job of documenting some of the evidence that we may
collect from them. What we found and we report in this product is that
the U.S. doesn't do a sufficient job of documenting some of the evidence
that it actually collects.

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[Narrator:] To learn more, visit GAO's Web site at gao.gov, and be sure
to tune in to the next edition of GAO's Watchdog Report for more from
the congressional watchdog, the Government Accountability Office.