Pentagon cancels aid to Pakistan due to growing tension over militant havens

The Pentagon is canceling $300 million of aid to Pakistan according to the organisation due to Islamabad's lack of "decisive actions" in support of regional American strategy and Islamabad’s apparent failure to take decisive action against militants.

The US has been pushing the Islamic nation to put a stop to the growing militant safe havens in the country and issued a statement to freeze on aid at the beginning of the year that an official said could be worth $2 billion. These funds are a part of the so-called Coalition Support Funds were a portion of a broader suspension in aid to Pakistan announced by President Donald Trump earlier this year. Pentagon's this decision catering to the deteriorating ties between the two nations.

According to the Trump administration, Islamabad is granting safe haven to insurgents who are waging a 17-year-old war in neighboring Afghanistan, but Pakistan denies this charge. Nevertheless, the U.S. officials had offered the possibility that Pakistan could win back that support if it changed its behavior.

Pentagon Spokesman Koné Faulkner told PTI, “Due to a lack of Pakistani decisive actions in support of the South Asia Strategy, the remaining $300 million (actually $323.6 million to include non-Pakistan funds) was reprogrammed by DoD in the June/July 2018 time frame for other urgent priorities before the funds expire on

September 30, 2018,”

Pakistan in defence said that it is doing its part to deal with the extremist threat as many lives lost to terrorist attacks and billions of dollars spent on military operations.

US officials accuse Islamabad of ignoring and collaborating with groups that attack Afghanistan from safe havens along the border between the two countries.

The White House holds the opinion that Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency and other military bodies have been funding and supplying arm to the Taliban for ideological reasons and to counter rising Indian influence in Afghanistan.