Resolved: The United States should suspend all assistance to Pakistan.

Resolved: The United States should suspend all assistance to Pakistan. CONIntro:The US government spent over a billion dollars in military aid to Afghanistan in 2010, and only just recently scaled that number back. Since 1998, over 20 billion has been given to the country. This amount causes many people to ask why we are spending this much, but I am here to tell you that the spending is justified, and went toward a good cause. Definitions:Suspend - To halt something temporarily Assistance – Means any economic, political, or military help that the US gives to Pakistan.1. The Taliban is very strong in Pakistan, if we suspend aid, the Taliban will take over. According to Jessica Stern of Foreign Affairs Magazine, in an article titled, "Pakistan's Jihan Culture", posted in December 2010, the Taliban in Pakistan control the government. The government also supports the Taliban by giving it weapons and intelligence support. This means that the US should give aid to Pakistan so that it can fight off the Taliban control of the government. 2. The Pakistani government is controlled by Muslim extremists who advocate jihad, stopping aid would give them a reason to come after us. In the same article by Jessica Stern, "Islamic religious schools? Madrasahs? On the other hand, are located all over the country and provide not only free education, but also free food, housing, and clothing. In the poor areas of southern Punjab, Madrasahs funded by the Sunni sectarian political party Sipah-e Sahaba Pakistan (ssp) reportedly even pay parents for sending them their children. In the 1980s, Pakistani dictator General Mohammad Zia-ul-Haq promoted the Madrasahs as a way to garner the religious parties' support for his rule and to recruit troops for the anti-Soviet war in Jihad Culture Afghanistan. At the time, many Madrasahs were financed by the zakat (the Islamic tithe collected by the state), giving the government at least a modicum of control. But now, more and more religious schools are funded privately? By wealthy Pakistani industrialists at home or abroad, by private and government-funded nongovernmental organizations in the Persian Gulf states and Saudi Arabia, and by Iran. Without state supervision, these Madrasahs are free to preach a narrow and violent version of Islam. Most Madrasahs offer only religious instruction, ignoring math, science, and other secular subjects important for functioning in modern society. As Maududi warned in his 1960 book, First Principles of the Islamic State, "those who choose the theological branch of learning generally keep themselves utterly ignorant of [secular subjects, thereby remaining] incapable of giving any lead to the people regarding modern political problems. " Even worse, some extremist madrasahs preach jihad without understanding the concept: They equate it to jihad, which most Islamic scholars interpret as the striving for justice (and principally an inner striving to purify the self with guerrilla warfare. These schools encourage their graduates, who often cannot find work because of their lack of practical education, to fulfill their "spiritual obligations" by fighting against Hindus in Kashmir or against Muslims of other sects in Pakistan. Pakistani official estimate that 10 to 15 percent of the country's tens of thousands of Madrasahs espouse such extremist ideologies. Pakistan's interior minister Moinuddin Haider, for one, recognizes these problems. "The brand of Islam they are teaching is not good for Pakistan," he says. "Some, in the garb of religious training, are busy fanning sectarian violence, poisoning people's minds. " In June, Haider announced a reform plan that would require all Madrasahs to register with the government, expand their curricula, disclose their financial resources, seek permission for admission. Obviously, we need to keep giving aid to Pakistan so we are safe and secure.3. The Pakistani government does not trust the US, continuing aid would allow them to trust us. According to Elizabeth Mcdonald in th eGUardian Newspaper, May 11, 2011, "U. S. officials were stunned to find that bin Laden had been living for up to six years at his fortified compound in Abbottabad, which sits about sixty miles from Pakistan's capital, Islamabad. The town is heavily populated by Pakistani military and security officials. That discovery shed new light on the tens of billions of dollars in taxpayer aid given to Pakistan since 9/11. An increasing number of U. S. officials now say what many have known all along, that Pakistan's government is guilty of playing both sides. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) said at a press briefing recently about Pakistan: "You can't trust them and you can't abandon them. "Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) has introduced a bill to cut off aid to Pakistan, noting in a statement that the successful raid to "kill Osama Bin Laden made it clear that Pakistan's leadership concealed, protected and enabled the al-Qaeda leader for many years. "Rohrabacher adds in his statement: "We can no longer afford this foolishness. The time has come for us to stop subsidizing those who actively oppose us. Pakistan has shown itself not to be America's ally. "Rohrabacher's bill spells out "several accounts of Pakistan's duplicitous behavior toward the United States," his statement reads. That includes "recent reports of Pakistani leadership lobbying Afghan President Hamid Karzai to move away from ‘imperial' America and to embrace Communist China," the Congressman says. And Rep. Rohrabacher quotes the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Michael Mullen, who has said the Pakistani intelligence service has had a long relationship with the Haqqani terror group that is right now "killing Americans" in Afghanistan.