The right kind of aid for Pakistan

 

Ignatius in WAPO complaining bitterly about Congress' inability to make special investment/jobs-creating zones in Pakistan's Federally Administered Tribal Areas.

I am embarrassed when I think back to a conversation last October in Wana, South Waziristan -- deep in the tribal areas -- with Maj. Gen. Khalid Rabbani, the commander of Pakistani forces there. He was about to launch an offensive against Taliban fighters, but he worried that the "clear and hold" phase of the campaign would fail if Pakistan couldn't also "build" through economic development.

Be patient, I told him. Congress is working on a bill that will take a first step toward bringing more jobs to the region.

Nine months later, Congress is still caught in partisan gridlock over the plan to create Reconstruction Opportunity Zones in Pakistan's Federally Administered Tribal Areas, or FATA. 

Usual fight back here about jobs being lost, but if you don't incentivize the "build," there ain't no sense in Pakistan sacrificing much in the "clear," argues Ignatius.

It's a very valid point.  

But I have to wonder:  should we be aspiring to this A-to-Z coverage?  Or, if Obama is going to use political capital, as Ignatius encourages him to do, shouldn't we more logically entice regional powers into the economic "build"?  I mean, if something this logical and simple encounters such political resistance here, shouldn't we be encouraging more localized stakeholders--the kind who would remain interested long after we're gone?