Pakistan a failed state: US lawmaker

Influential American Congressman Dana Rohrabacher has told Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Gilani that his country is a failed state and no amount of US aid money will ever change that. "It is becoming increasingly clear to Members of the US Congress that Pakistan is a failed state and no amount of US aid money will ever change that," Rohrabacher wrote in a letter to Gilani.

In his letter, Rohrabacher condemned a recent police action that resulted in the death of four Baluchi men. "Pakistan's future will remain bleak and marred by political violence as long as the Pakistani government and military continue to deny ethnic groups within Pakistan a right to self-determination," he wrote. "American aid money for Pakistan will dry up. It is clear that the Pakistani military and intelligence services have for years diverted money intended to help the people of Balochistan, and the other provinces of Pakistan, into funding terrorism and buying weapons to repress their own people," Rohrabacher said. Rohrabacher is Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee. He along with Congressman Steve King and Louie Gohmert, introduced legislation on February 17, 2012 expressing the sense of Congress that the people of Balochistan have a "right to self-determination and to their own sovereign country."