Mc Master, in his latest book ‘At War with Ourselves: My Tour of Duty in the Trump White House,’ revealed that despite Trump‘s order to stop aid until Pakistan ceased providing safe havens to terrorist, Mattis planned to give financial assistance, including over USD 150 million worth of armoured vehicles, to Islamabad, PTI news agency reported.
McMaster intervened, successfully stopping that particular shipment, but other aid persisted. his prompted Trump to tweet on New Year’s Day, “The United States has foolishly given Pakistan more than 33 billion dollars in aid over the last 15 years and they have given us nothing but lies & deceit thinking of our leaders as fools. They give safe haven to the terrorists we hunt in Afghanistan with little help. No more!”
“Pakistan was not changing its behaviour, and almost as an insult, the government released Hafiz Saeed, the mastermind behind the 2008 Mumbai terrorist attacks, on the eve of defence secretary Jim Mattis’s visit. Moreover, a recent event in Pakistan involving hostages had exposed the undeniable complicity of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence with the terrorists,” McMaster wrote.
He notes that news reports that time criticised the president’s tweet as capricious and devoid of a coherent policy. But halting assistance was a critical part of the South Asia strategy that Trump had approved at Camp David in August, he wrote in book, according to PTI.
“A lunch that the president hosted with the vice president, Tillerson, Mattis, Kelly, and me on December 14 helped me understand why it was difficult to implement Trump’s guidance on Pakistan or to foster cooperation on contingency plans for North Korea,” says McMaster.