WASHINGTON, DC —This week, Congressman Tierney (MA-06), Chair of the National Security Oversight Subcommittee, is offering an amendment that serves long-term U.S. national security interests by helping to give Pakistani children an educational alternative to extremist, jihadi-teaching madrassas. The amendment, titled the Pakistan Education Assistance Amendment, is intended for the Fiscal Year 2008 Department of State, Foreign Operations appropriations bill (H.R. 2764). It aims to reprogram $75 million of previously unspecified American aid to Pakistan towards programs that support basic education for Pakistani children. 

“Pakistan’s extremist madrassas are jihadi hotbeds that fuel terrorist groups like Al Qaeda. It is in The United States’ national security interest to give Pakistani children an alternative other than that of radicalization. By designating this important funding for basic education alternatives, we will be fighting terrorism at its source – stopping the process of extremism before it starts,” said Congressman Tierney.

Over the last several years, the Pakistani government has been receiving a $200 million cash transfer per year in unregulated direct budgetary support through the Economic Support Fund account. If passed, the Congressman’s budget-neutral amendment would specifically reprogram $75 million of those funds for basic education.

“In 2003 the 9/11 Commission warned, ‘[i]t is hard to overstate the importance of Pakistan in the struggle against Islamic terrorism,’” Congressman Tierney continued. “It is past time to heed the Commission’s warning by addressing international terrorism at its source — in failing school systems in places like Pakistan. Let us fight terrorism with textbooks and blackboards now, rather than with more bullets and bombs later.”

In addition to Congressman Tierney’s role as the Chairman for the Subcommittee on National Security and Foreign Affairs of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee, he sits on the Committee for Education and Labor. In April, 2007, he led a Congressional delegation to Pakistan and Afghanistan where he met with the region’s top officials. In May 2007, he held a hearing with the National Security Subcommittee to investigate the dangers of madrassas in Pakistan, specifically in pursuit of a solution to stop radicalized education through the redirection of U.S. aid to Pakistan.

-30-