Context
The State Department will handover the Pakistan Counterinsurgency Fund back to the Pentagon for the remaining part of the year, under the budget deal signed between the Obama administration and Congress to prevent a government shutdown. The deal took away $8.5 billion from foreign operations and the State Department for the rest of the 2011 fiscal year. The administration had asked for $1.2 billion in this year’s State Department’s budget for the PCCF, but the deal cut down that demand by $400 million and transferred the remaining sum of $800 to the Department of Defense. The Pentagon was the original manager of the program but transferring the fund’s management as well as the money to Foggy Bottom was an essential part of US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s strategy to give State Department more control over foreign military aid.
