By Dr Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed

The fuss over David Cameron's comments on Pakistan exporting terror and his subsequent attempts to repair bridges has been hugely overblown. The prospect of relations between Britain and Pakistan being damaged was remote, and Friday's agreement between Zardari and Cameron only reaffirmed the close long-standing military-intelligence co-operation between the countries.

Only a month earlier, William Hague had gushingly praised Pakistani Army chief General Kayani’s efforts to combat extremism, emphasising the significance of Britain’s long-term strategic and economic relationship with Pakistan.

What would have been welcome, but we didn't get, was serious consideration following Cameron's comments of whether the relationship between Britain and Pakistan has indeed been counterproductive. The WikiLeaks ‘revelations’ offer nothing new – US military intelligence has been fully cognizant of Pakistan’s sponsorship of Islamist extremist networks for several decades. For instance, two declassified US Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) reports dated two weeks after 9/11 observed that bin Laden’s al-Qaeda network was “able to expand under the safe sanctuary extended by Taliban following Pakistan directives” and funded by the ISI.

It is hardly a ‘rogue’ operation – even Gen. Kayani is implicated. Confidential NATO reports and US intelligence assessments circulated to White House officials in 2008 documented that as ISI chief from 2004 to 2007, Kayani presided over Taliban training camps in Balochistan, and provided over 2,000 rocket-propelled grenades and 400,000 rounds of ammunition for a Taliban offensive in Kandahar. In 2008, US intelligence intercepted Kayani’s description of senior militant leader, Maulavi Jalaluddin Haqqani, as a “strategic asset” in the insurgency around Kabul and eastern Afghanistan.

The British have never been in the dark either. In 2006, a leaked report by the Ministry of Defence-run think tank, the Defence Academy, spelled out the ISI’s “dual role in combating terrorism” while simultaneously “supporting the Taliban [and] supporting terrorism and extremism.”

It is only our obsession with a military solution in Afghanistan that has made us militarily dependent on Pakistan; but the correlation between the troop surge in Afghanistan and the 90 per cent increase in insurgent violence – with executions of aid workers and other civilians becoming increasingly common – shows how militarization is cultivating imminent “strategic defeat”. Meanwhile, militant groups who thrive due to the Pakistani government’s corrupt ineptitude are the fallback to supply communities with medical aid, infrastructure and education, increasing the Taliban's grip on the country.

If we change our approach by redirecting military aid into development spending in Afghanistan and Pakistan, the situation would change radically. We could then be freer to re-consider the ill-conceived policy of unconditional military aid to Islamabad, and perhaps even explore targeted sanctions –a radical departure from current policy, but one that policymakers must at least begin debating.

Dr Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed is author of A User’s Guide to the Crisis of Civilization (Pluto, 2010)