UNITED STATES OFFERS AID TO RESCUE PAKISTANIS AND RECLAIM IMAGE

[The American response is putting to a practical test Mr. Obama’s strategy to engage Pakistan as a strategic partner on multiple levels, including economic development, counterinsurgency, law enforcement and judicial reforms, and intelligence sharing.

It comes as the American ally in that effort, President Asif Ali Zardari, is facing withering criticism at home for paying a state visit to France and Britain during the flooding, the worst in Pakistan’s history.]

By ERIC SCHMITT

Staff Sgt. Matthew Kingsbury on board a heavy-lift helicopter in Swat Valley last week.

The floods have commanded a sizable and high-level American response,

including $76 million in donations. More Photos »

WASHINGTON — As the Obama administration continues to add to the aid package for flood-stricken Pakistan — already the largest humanitarian response from any single country — officials acknowledge that they are seeking to use the efforts to burnish the United States’ dismal image there.

Administration officials say their top priority is providing much-needed help to a pivotal regional ally in the fight against Al Qaeda. But when senior officials from the White House, State Department, Pentagon and Agency for International Development hold their daily conference calls to coordinate American assistance, they are also strategizing about how that aid could help improve long-term relations with Pakistan.

According to a survey conducted last month by the Pew Global Attitudes Project, 68 percent of Pakistanis have an unfavorable view of the United States. American officials hope that images of Navy and Marine Corps helicopters ferrying supplies and plucking people from rain-swollen rivers will at least begin to counteract the bad will generated by American drone strikes against militants in Pakistan. Many Pakistanis blame the strikes for a devastating series of insurgent attacks in Pakistan.

“If we do the right thing, it will be good not only for the people whose lives we save but for the U.S. image in Pakistan,” Richard C. Holbrooke, the administration’s special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, said Thursday on the PBS program “The Charlie Rose Show.”

“The people of Pakistan will see that when the crisis hits,” Mr. Holbrooke continued, “it’s not the Chinese. It’s not the Iranians. It’s not other countries. It’s not the E.U. It’s the U.S. that always leads.”

American officials say they also hope to build greater trust with the Pakistani military, which has become increasingly wary that President Obama plans to withdraw American troops quickly from neighboring Afghanistan, leaving the Pakistanis to deal with the consequences.

The flooding, which has swamped a fifth of the country and killed at least 1,384 people, according to Pakistani government figures, has led to a sizable and high-level American response, including $76 million in donations.

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates sent 19 more helicopters last week to replace six aircraft on loan from the military campaign in Afghanistan, and he invoked Mr. Obama’s personal directive to “lean forward” in providing assistance. American aircraft have rescued more than 4,000 people since Aug. 5.

The Pentagon announced Friday that ships carrying more relief supplies and helicopters had left the East Coast and would arrive in the waters off Pakistan in late September.

How much credit the United States will receive in the eyes of the Pakistanis is not clear. Some of the aid has been channeled through Pakistani and international groups because the government did not want to be associated with the unpopular Americans.

But the magnitude of the disaster, which the government says has now driven 20 million people from their homes, may be changing those calculations and, the Americans hope, breaking down that taboo.

The American response is putting to a practical test Mr. Obama’s strategy to engage Pakistan as a strategic partner on multiple levels, including economic development, counterinsurgency, law enforcement and judicial reforms, and intelligence sharing.

It comes as the American ally in that effort, President Asif Ali Zardari, is facing withering criticism at home for paying a state visit to France and Britain during the flooding, the worst in Pakistan’s history.

“This is a country where we have an enormous interest in their going after the Taliban and other extremist jihadi groups,” said Mark L. Schneider, a senior vice president at the International Crisis Group, a nonprofit organization that focuses on conflict resolution. “If this kind of activity supports the Pakistani government and people supporting the Pakistani government, it’s all to the good.”

Some experts on the region had recently warned that public resentment of the government generated by the floods could wear away public support for the military campaign against militants, integral to American goals in the region. Those worries only deepened as hard-line Islamist charities rushed to fill the void in humanitarian aid left by the government’s slow and chaotic response.

Senator John Kerry, a Massachusetts Democrat who leads the Foreign Relations Committee, said Friday that he would visit Pakistan this week to assess the damage and whether the United States needed to rethink how $7.5 billion in long-term, nonmilitary aid to Pakistan would be spent as a result of the flooding.

American officials say they are trying to rekindle the same good will generated five years ago when the United States military played a major role in responding to an earthquake in Kashmir in 2005 that killed 75,000 people.

Many of the same American and Pakistani leaders who worked together during that crisis have reunited in this calamity, including Nadeem Ahmad, a retired Pakistani lieutenant general, and Vice Adm. Michael A. LeFever, the senior American officer in Pakistan. But American officials warn that the glow from the earthquake assistance faded quickly without more enduring development programs.

“LeFever clearly understands the P.R. value of flood assistance, but he also knows that absent other high-profile public diplomacy efforts, the half-life of any improvement to Pakistani impressions of the U.S. will be short,” said John K. Wood, a retired Army colonel who was senior director for Afghanistan on the National Security Council in the Bush and Obama administrations.

The American aid drawn from giant warehouses in Dubai and in Pisa, Italy, includes 500,000 halal meals, 12 prefabricated bridges to help replace the hundreds that have washed away, 14 rescue boats, and six large-scale water-filtration systems. Last week Pakistan submitted a several-page request for additional supplies, including more boats and bridges, a senior Defense Department official said.

“The U.S. has been forthcoming on providing what we need,” said Husain Haqqani, Pakistan’s ambassador to the United States.

Still, the United States is aware that the relief effort could backfire, or at least include some negatives. Mr. Gates said relief would be paced according to Pakistan’s request, in part to avoid any perception that the United States is running the relief effort.

The United States will also have to be mindful of how the Pakistani public perceives what will be a growing American military presence in country, though largely restricted to an isolated military base. By the end of this week, when the last of the 19 helicopters begin rescue and aid missions in the Swat Valley, about 250 American troops will be operating with Pakistani troops.

It remains difficult to calculate the long-term effects of the floods on America’s goals in the country, which include focusing the Pakistani government on fighting the militants that threaten it and use Pakistan as a base to attack NATO forces in Afghanistan.

It has been difficult to assess, for instance, how far the flooding has set back reconstruction efforts in the Swat Valley. The rebuilding is considered crucial to keeping the area from falling back under the influence of militants the government drove out in an offensive last year.

The scale of the flooding is also demanding a greater role from the Pakistani military, which in turn leaves some American military officials concerned that the army’s counterinsurgency campaign could falter in the northwest border regions.

Mr. Gates told reporters last week that the Pakistani military had not been expected to launch any new offensives against militants in the short term, and he said it remained to be seen whether the flood would have a significant impact on the Pakistani government’s campaign against extremists.

“Clearly, they’re going to have to divert some troops, and already have, in trying to deal with the flooding,” Mr. Gates said.

Reporting was contributed by Salmon Masood from Islamabad, Pakistan, Neil MacFarquhar from the United Nations, and Thom Shanker from Washington.

@ The New York Times