New U.S. aid is planed for the North Western Frontier States in Pakistan according to this NYT piece.

The frontier states are Pashtun (or Pathan) land that was never ruled by anyone than the Pashtun themselves. These people are not exactly friends of the U.S. government which kills their brethren on the other side of the Durand line. A border the Pashtuns never recognized anyway. The Taliban in Pakistan are now under unified command and on the offensive. Their fighters are people from the tribes. So does this have any chance of success?

First a look at the numbers:

The disputes have left many skeptical that the $750 million five-year plan can succeed in competing for the allegiance of an estimated 400,000 young tribesmen in the restive tribal region …

A $150 million per year sounds like a lot of money. But later in the piece we learn:

The region of 3.2 million people has no industry, virtually no work and no hope. Men aged 18 to 25, who are the target of the program, find offers of 300 rupees a day from the Taliban — about $5 — attractive.

The NYT doesn’t do the math, but $150 million per year divided by 400,000 recipients and 365 days per year results in $1.03 per day per person. Say’s Pashtun junior: "Why should I work for so little money? The Talibs pay $5 per day. Besides that, shooting is much more fun than building roads."

But that money would never reach the tribes anyway. NGO’s can not go into the region anymore. The Pakistan government doesn’t really exist there and its army gets shot at whenever it tries to get a hand on the tribes. 

The USG solution? Contractors:

Among the handful of companies invited to bid are DynCorp International and Creative Associates International Inc., both of which won substantial contracts in Iraq. How effective they will be in the tribal areas is equally uncertain.

Their profit and overhead share would be 50% and of course there would be no control over who would really receive the rest.

The program propaganda smacks of pseudo-humanist colonial attitude:

The civilian aid program would provide jobs and schooling, build 600 miles of roads and improve literacy in an area where almost no women can read.

But the real stuff is this:

The presentation listed the range of programs involving A.I.D., the narcotics section of the State Department and, to a small extent, the Pentagon.

US-AID, i.e. the soft CIA, anti-narcotics from State and the Pentagon. Those will teach women how to read? Not really:

Besides providing jobs, schooling, and roads the American plan also calls for improving the “capacity” of the local Pakistani authorities so that the government becomes a more viable and friendly force in everyday lives.

This smells of another attempt of an "Anbar awakening" program, bribing the locals to use them as U.S. proxy forces against the government. Like the Shia puppets in Baghdad, Musharraf’s certainly hates the idea.

Asked what he thought of the American goal to improve the “capacity” of the administration of which he is a senior member, Mr. Iqbal, the Pakistani official, who attended college in the United States, replied, “Bunkum.”

For the above reasons, the program has no chance to make a difference anywhere but to put money in the hands of some contractors. Where it goes from there, we can only guess …

Sidenote:
When the NYT writer writes "The region … has no industry, virtually no work and no hope", what does this mean? The people there have been living off their land for thousands of years. They do the work needed to feed themselves. Why would they need industry, other work or the NYT readers version of ‘hope’?