Pakistan says the United States is not sufficiently supporting the country’s struggle against insurgents.

As America’s most important ally in the war against Islamic extremists, Pakistan has received billions of dollars in military and economic aid from the United States, Europe and China. The U.S. alone has handed over a significant proportion of $5 billion it has pledged in the past year. Yet, the coalition government, fracturing amid corruption scandals and withering public confidence, says it is insufficient.

In an interview with Fox News, the country’s interior minister, Rehman Malik, called for “if not financial support then moral support” from the international community.

“We are not only fighting for moral support, we’re fighting for future generations,” he said. “We don’t want want to see suicide jackets in the hands of future generations.”

In this interview clip below, Mr Malik argues that of all countries involved in the war on terror, Pakistan has suffered the greatest military and civilian casualties.

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Earlier today, the U.S. Ambassador to Pakistan Cameron Munter repeated insistence for Pakistan to eliminate terrorist sanctuaries in North Waziristan, a demand so often voiced that, until recently, Washington has all but given up hope of seeing Islamabad come good.

“We would like them to move tomorrow, we would like them to take out these people tomorrow,” said Ambassador Munter.

But, switching swiftly to the empathetic tone Washington flexes when it fears it may be pushing Pakistan too hard, he added America understood that the Pakistan military was stretched thin with holding down difficult mountain areas like Swat Valley and South Waziristan, which it has reclaimed from the Taliban and Al Qaeda operatives.

Pakistan currently has 140,000 troops in the northwest alone who have been involved in 19 months of fighting, while the rest of the corps is stretched protecting the border with India and also assisting in ongoing relief efforts from the summer floods.

“Yes I believe that,” Ambassador Munter said in response to being asked if he consider Pakistan sincere in its intention to hunt down terror groups who use the country’s tribal belt to hide in and from which to launch attacks on U.S.-led Nato forces. “The Pakistan military has made a serious, serious effort in fighting militants, at enormous cost to Pakistan.”

But, he added, “the effort is not finished” – which is why America continues to pound insurgent strongholds within Pakistan’s tribal belt bordering Afghanistan with unmanned aerial vehicles.

Today, as many as 25 militants were killed in a series of drone attacks in the Kyber agency of Northwest Pakistan, an area that has seen scant U.A.V. attention. Missiles targeted two groups including Lashkar-e-Islam, the group responsible for recent attacks on Nato supply convoys supporting troops on Afghanistan.

The pro-West Pakistan government routinely publicly condemns such attacks, as civilian casualties in the past have fanned wide-scale popular anti-Americanism here.

But the lack of conviction in the tone of such protests underlines how the administration in Islamabad tacitly permits the U.S. to conduct strikes. A typical example of a ministerial protest can be watched here:

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Ministers across the cabinet privately admit that without drone strikes, Pakistan would not be as successful on its own in reducing militancy.

America can only hope that Pakistan will soon be equally as expedient and as effective in its own anti-militant operations.