Author: Sandeep Unnithan
Publication: India Today
Date: May 18, 2009
URL: http://indiatoday.intoday.in/index.php?option=com_content&Itemid=1&task=view&id=40769§ionid=40&issueid=105&latn=2
Introduction: Since 9/11, Pakistan has siphoned
of billion of dollars from US aid for the 'War on Terror' to strengthen its
offensive capabilities against India instead of the Taliban
Taking off from its base near Karachi, Pakistan's
P-3C Orion, a US-built four-engined long-range maritime patrol aircraft, can
fly nearly 9,000 km in 10 hours, carrying an array of torpedoes, weapons and
anti-ship missiles to any point in the Indian Ocean. The Pakistan Navy is
acquiring eight of these aircraft from the US after 9/11 as part of its role
as a 'Major non-NATO Ally' in the war on terror.
These aircraft, bought with US aid of $970
million (Rs 4,800 crore) are pretty much useless against the Taliban, which
is now threatening its existence, unless Baitullah Masood, head of the Pakistani
Taliban, begins acquiring a navy. The targets, say Indian defence planners,
undoubtedly are Indian Navy ships and submarines.
The Obama administration is now debating the
Kerry-Lugar Bill which as part of its Af-Pak strategy will triple US assistance
to Pakistan-$7.5 billion (Rs 37,070 crore) over the next five years, including
$1.5 billion (Rs 7,400 crore) in military aid. The bill has resurrected concerns
that this could be diverted for use against India. "Our experience has
shown that military aid has been used against us in the past," Prime
Minister Manmohan Singh said in New Delhi recently.
According to official US sources, Pakistan
has received approximately $12.3 billion (Rs 60,700 crore) in aid since 2002,
of which $8.6 billion (Rs 42,460 crore) came as military assistance. Where
were the funds for military assistance spent? A recent study released by the
Stockholm Institute of Peace Research Initiatives (SIPRI), an independent
organisation which studies arms transfers, notes the deliveries in 2008-M-109A5
155-mm self-propelled artillery systems, P-3CUP Orion maritime patrol aircraft
and F-16A combat aircraft.
Needless to say, none of these will be used
in the Pakistan military's ongoing offensive to evict the Taliban PAKISTAN
from north-western Pakistan, the so-called 'crucible of terrorism'. "We
are concerned by the build-up in Pakistan's capabilities with arms ostensibly
meant to fight an insurgency, and have conveyed this to the US at various
levels in the past," says a senior Indian Defence Ministry official.
As SIPRI notes, the volume of deliveries to Pakistan has increased significantly
in recent years with 41 per cent of all transfers taking place last year alone.
Between 2004 and last year, 40 per cent of
Pakistan's imports of major conventional weapons came from the US. "The
US now accounts for onefourth of the conventional weapons exported to Pakistan,"
says Paul Holtom of SIPRI. Annual US military aid to Pakistan is currently
around $300 million (Rs 1,480 crore) a year which could triple if the Kerry-Lugar
Bill goes through.
Counter-insurgency, admittedly an area the
Pakistan Army has little or no expertise in, calls for huge investments in
training, transport helicopters and infantry weapons, which has not happened
so far. "There is no congruence between the US objectives in South Asia
and the nature of weapons and systems which Pakistan is being supplied so
far," says Thomas Mathew, deputy director, Institute of Defence Studies
and Analyses. In fact, the weapons have had the opposite effect. "US
military aid has always emboldened the Pakistan Army and ISI to wage asymmetric
warfare against India and the terror attacks in Mumbai were part of the same
continuum," says Brigadier Gurmeet Kanwal of the Centre for Land Warfare
Studies.
Pakistan has traditionally used the canard
of a danger on its western border to seek arms which are instead used on its
eastern front. Following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, Pakistan's military
dictator General Zia-ul-Haq pressured the US and successfully obtained the
F-16 fighter aircraft (later rejigged to carry nuclear weapons). It waged
a proxy war against India by diverting to Kashmir the arms gifted by the CIA
to the ISI to fight the Soviet invaders in Afghanistan.
The Obama administration has placed conditions
on military aid, with President Obama asking Pakistan to get rid of its 'India
obsession'. But according to Indian military analysts, it will be impossible
to monitor the deployment of weapons the US supplies to Pakistan for its War
on Terror Part II. "Since field inspections are not possible, the US
will have to rely on annual statements from Pakistan about where the weapons
have been deployed," says Kanwal.
Despite probing questions raised by the US
Congress in the past, the US administration has managed to get the aid through.
Last year, for instance, the US government managed to clear a $200-million
upgrade in the targeting abilities of F-16s, ostensibly to mount precision
attacks on the Taliban, despite objections from the Congress. Pakistan cited
bankruptcy to get the US to pay for the upgrade. "The US administration
must realise that the Pakistan Army and the ISI are part of the problem and
cannot, therefore, be part of the solution," says Kanwal. In Deception,
an investigative book which details A.Q. Khan's nuclear blackmarketeering
allegedly with the connivance of the Pakistan army, a Musharraf aide gleefully
informs the authors about being let off by President Bush: "We were back
in the old relationship, you know, the one where we do as we please and they
do as we please."
