Author: UPI
Publication: Washington Times
Date: November 23, 2004
URL: http://www.washingtontimes.com/upi-breaking/20041122-054057-7837r.htm
Even as Pakistan's leadership was
expressing its unrestrained glee with President George W. Bush's thumping
re-election, the new Bush administration wasted no time in making its first
big move to reward Pakistan with advanced weaponry.
On Nov. 16, the Defense Security
and Cooperation Agency sent notifications to Congress of a $1.3 billion
arms package for Pakistan, a major non-NATO ally of America. The deal includes
eight P-3C Orion naval reconnaissance planes possibly with anti-ship and
anti-submarine missiles, 2,000 TOW-2A heavy anti-armor guided missiles
and the deadly PHALANX Close-In Weapon Systems for ships. Ostensibly, these
sales are to enable Pakistan to fight the war on terror. What's even better
for Pakistan is that the money for this sale is likely to come from the
$1.5 billion over five years that the U.S has promised Pakistan in military
aid, making it a veritable freebie.
Not to forget that what is still
on the table is the deal for the F-16 fighter jets that Pakistan has been
dying to get. Even though there is no official word on the F-16s, there
have been many reports that the deal is all but done and the Bush administration
is waiting for an opportune time to announce it, perhaps when Pakistan's
President Gen. Pervez Musharraf next visits Washington.
Now, if one takes this new Orion/TOW/
Phalanx giveaway deal at face value, it seems like a reasonable proposition.
After all, if the United States expects Pakistan to fight terrorists, it
behooves it to support its ally as much as possible, right? Not quite.
The problem is that these systems
are unlikely to be used in Pakistan's much- vaunted operations in the tribal
areas, which a senior U.S official recently described to Time magazine
as "7,000 to 10,000 Pakistani troops courageously battling 200 al-Qaida
guys to a standstill."
The Pakistan army, for instance,
could theoretically use the TOW missile against militant hideouts in the
tribal areas. But one needs to look at the specific version that Pakistan
is seeking to see the fallacy of this claim.
The DSCA statement clearly states
that the TOW variant that Pakistan wants is the "TOW-2A Anti-Armor Guided
Missile." This missile's unique feature is the "tandem" warhead that is
specifically designed to be used against tanks with Explosive Reactive
Armor. It is hard to imagine the tribal militants in possession of ERA
armored vehicles, but everyone knows who has such systems in Pakistan's
neighborhood.
On the other side of Pakistan, the
Indian army is busy inducting the Russian made T- 90S tanks with the Kontakt-5
ERA, just the type of armor the TOW-2A is designed to penetrate. It is
unlikely to see Pakistan wasting its supply of TOW-2As when its huge supply
of cheap Chinese anti-tank missiles could do the trick against the mud
structures of the tribal militants. As they say, it doesn't make sense
to use a sledgehammer to kill a fly.
Similarly, the P-3C planes have
only one likely purpose -- to fight against India's large fleet of submarines
and battleships. Indeed there is very little that the Pakistan Navy could
do in terms of tracking terrorist ships that the U.S. and NATO fleets in
and around Pakistan cannot do. Besides, is the United States ever going
to rely on the Pakistanis to track their coastline, when that area holds
the biggest risk of a nuclear-weapon-laden container being sent to American
ports? Even the DSCA's press release on the P-3C sale says that the P-3C
"will enhance the capabilities of the Pakistani Navy and support its regional
influence."
Similarly, the PHALANX system is
meant to defend ships against fast incoming missiles and aircrafts, which
terrorists are unlikely to have. Pakistan is likely to employ them on ships
conducting operations against India.
And we are not even talking about
the F-16s. If press reports from Washington are to be believed, Pakistan
is likely to get 18 to 20 F- 16 C/D variants, possibly with AMRAAM air-to-
air missiles and precision-guided bombs. It is hard to see how AMRAAM long
range air-to- air missiles help fight terrorists unless they are intended
to bring down Osama Bin Laden's flying carpet.
All this makes one wonder if the
United States has learned anything from history.
In the 1980s, Pakistan was a frontline
ally of the U.S in the effort to drive the Soviets out of Afghanistan.
During that time, supporters of Pakistan in Capitol Hill and the Pentagon
argued for giving that nation advanced arms, including the F-16 fighters
as well as billions in military aid. The F-16s were justified with an argument
that a conventionally strong Pakistan is unlikely to develop nuclear weapons.
As it turned out later, Pakistan
actually accelerated its nuclear program during the same period with the
American taxpayer funding its conventional defenses to the tune of $5 billion,
thereby freeing up funds for its nuclear program. Former Senate official
Leonard Weiss revealed in 2002 that Pakistan had in fact diverted two-thirds
of the weaponry acquired from the United States ostensibly to protect against
the Soviet threat to the Indian border.
Washington Post Managing Editor
Steve Coll wrote in his recent book "Ghost Wars" that Pakistan's intelligence
services transferred weapons obtained from the CIA, such as advanced sniper
rifles, to the Islamist groups fighting against Indian troops in Kashmir.
The Pakistan army even used the famous Stinger missiles in its 1999 aggression
into the Indian-held Kargil heights in Kashmir.
Apologists for Pakistan in Washington
point out that given the big imbalance between India and Pakistan militarily,
the United States must step in to address the disparity for the sake of
"stability." One could write a book on the hollowness of this argument,
but two big holes in this hypothesis stand out.
Firstly, Pakistan is already close
to max-out levels in its defense spending. Its current defense budget for
2004-2005 is officially 194 billion rupees. But that doesn't include grants,
pensions and other expenses, which increase the actual number to 300 billion
rupees or approximately $5 billion. If one adds to that the $600 million
that Pakistan is getting in terms of free weaponry from the United States,
it comes to $3.6 billion or a whopping 8 percent of its 2003 gross domestic
product. India, on the other hand, spends between 2 percent and 3 percent
of its GDP for defense.
The fact is that there is never
going to be an equality between Pakistan and India in conventional arms,
just like India can never equal China's numbers and China in turn can never
match up to America's. Besides, aren't Pakistan's nuclear weapons supposed
to obviate the need for Pakistan to match India weapon for weapon?
The other argument is the one that
is usually spouted by retired Pakistani military officials who frequent
American think tanks. For instance, retired Pakistan Army Brig. Feroz Hassan
Khan is a visiting professor at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterrey,
Calif. Khan says that the United States needs to "realize" that India is
Pakistan's main threat and must seek to alleviate this specific concern
of Pakistan.
In fact, this argument is also without
merit. The reality is that in terms of South Asian stability, India is
a status quo power, which seeks to wait out issues, much like China does
with respect to Taiwan.
But what the Pakistani military
establishment clearly wants is a license to try to change the status quo
through the use of sub-state actors, such as the jihadi groups its uses
in Kashmir supplemented by a U.S.-provided safety net when its ill thought-out
military adventures backfire, like they usually do.
Now it is quite true that the military
dominated Pakistani establishment has always viewed India as an aggressor
and a mortal threat. But that does not mean that the world should buy into
this theory. In fact, most experts in Washington and elsewhere point out
that Pakistan's main threat is an internal one from homegrown Islamist
groups and the radicalization of the Pakistani society in general and the
army in particular. In fact, the unsaid fear factor is America's post 9/11
policy towards Pakistan has been the prospect of a radical Islamist regime
taking control of Pakistan's already leaky nuclear weapons complex.
It is therefore in the American
interest to focus aid to Pakistan toward efforts to thwart the internal
dangers, rather than buttressing the Pakistani establishment's paranoia
about the Indian "threat." Former State Department official and South Asia
expert Teresita Schaffer pointed out in her July 14, 2004 testimony to
the Senate that Pakistan has not abandoned its proclivity towards starting
reckless military adventures and continues to support Islamist militants
in Kashmir who could provoke a war with India with one big attack. She
recommended against the sale of major weapons systems to Pakistan in that
context.
The Musharraf regime is already
in a state of euphoria over the Bush re-election. They see Bush's win as
something that would guarantee the continuation of benefits that Pakistan
enjoyed over the last four years -- lavish economic support, daily diplomatic
encomiums, little pressure for democratic reforms, coddling of Pakistani
jihadi groups and a free pass on the A.Q. Khan deal and more cover up of
Pakistani state involvement in nuclear proliferation.
In this milieu, it is hard to see
the latest American military largesse to Pakistan as having anything but
a negative effect on the region's stability. This could only serve to embolden
the hard-line elements in Pakistan's military to get aggressive with India
again. If the Kashmir talks soon hit a dead end with Pakistan realizing
that it cannot gain any territory from India on the negotiating table,
we may possibly see another "tactically brilliant" but strategically harebrained
military adventure by Pakistan within the next four-years.
Like Yogi Berra once said -- "It's
déjà vu all over again"
(Kaushik Kapisthalam is a freelance
commentator on topics relating to South Asia. He can be reached at contact@kapisthalam.com.)
