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| India-Pakistan |
| Fighter jets will make Pakistan's debt soar |
| 2006-08-09 |
| By Husain Haqqani The Bush administration has justified its decision to sell 36 F-16 Falcon fighter jets to Pakistan on grounds that it would increase American "access and influence" in Islamabad. Pakistan's military regime, which will incur a debt of $5 billion to purchase the planes made by Lockheed Martin, considers the deal a boost for Pakistan's security. Close examination of the deal and of the history of similar US-Pakistan deals indicates that the stated goals of neither the US nor the Pakistani rulers are likely to be advanced with the F-16 purchase. If anything, the F-16s are a pay off from Washington for General Pervez Musharraf's military regime a sort of "toys for the boys" gift that is expected to extend the regime's survival. That is all that concessional arms transfers under previous pro-US Pakistani military regimes have achieved. Let us first look at the F-16 deal from the perspective of Pakistani national security. Not long ago, Musharraf declared that the greatest threat to Pakistani security comes from extremist ideologues and terrorists within the country. Domestic extremism in Pakistan would be fought more effectively with investment in the neglected social sectors. A sum of $ 5 billion could go a long way in expanding education, healthcare and poverty alleviation programmes. If the purpose is to locate and liquidate hardened terrorists, the F-16 Falcon is not the best weapon to identify, isolate or even kill individual terrorists. Most major Al Qaida figures arrested in Pakistan and handed over to the US were arrested in major Pakistani cities. The F-16's sophisticated air-to-air, air-to-surface and anti-ship missiles have little to contribute in the battle in the neighbourhoods of Westridge, Rawalpindi (where Khalid Shaikh Mohammad was found) or Defence Society, Karachi (where Ramzi Bin Al Shibh was caught). They have limited value in Waziristan or other tribal areas on the Afghan border. Pakistan's traditional security threat is believed to come from India but here too Pakistan will not get a bang for its buck. The Pentagon's statement accompanying notification of the F-16 sale to the US Congress has stated unequivocally that Pakistan's F-16 purchase would "not significantly reduce India's quantitative or qualitative military advantage" and that it would neither affect the regional balance of power nor introduce a new technology in the region. John Hillen, the US Assistant Secretary of State for Political-Military Affairs, told a recent Congressional hearing that the version of the plane being sold to Pakistan "will not be nuclear capable" and explained that the Pentagon's notification to Congress had "enumerated the technologies that were not, that would usually go with an F-16, that are not part of this deal". According to Hillen, these withheld technologies "include ones that would allow the F-16 to be used in offensive ways to penetrate airspace of another country that was highly defended". If the F-16 will not enhance Pakistan's military capability against domestic terrorism or confer it some qualitative or quantitative advantage in its unfortunate perennial conflict with India, why add to Pakistan's debt burden for such expensive jets? Hillen's explanation, repeated in private and public conversations by other American officials, focuses on US influence over Pakistan. Secure leverage The military is the most powerful institution in Pakistan and military sales, backed by large American credits, are a means of pleasing the Pakistani military. This, in turn, is supposed to secure leverage for the United States. The US has dreamt of leverage over Pakistan's foreign policy in return for military equipment and economic aid ever since the days of the Cold War alliances, SEATO and CENTO. Contrary to the assumption of American officials that military aid translates into leverage, Pakistan's military has always managed to take military aid without ever fully giving the US what it desires. If Pakistan's security policy was determined by a representative government and not by a Praetorian army, the ability to make independent foreign policy decisions would be a good thing from Pakistan's point of view even if that is not what the Americans seek. But given the ascendancy of the military in Pakistan's decision-making, the military aid relationship with Washington has become a contributing factor to Pakistan's internal dysfunction. The availability of weapons systems that enhance the Pakistani military's prestige and therefore its ability to continue to dominate national life offered by the US to secure limited Pakistani cooperation in US grand strategy allows Pakistan's military rulers to believe that they can continue to promote risky domestic, regional and pan-Islamic policies. It undermines the Pakistani military's willingness to negotiate realistically with India without bolstering Pakistan's actual military prowess against its much larger neighbour. The people of Pakistan, and the long-term US-Pakistan relationship, would benefit far more if Washington made it clear that its support for Pakistan's security would be contingent upon Pakistan having an elected government that determines Pakistan's real security needs in a transparent manner. Husain Haqqani is Director of Boston University's Centre for International Relations and Co-Chair of the Hudson Institute's Project on Islam and Democracy. He is the author of the Carnegie Endowment book "Pakistan Between Mosque and Military". |
| Posted by:john |
| #4 49 Pan's got it...but I think John had it too...he's no slouch, that John |
| Posted by: Frank G 2006-08-09 23:10 |
| #3 This is typical FMF back scratching for being a good boy. We sell them 30 F-16 aircraft that are really not any good for a first world fight. There is no money exchanged, it's a loan. They play along and let us push our policies in the area. The aircraft will soon be lawn art because the PAF can't maintain them, and we will forgive the debt when we need a big favor from them. Same game, different country. |
| Posted by: 49 Pan 2006-08-09 23:02 |
| #2 The miserable pakis make wonderful cannon fodder. The islamists thrive in ignorant, starving, fanatical, saudi-funded-madras-ridden societies. I suppose the new weapons will come in handy when the moolahs take over from Perv and the democrats immasculate our US forces. Sorry, i've been feeling depressed today--perhaps it was liebermans defeat, one of the few democrats who "gets it". |
| Posted by: Claviling Sholuth9192 2006-08-09 22:58 |
| #1 VIEW: Are the F-16s up to scratch? By Kamran Shafi So then, despite the fact that the infrastructure of the country is in the state it is in: water soluble roads that are pot-holed with the slightest rain; rickety bridges that collapse at the merest provocation; an electricity distribution system that is so weak and frayed it breaks down with sickening regularity; schools that do not have chairs and tables or safe drinking water for children; government-run hospitals that do not even have sutures, bandages, cotton-wool or methylated spirit; a train network which can be decimated by the washing away of a single bridge- despite all of this it seems we must have the blessed F-16s first. Indeed the fact that, the infrastructure of Karachi, the major centre of industry and trade and the city that pays majority of the federation’s bills, could be so creaky that it drowns in three inches of rain; when three-fourths of its residents are out of electricity or water, seems to be a greater cause for concern. Yet we are geared to spend an outrageous amount of five billion US dollars to buy the, as Husain Haqqani put it yesterday, “toys for the boys” along with building a new general headquarters in ‘Islamabad the beautiful’, to boot. We’ll talk about the new GHQ another time; this week it is the F-16s. While buying these expensive planes at a time when the country needs all the money it can muster to make the lives of its people a little easier, is a criminal waste of money. Are these aircrafts even worth it? A Pakistani reader from America, who is researching for his PhD sent me a quite shocking email two days ago, which got me going on this subject anew. While I have edited it for brevity, I reproduce it (almost) verbatim: “I am a PhD student at present in the United States and consider myself a patriot. I therefore feel it my duty to ask you to bring something to the nation’s attention and if possible, create a furore through the press (something similar to what happened in the steel mills case). A friend of mine, who has inside information (but doesn’t want to be known) regarding the operational capabilities of the F-16 batch that we currently have, is very worried about the purchase of the new F-16s being touted as a quantum leap for the PAF. “What worries him specifically (other than the US being able to stop the supply of spares whenever) is that these F-16s will not have EW (electronic warfare) programming capabilities for its RWR (radar warning receiver). Our F-16s have a pre-installed threat library that is able to identify only non-NATO aircraft using its RWR. It has been observed that our F-16s could not detect being locked onto by a Mirage 2000 (since that’s a NATO aircraft) while the Chinese built F-6 could. This was because of the above-mentioned limitation in the EW capability of the F-16 supplied (i.e. it cannot be reprogrammed). What this would mean is that an enemy airplane fitted with BVR (beyond visual range) missiles, can lock on to our F-16s and fire a missile without the F-16 being able to take evasive measures. This would make even the most sophisticated aircraft (with all the manoeuvrability in the world) a sitting duck. “His concern is that in the current technological revolution, the age-old concept of dogfights and pilot’s skill is no longer an integral part of having mastery of the skies. Unfortunately, most of our PAF high ups are usually GD pilots and have a “jingoistic” vein where they think their skill and superior manoeuvrability is all they need to teach the enemy a lesson. They don’t seem to appreciate that the paradigm has shifted in air warfare. “Having no capability to re-program the EW systems in these most advanced fighters is like giving someone a super-duper Pentium Core Duo system with a 29-inch LCD screen and the best sound system in the world; and then to only allow the user to browse the Web on it. Using this same analogy, wouldn’t it be preferable to have a Pentium 3 with the capability of writing your own code and interfacing your own peripheral devices? “The bottom line is that we want to ask the government this question: ‘Is the PAF being provided the capability to reprogram the EW threat library?’ A simple yes or no is all we need because then we can hold them accountable to a folly that may cost us, not only the billions spent on the deal (and the millions received in kickbacks?), but also the fate of our nation in the near future. “I have tried to be as exhaustive as I can. Please, if you feel the need, investigate more through Jane’s and other such sources, and try to make the PAF at least reply to the question.” Right then, this is not all. We have the ‘bum’ too, folks, remember? How can we forget when the Establishment reminds us day in and day out that we have it because it and it alone is the deterrent that keeps India in check. Well, if you have this great deterrent, what are the F-16s for? Neither is this all. The F-16s on offer to Pakistan apparently can’t deliver nuclear bombs either! So, could some PAF-wallah please clarify the points raised here? And could he please tell us who the F-16s agent(s) is/are and what sort of commissions he/they will make out of this deal? And while he is at it, could he also please tell us who the agents (because there are several, according to my information) are in the SAAB AWACS deal, and how many hundreds of millions of scrumptious Dollars they will make? |
| Posted by: john 2006-08-09 21:17 |