The U.S.-Pakistan F-16 fiasco
By C. Christine Fair, February 3, 2011
Thursday, February 3, 2011 - 2:16 PM
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At a recent event on Pakistan co-sponsored by Brookings and the U.S. Institute of Peace, several panelists cogently stressed the need for greater transparency on the parts of Washington and Islamabad as a necessary step in forging better relations.
Inevitably, the sad story of Pakistan's F-16s emerged during a panel discussion. In the early 1980s, the United States agreed to sell Pakistan F-16 fighter jets. This decision was taken when the United States worked closely with Pakistan to repel the Soviets from Afghanistan. The F-16 was the most important air platform in Pakistan's air force and it was the most likely delivery vehicle of a nuclear weapon. When nuclear proliferation-related sanctions (under the Pressler Amendment) came into force in 1990, the U.S. government cancelled the sales of several F-16s. Pakistanis routinely cite this as hard evidence of American perfidy to underscore the point that Washington is not a trustworthy ally.
With the lapse of time, many American and Pakistani interlocutors alike rehearse redacted variants of this sordid affair for various purposes. But I was dismayed when a U.S. official (speaking in his personal capacity) did so at the U.S. Institute of Peace event. He stressed, with suitable outrage, that the United States unfairly deprived Pakistan of the F-16s it purchased, demurred from reimbursing Pakistan when sanctions precluded delivery, and even charged Pakistan for the storage fees while the United States sought a third-party buyer for the planes. This particular individual has a long-standing relationship with South Asia and extensive experience in the region, which made the stylized telling all the more troublesome.
This narrative likely appealed to recreational critics of Washington and its serially failed engagements with Islamabad. But it is a disturbing and incomplete re-telling at the F-16 fiasco, the rehearsal of which does little to advance U.S.-Pakistan relations.
Better relations will require both Washington and Pakistan to confront the edifice of ossified fictions that surround and ultimately undermine this complex and strained relationship. Washington needs to aggressively combat the historical untruths that have become legendary fact as vigorously as it needs to understand the Pakistan that is, not the Pakistan it might want to be.
The trust deficit and its deceits
Pakistanis are wont to complain that the United States is a disloyal ally,
using Pakistan for its purposes, then abandoning it when expedient. They lament
that the United States absconded from the region when the Soviets left
Afghanistan, leaving Pakistan to contend with legions of dangerous mujahideen
and proliferating narcotics and small arms traffic with its own meager
resources. This gives rise to a current chorus of Pakistanis who opine woefully
that the United States will abandon Pakistan again when Washington's security
interests change. In turn, this motivates proponents of U.S.-Pakistan relations
to promise ever-more allurements to demonstrate that "this time," America will
not abandon Pakistan.
Of course, Pakistan's complaints are not entirely unfounded: the United States did abandon the region once the Soviets
withdrew from Afghanistan in 1989. Pakistanis, however, never acknowledge the enormous
benefits that the country derived from its partnership with the Americans during
the 1980s. Between 1979 and 1989 Pakistan received $5.6 billion (in constant 2009 dollars) in total aid,
of which $3.5 billion was military assistance.) During this period, Pakistan developed
its nuclear weapons program without penalty until 1990 while receiving enormous
financial and military support from the U.S., which allowed Pakistan to improve
its capabilities
to fight India.
Most frustrating is Pakistan's refusal to acknowledge its own role in undermining its security by backing various Islamist militant groups in Afghanistan throughout the 1990s, including the Taliban. (Pakistanis often claim erroneously that the CIA created the Taliban.)
Pakistan also complains that it has been punished disproportionately relative to India for its nuclear weapons program. Pakistan correctly notes that India was the first to proliferate in South Asia with its first explosion of a nuclear device in May 1974 (Pokhran I). As the revisionist and weaker state, Pakistan could hardly resist the compulsion to acquire nuclear weapons. The bitterest invective is reserved for the 1985 Pressler Amendment, which many Pakistanis wrongfully claim was written to punish Islamabad for its nuclear program.
Contrary to Pakistanis' popular perceptions, U.S. and international nonproliferation efforts in South Asia were precipitated by India's 1974 nuclear test as well as misgivings about the Ford administration's response to India's abuse of Canadian- and U.S.-supplied civilian nuclear assistance. And, of course, the U.S. Congress was increasingly discomfited about Pakistan's acquisitions of nuclear items abroad.
In response to these varied concerns, the U.S. Congress passed two nonproliferation amendments to the 1961 Foreign Assistance Act (FAA): the 1976 Symington Amendment and the 1977 Glenn Amendment. Together, they prohibit U.S. military and economic assistance to countries that reject full-scope International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) safeguards for all nuclear facilities and materials; transfer, acquire, deliver, or receive nuclear reprocessing or enrichment technology; or explode or transfer a nuclear device. Congress, wary of Indian and Pakistani intentions, passed the Nuclear Nonproliferation Act (NNPA) of 1978 that prohibited the sale of U.S. uranium fuel to countries that refuse "full-scope" IAEA safeguards and inspections.
"Our security policy cannot be dictated by our nonproliferation policy.''
After the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, Washington chose to subordinate its nonproliferation policies to other regional interests. According to Steve Coll, then-national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski told American president Jimmy Carter that Washington needs to secure Pakistan's support to oust the Soviets and that this will "require... more guarantees to [Pakistan], more arms aid, and, alas, a decision that our security policy cannot be dictated by our nonproliferation policy."
Despite full knowledge of Pakistan's nuclear program, Congress added Section 620E to the FAA, which granted the president a qualified authority to waive sanctions for six years, allowing the United States to fund and equip Pakistan for the anti-Soviet jihad. Congress next appropriated annual funds for a six-year program of economic and military aid that totaled $3.2 billion. Despite continued warnings from the U.S. about its nuclear program, Pakistan continued developing a weapons capability. Pakistan's military dictator, Zia ul Haq, asserted that it was Pakistan's right to do so.
In 1985, the Pressler Amendment was passed, making U.S. assistance to Pakistan conditional on an annual presidential assessment and certification that Pakistan did not have nuclear weapons.
But this legislation was not punitive as Pakistanis claim and as some historically ill-informed American commentators lament. Rather, the amendment allowed the United States to continue providing assistance to Pakistan even though other parts of the U.S. government increasingly believed that Pakistan had crossed the nuclear threshold, meriting sanctions under various U.S. laws.
Nor was Pakistan a passive observer of this congressional activity. Husain Haqqani, now Pakistan's ambassador to the United States, explained in 2007 that the Pressler Amendment was passed with the active involvement of Pakistan's foreign office, which was keen to resolve the emergent strategic impasse over competing U.S. nonproliferation and regional objectives on one hand and Pakistan's resolute intentions to acquire nuclear weapons on the other. He described it as a victory for Pakistan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs. It was.
In 1990, when U.S. interests in the region lapsed after the Soviet Union left Afghanistan, President George H. Bush declined to certify Pakistan, and the sanctions came into force.
However this was not a bolt out of the blue. The U.S. ambassador to Pakistan, Ambassador Robert Oakley repeatedly made Pakistani leadership aware of the inevitable consequences of proliferation. Pakistan's leadership made a calculated gamble.
This brings us back to the F-16s debacle. When the Pressler sanctions came into force, Pakistan was precluded from taking possession of 28 F-16s for which it had made payments until 1993, some three years after the sanctions commenced. Pakistan paid the Lockheed Corp. $658 million for the planes, and some reports suggest that Pakistan continued making payments based on Pentagon assurances that continued payments would ensure eventual delivery.
Pakistan did not get the planes and was assessed storage and maintenance costs of $50,000 per month for the planes that sat, becoming ever more obsolete, in the Arizona desert. This account is telling: Pakistan preferred to heed the roseate advice of the Pentagon over the clear lines of U.S. law.
Under threat of a Pakistani lawsuit, U.S. president Bill Clinton resolved the issue in late 1998. Pakistan received $464 million, mostly in cash, which was the remaining amount of the claim. Clinton also agreed to send Pakistan an additional $60 million worth of wheat. (New Zealand ultimately purchased the F-16s on a 10-year lease-purchase deal that totaled $105 million.)
Long before President George W. Bush promised to resume sales to Pakistan in 2005 as a good faith effort to restore confidence in the United States, the F-16 issue had been resolved.
Accepting responsibility
While Pakistanis prefer to characterize the F-16 fiasco as inherently unfair, the simple fact is that Pakistan's leadership made a strategic choice to develop nuclear weapons at the expense of taking ownership of the fleet of F-16s. Pakistan's leadership understood the U.S. law and its likely consequences. Pakistanis need to hold their leadership to account rather than blithely blaming Washington.
Americans also have to take responsibility. When U.S. officials rehearse only part of this story, it undermines all efforts to achieve a working bilateral relationship that is based on facts rather than fiction.
If the United States and Washington can ever re-optimize their bilateral relationship, both will have to make a concerted effort to resist rehearsing past fictions and creating new ones. Sensationalized half-truths percolate through our respective societies, foster outrage and misunderstanding, and create popular resistance to a relationship that is critical to the security interests of both states.
C. Christine Fair is an assistant professor at Georgetown University and is the author of The Cuisines of the Axis of Evil and Other Irritating States.
JEWEL SAMAD/AFP/Getty Images
EXPLORE:AFPAK, AFGHANISTAN, AFPAK CHANNEL, AL QAEDA, DEVELOPMENT, FOREIGN AID, INTELLIGENCE, MILITARY, NUKES, OBAMA ADMINISTRATION, PAKISTAN, TALIBAN, TERRORISM, U.S. FOREIGN POLICY 
The opening line of last para is an error unless we presume "United States and Washington" to be 2 different countries. The author may want to change one of the those to Pakistan. A few other minor errors also exist. Maybe FP needs an editor or two.
Unfortunately Christine Fair still does not understand Pakistan or its relationship with the US. In her haste to criticize Pakistan, she leaves out how the US got involved in Pakistan in the first place. In the Robert Oakley interview cited by Fair, he talks about how Reagan admin decided to involve Pakistan in countering the Soviets. "Okay, let's use Islam to help on this political psychological front. If we can get an amount of countries directly involved in fighting the atheist communists in Afghanistan, it will give us a great deal more political support." It is not too difficult to comprehend how this "let's use Islam" approach led to the advent of the Taliban movement in 90's and hence the criticism of the CIA. Just as a side, University of Nebraska was tasked by AID/CIA to develop syllabi which used religion as an avenue for teaching jihad.
Fair says that Pakistan gained 5.6 billion dollars (most in military aid) over a decade while the Afghan war was going on. While factually correct, these figures do not include indirect costs to Pakistan as it supported the Mujaheddin. These include but were not limited to an explosion in illegal arms and drugs coming into Pakistan from Afghanistan, terrorist bombings and rise of religious extremism. In addition Pakistan was host to over 3 million refugees. I challenge Christine Fair to put a dollar figure on these costs incurred by Pakistan and see if the 5.6 billion dollar figure still holds up as a shining pillar of American generosity. Just as a comparison, this figure is miniscule compared to the aid given to Egypt or Israel during the same period.
The Afghan war also led to the American support of a dictator whose anti democratic policies harmed Pakistan in a major way. The one window operation of General Haq may have served the US but harmed average Pakistanis immensely.
Over the past few years, the US has done a lot to make things right for average Pakistanis. The aid to Pakistani earthquake victims, the flood victims as well as help with social and educational programs is greatly appreciated. The photo of Richard Holbrooke in a helicopter hovering over flooded villages in Pakistan is iconic. But to put things in perspective, so is the photograph of Ronald Reagan holding court at the White House while surrounded by Shalwar Kameez and turban wearing Mujaheddin. President Reagan called them the "moral equivalents of our forefathers." No long after the US left it to the same individuals to look after a broken Afghanistan. For most Pakistanis, the current events in South Asia are an extension of what transpired nearly three decades back.
In the greater scheme of things, "wheat for F16s" issue is quite minor. The fact that it became a rallying cry for Pakistanis speaks to the inherent lopsidedness of this "relationship."
The US and Pakistan's Nuclear Program
This article contains a good point about the self-deception that both Pakistan and the US engage in regarding their relationship over the past 30-odd years. U.S. officials gamed the system, using the Pressler Amendment to allow the aid to continue to flow to Pakistan. A great example of this was the famous "one screwdriver turn away" interpretation of Pressler. This amendment, after all, required, not that the U.S. cut off aid if it found that Pakistan was making a bomb, but imposed the much more stringent requirement that the President certify to Congress that Pakistan had not done so. In other words, it required a positive act. The U.S. could not just say: "We do not have evidence of a bomb." Rather, the President had to say: "Pakistan does not have a bomb." Since the U.S. knew that Pakistan was making steady progress towards a weapon, it had to decide how to do this, and hence, the "one screwdriver turn away" interpretation. Under this interpretation, if Pakistan had done everything to make a weapon, and had all of the parts together, but had "one screw left to turn" before the weapon was operational, the President could certify Pakistan. The U.S. did this repeatedly. In 1987 I ran into a senior State Dept official who had just come from a meeting in the office of Undersecretary Armacost where ir had been decided to certify Pakistan. His comment: "Well, we kicked that one down the road for a year." I agree with Ms. Fair that Pakistani officials were aware of Pressler and kept developing their nuclear program anyway, hence jeopardizing other goals such as the F-16's. I would argue, however, that the U.S.enable this by allowing them to gain the impression that the U.S. would always find a way to avoid imposing Pressler sanctions.
Another incident comes to mind in this regard. Around 1988, the U.S. was able to obtain copies of the diagrams which Pakistan was using to build a weapon (not just a device.) Vernon Walters was sent on one of his secret missions to confront General Zia over this. Walters showed the plans to Zia, who said: "I don't know anything about it. Looks like a soccer ball to me." (No one can say Zia did not have a sense of humor.) Walters reported that he looked Zia in the eyes and said: "I want to ask you, as one general to another, are you building a nuclear weapon?" Zia replied that he was not, and for Walters, that was good enough.
My point here is that the U.S., by adopting this cavalier attitude towards the Pakistan nuclear program, encouraged the Pakistanis to make that very decision which they did - to go ahead with their nuclear program, believing that they had a covert signal from the U.S. that they would be protected from the consequences. .
One point that is being missed here is that the Pakistanis were going to pursue their nuclear program no matter what. Their perceived need to match strides with the Indians trumped all other considerations. This is why they were particularly resentful over the imposition of Pressler Amendment sanctions following the Soviet departure from Afghanistan. It was not just that we had suddenly turned from an ally on Afghanistan into an adversary over their nuclear program, but that they were being punished for pursuing something which they regarded as absolutely indispensable to their national security. We may take issue with their perception of their own best interests, but it is important to understand what drives them. The lesson they learned from Pressler was that U.S. friendship toward, and involvement with, Pakistan is contingent on whatever strategic interests driver U.S. policy at any particular moment in time. The U.S. is not necessarily to be faulted here. In implementing Pressler Amendment sanctions, it was pursuing what it regarded to be its national security interests at the time, which was to resist the proliferation of nuclear weapons. Turning a blind eye toward the Pakistani nuclear program would have undercut global U.S. efforts to deter proliferation. But this doesn't mean that the Pakistanis are wrong when they consider the United States to be a fair weather friend. From their perspective, that is exactly what the U.S. is. Unfortunately for current U.S. policy in the region, this is a perception that has consequences.
Pakistan is still a ‘terror center’ after F-16 delivery
Although non-delivery of F-16 jet fighters was the reason why Pakistani government planned, financed and carried out 9/11 attacks to teach U. S. a lesson, Pakistani government has not changed its policy of supporting terrorists just because US has now delivered those jet fighters.
It is NO use to deny that nobody forced Pakistani government to facilitate relocation of Osama bin Laden from Sudan to Afghanistan in 1996. Pakistan’s democratic government chose to do so of its own free will.
It is NO use to deny that nobody forced Pakistani Army and Intelligence to create what ex-CIA official Bruce Reidel called ‘this jihadist Frankenstein’ monster in 1990s. Pakistani Army and Intelligence chose to do so with the full financing provided by Pakistan’s democratic governments at the time.
It is NO use to deny what Sandy Berger, Clinton’s national security advisor told 9/11 Commission in 2004: 'Pakistani Army was the midwife of Taliban'. UN report on Bhutto killing released on 4/15/10 confirmed this fact when it noted that "The PAKISTANI MILITARY ORGANIZED AND SUPPORTED THE TALIBAN TO TAKE CONTROL OF AFGHANISTAN IN 1996“.
Bush administration varnished Pakistan’s role in 9/11 attacks after forcing Pakistan to join its fight against terrorism. So Pakistan decided to play the duplicitous game of ‘running with the hares while hunting with the hounds’ and still continues to do so today.
Adm Mullen had following to say about America’s primary ally in its fight against terrorism to the foreign news media on 1/13/2011: “I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again it, [Pakistan] is the epicenter of terrorism in the world right now. It is absolutely critical that the safe havens in Pakistan get shut down. We cannot succeed in Afghanistan without that. It’s not just Haqqani Network anymore, or Al Qaeda or TTP (Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan), the Afghan Taliban, or LET (Lashkar-e-Tayyeba), it’s all of them working together.”
And previous US ambassador Anne Patterson of Pakistan wrote in a secret review in 2009 that ‘Pakistan's Army and ISI are covertly sponsoring four militant groups - Haqqani‘s HQN, Mullah Omar‘s QST, Al Qaeda and LeT - and will not abandon them for any amount of US money, diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks show.
No matter what Ms. Fair preaches, U.S.-Pakistan partnership will continue to be cursed by U.S. refusal to exercise its aid leverage to force Pakistan to snap its ties to terror.
U. S. deserves to be duped by Pakistan for deliberately ignoring Afghan Taliban’s Pakistani connections in fueling and sustaining Afghan insurgency as reported by Matt Waldman in ‘The sun in the sky‘ on 6/13/2010, corroborated by WikiLeaks leaks on 7/25/2010 and then further corroborated by Chris Alexander, Canadian ambassador to Afghanistan from 2003 to 2005 and Deputy Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for Afghanistan from 2005 until 2009 in his article on 7/30/2010 titled ‘The huge scale of Pakistan‘s complicity‘.
Note in this article the focus on what Pakistan received from the US during the Afghan Jihad - certainly Pakistan received significant military aid from the US, but it wasn't without reason or cost or something in exchange - just as the current aid after 2001 is not without the US extracting something in exchange. Nor, as a previous poster has pointed out, did the actions Pakistan undertook as a consequence of that aid, come cheap:
Millions of refugees from the Afghan jihad, rising crime, drugs and weapons smuggling, and of late, the creation of Pakistani Taliban groups and terrorist bombings in Pakistan as a result of the US invasion of Afghanistan.
So on the issue of 'aid', Pakistan owes the US nothing, in fact given the negative impact of both the Afghan Jihad and the US invasion of Afghanistan, I'd argue the US owes Pakistan significantly more for the pain and suffering the country has gone through - the US gave Pakistan military aid to bolster its conventional capabilities vis a vis India, and Pakistan served as base for 'liberating' Afghanistan from Soviet hands, and provided men and materials to accomplish that.
BTW, this is what allies are expected to do - cooperate and support each other where possible to achieve common goals. Of course the true test of an 'ally' or 'friend' comes when 'need for the other' no longer exists. And what is the US's track record on that front? As soon as the 'need' for Pakistan against the Soviets was no longer felt, the US abandoned Pakistan and abandoned Afghanistan, and going a step further, sanctioned Pakistan. That would be an almost classic definition of 'betrayal' by an ostensible 'friend and ally'.
Fair chooses to hide behind the argument that 'Pakistan was aware of what the Pressler Amendment would do', and she paints the fact that US Presidents provided a waiver to Pakistan, while they 'needed' Pakistan against the Soviets, and pretended to be Pakistan's 'friends and allies', as some sort of 'magnanimous gesture' to Pakistan. If the part about Pakistan's foreign office being involved in the Pressler Amendment is correct, it is because they were functioning under the assumption that the US would continue to be a 'friend and ally' even when 'need for Pakistan' no longer existed, and provide the necessary certification.
Israel after all has seen no consequences of its own nuclear weapons program that has also been well known to the US, and indeed the world. Instead of 'Pressler Amendments' against Israel and sanctions, we have seen aid and support boosted for a country that has long possessed a nuclear arsenal that significantly outnumbers that possessed by Pakistan, along with the missile systems to deliver it.
So no, hiding behind Pressler does not exonerate US duplicity and betrayal when it comes to Pakistan. Pakistan's knowledge of Pressler, and its pursuit of US weapons systems, only indicates that Pakistan was naive in believing the US to be a 'friend and ally'. Instead of blaming Pakistan for pursuing the F-16's despite knowledge of Pressler, one could ask why the US even entertained the request and signed the agreement if it was planning to sanction Pakistan? If the nuclear weapons program of Pakistan was such a significant issue for the US, why were the negotiations for the F-16's themselves not contingent upon a cessation of Pakistan's nuclear weapons program?
Signing the contract for the F-16's, issuing waiver after waiver from the Pressler Amendment, accepting payments of hundreds of millions of dollars from Pakistan for the jets, completing the manufacture of dozens of jets, and then suddenly discovering 'US non-proliferation principles and values', coincidentally after 'need for Pakistan' ended, is duplicitous and deceitful behavior on the part of the US, and the fault of Pakistan only in that it trusted the US to be a 'friend and ally'.
it is wrong to suggest Us was untrustworthy.In 1971 President Nixon talked to his soviet counterpart to dissued india from agression on west pakistan on the hotline.
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