US AID TO PAKISTAN: INDIA’S SECURITY CONCERN
U.S. first time established its diplomatic relations withPakistan in 1949 during ‘Eisenhower’ administration.America agreed to provide economic and militaryassistance to Pakistan and latter’s partnership in‘Baghdad Pact’ during this regime. At that time, Pakistanwas so close to America that it was called ‘US’s mostallied ally’ in Asia. US began to supply arms to Pakistan in1954 and continued till 1965.Also, the threat of N.Khrushchev, the Soviet leader in 1960 to annihilate thenuclear arms of Pakistan affected the US-Pak relations.Gradually, US again restored arms sales to Pakistan in1975 but then cut-off economic assistance under US“Foreign Assistance Act” due to Pakistan’s nuclearprogramme. The Soviet’s invasion of Afghanistan in 1979proved to be another milestone in heavy US aid toPakistan being the common interest of Pakistan and US inSouth Asia. In 1981, US agreed for 3.2 billion dollarmilitary and economic assistance to Pakistan’s armory forconducting the worst operation which eventuallydefeated the Soviet’s in 1988. US congress again added 4million dollar for economic development and securityassistance package to Pakistan in1986, but in 1990, theUS suspended military assistance/economic aid toPakistan under ‘Pressler’ amendment’ which required thePresident of US to certify that Pakistan doesn’t possessnuclear explosive device. Again in 1998, the renewed USinterest into Pakistan during Clinton administration wasstrengthened in view of India’s decision to conductnuclear test in May 1998. Pakistan’s matching responseto nuclear tests conducted by India, although called foranother sanction by US but, later the intensive dialogue
between Deputy Secretary Talbott (US) and ForeignSecretary Shamshad Ahmed (Pakistan) waved off sanction to an extent but in October 1999, Pakistan waskept under another sanction by US under section 508 of ‘Foreign Appropriation Act’. However the turning point inthis scenario was 9/11 due to which Pakistan moveddecisively to ally itself with the US in its war againstOsama-bin-laden and Al-Qaeda. In bargain to provide theUS many military airports and bases for its attack onAfghanistan and arrests of over 500 Al-Qaeda operatives,Pakistan had been lavishly getting appreciation from US.Although the economic and military assistance has beenflowing from US to Pakistan, the huge amount of such aidhas been misappropriated by Pakistan aimed to fightagainst India. Pakistan received 9 million American dollarafter 9/11 incident, 4.2 billion dollar in 2003 to purchaseadvanced American military technology and further inMay 2006, Bush announced major sale of missiles toPakistan costing 370 million US dollars. The recent Taliban’s upsurge in Pakistan particularly in SWAT, FATA,Waziristan and in close vicinity of Rawalpindi, Lahore andIslamabad has caused some concern to US authority butafter visit of Asif Ali Zardari to America, this issue hasbeen cooling recently.US Ambassador to Pakistan hasagain reacted about US commitment to assist Pakistangovernment in the areas of development, stability andsecurity and has also announced 8.4 million dollar aid toaddress Pakistan’s food crisis. However, the Pentagon hasconfirmed one of South Asia’s worst kept secrets that,Pakistan has used billions of dollars of US aid to buy amind-boggling array of conventional American Weaponryto use against India which was meant for Pakistan to fightthe war on terror. India has repeatedly pointed out thatmuch of military hardware of Pakistan’s shopping list was
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Us Aid to Pakistan
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