Category: Political Military Affairs

C. CHRISTINE FAIR Updated: 15 March, 2019 9:47 am IST

For the fourth time in ten years, China placed a technical hold on a proposal to designate Masood Azhar, the leader of the Jaish-e-Mohammed, under the United Nations’ Security Council ISIL (Da’esh) and Al-Qaida Sanctions Committee (1267). The hold, for which no justification is required, lasts three months and can be extended for another six. After nine months, China can use its veto power to formally kill the proposal.

This time, France led the initiative with support from the United Kingdom and the United States. The renewed effort to designate Masood Azhar was motivated by the organisation’s February 14, 2019 suicide attack on a convoy of Central Research Police Force (CRPF) killing 44 at Pulwama (in Kashmir). In response, India attacked a facility at Balakot, purportedly associated with the Jaish-e-Mohammad, in Pakistan’s Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province. In retaliation, Pakistan scrambled several fighter aircraft to which India responded by dispatching several MiG 21 Bisons.

This resulted in a dogfight in which an Indian pilot, Wing Commander Abhinandan Varthaman, was shot down and taken into Pakistani custody. Varthaman claims he locked onto a Pakistani F-16 and shot it down, although no evidence of the downed aircraft or its pilot has surfaced to date. The international community was on tenterhooks fearing a war. The crises de-escalated when Pakistan returned the Indian pilot after numerous gratuitous delays.

Given the gravity of the crisis, many Indian observers were optimistic that this time China would agree to the move to designate Masood Azhar. After all, in 2008, shortly after the Lashkar-e-Taiba’s simultaneous attacks in November that year on multiple, high-value civilian targets in Mumbai, China permitted the Lashkar leader, Hafiz Saeed, to be listed under this mechanism. Such optimism was never warranted because the two attacks are not comparable. Whereas the Lashkar-e-Taiba’s 26/11 assault on Mumbai killed 166 civilians, including Israelis and Americans, and included a multi-day siege of the iconic Taj hotel; Pulwama’s 44 victims were all Indian security personnel drawing from the CRPF.

Moreover, Pulwama is firmly within Kashmir, which China and Pakistan recognise as disputed. Because of the location and nature of the victims, some scholars have tediously observed that Pulwama was an “insurgent” rather than a “terrorist” attack, whereas the 2008 Mumbai attacks was without question a terror attack. That India responded to Pulwama but not Mumbai can be chocked up to an “Indian over-reaction.” In a point of fact, and largely due to the associated nature of seeing soldiers with reverence, Indians have arguably responded more angrily to the fatalities of security forces than when the casualties have involved only the civilians.

China has long sought to prop up Pakistan such that it can challenge India. To encourage Pakistan’s pugnacity, China has provided Pakistan military assistance inclusive of nuclear and conventional assistance as well as sustaining a permissive environment for Pakistan’s terrorist assets such as Jaish-e-Mohammed as well as Lashkar-e-Taiba. However, China has no interest in Pakistan actually going to war with India because, in such an eventuality, China would be forced to show the limits of its support to its “all-weather ally” by not actually supporting it. After all, China has never provided material support to Pakistan during any of its wars with India. During the most recent war at Kargil in 1999, China took the same line as India and the United States — namely that Pakistan needs to respect the sanctity of the Line of Control.

China’s dedication to supporting Pakistan’s terror camps may seem counter-intuitive given that China is confronting Uigher Muslim insurgents in Xinxiang. Should China not fear that groups like Jaish-e-Mohammed and Lashkar-e-Taiba may give a fillip to their own restive Muslims? The answer is no, because both Jaish-e-Mohammad and Lashkar-e-Taiba are loyal proxies of Pakistan’s deep state.

While factions of Jaish-e-Mohammad broke with Masood Azhar to target the state from late December 2001, Azhar himself has remained loyal to his patrons who have dedicated numerous resources to rebuild his organisation over the last decade.

Also read: For the LeT, convincing mothers is one of the key steps to recruiting for Jihad

As for Lashkar-e-Taiba, it has never attacked any target within Pakistan. In fact, Lashkar-e-Taiba is vociferously opposed to the Deobandi groups targeting the Pakistani state, has rejected the practice of takfir (of declaring Muslims to be a kaffir and thus wajib-ul-qatil, worthy of being killed), and denounced any violent protestations of the state.

Jaish-e-Mohammed, along with the Afghan Taliban, are also critical means of redeploying fighters and commanders of the Pakistani Taliban to theatres of “legitimate” jihad in Afghanistan and India. In this way, Jaish-e-Mohammed along with the Afghan Taliban are “ghar vapasi” programmes for wayward Pakistani terrorists. Given that Pakistan’s domestic stability and encouraging Pakistani pluck against India remain Chinese objectives, groups like Jaish-e-Mohammed and Lashkar-e-Taiba are also important Chinese assets by extension.

Unlike the situation that obtained in November 2008, both China and Pakistan have more leverage vis-à-vis the United States. During the November attacks, George W. Bush was a lame-duck president and Barrack Obama, who had won the US election on 4 November, would not take office until January of 2009. Bush had viewed the Pakistanis as an important ally in Afghanistan; however, Obama viewed Pakistan as a problem. President George W. Bush, wary of China, courted India as a partner in managing China’s rise in the region and beyond. Presidential candidate Obama said very little about China during his campaign, leaving few clues about how he would view China.

Beijing may have seen the acquiescence to designate Hafiz Saeed as a down payment on a better relationship with the United States and could use the international outrage over the civilian carnage as a convenient hook on which to hang this decision. In contrast, today China and Pakistan are viewed as important actors in Afghanistan, which President Donald Trump is anxious to abandon.

Also read: Even if Masood Azhar gets UN terrorist tag, it will likely be only a symbolic win for India

Trump, who fetishistically seeks to fulfil campaign promises irrespective of how foolhardy they may be, wants to make good on his pre-election promise to withdraw from Afghanistan. And when the last American soldier leaves, who will pick up the tab to pay for Afghanistan’s bills? Again, China is seen as critical to filling this vacuum. Thus, even if China is seen as a source of insecurity in the Indo-Pacific, it is increasingly viewed in Afghanistan and Pakistan as the power to which the Americans will hand over the keys to the jalopies that they are anxious to abandon.

Unless there is a Jaish-e-Mohammed terror attack in a major city like Mumbai or Delhi, which murders civilians on the scale of the 26/11 Mumbai slaughter, one should not expect that China will permit a valued terrorist organisation to be designated — particularly at a time when it has the upper hand over the United States.

C. Christine Fair is the author of Fighting to the End: The Pakistan Army’s Way of War and In Their Own Words: Understanding the Lashkar-e-Tayyaba.

This originally appeared in the The Print on 15 March 2019.

Pakistani hubris and American cupidity

ON FEBRUARY 14TH, 2019, a suicide attacker associated with Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) drove an explosives- laden vehicle into a bus transiting Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) jawans in a convoy in Pulwama, Jammu and Kashmir. At least 40 jawans perished in that attack. It was the first time that JeM had used suicide attacks since the December 2001 attack on the Indian Parliament in New Delhi, which brought India and Pakistan to the brink of war. Given that JeM—like the Lashkar-e-Tayyaba (LeT)—is a well-behaved and obedient proxy of the deep state, there can be little doubt that Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) Directorate played a direct role in the attack. While the exact details of India’s response remain disputed, India claimed that in the early hours of February 26th, it dispatched 12 Mirage fighter aircraft across the Line of Control (LoC) and into the airspace of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa to attack a training facility associated with JeM in Balakot. Those jets returned unscathed. Indian media, citing figures leaked by the Government, claimed the base was destroyed and some 300 people killed. Virtually all of these details have been disputed by Indian and international media alike.

Pakistan, while risibly denying that it has any evidence of JeM culpability, claimed that its air forces rallied to drive the Indian planes out of its airspace, causing them to drop their ordnance prematurely and causing no damage. Incidentally, a recording of a preacher ostensibly tied to JeM conceded an attack (hamla) took place but asserted no casualties. Despite asserting that no damage occurred, Pakistan dispatched fighter aircraft—likely American-made F-16s—to target purportedly ‘non-military targets’, across the LoC. India sent out MiG 21 Bisons after which a dog fight ensued. After various claims and counter-claims, it now seems clear that Pakistan shot down a MiG 21 and captured its pilot, Wing Commander Abhinandan Varthaman, who was returned after considerable delay on March 1st. India, in turn, shot down a Pakistani jet which crashed on Pakistan’s side of the LoC. The fate of that pilot is unclear: Indian sources claim he was lynched by Pakistanis who mistook him for an Indian pilot while Pakistani sources deny this claim without offering alternative explanations.

While the return of Varthaman provided an off-ramp for the crisis to begin de-escalating, many questions remain. What motivated the Pakistani attack and what made Pakistan expect it could get away with murder this time? Similarly, what motivated Pakistan to escalate tensions by inducting air power? Now that the crisis may be receding, what lessons did Pakistan learn?

Pakistani goals at Pulwama

I have argued elsewhere that the attack at Pulwama had several distal and one likely proximal objective. At the most general level of abstraction, since Pakistan is obsessed with changing maps but has an army that cannot win the wars it starts and nuclear weapons it cannot use without courting its own destruction, Pakistan uses terrorist proxies under the security of its nuclear umbrella to demonstrate that it is able to challenge India. More specifically, Pakistan has been worried as both Al-Qaeda Indian Subcontinent (AQIS) and Islamic State (IS) have sought to hijack its project in Kashmir. Both AQIS and IS have mocked Indian Muslims within and without Kashmir for their pusillanimity and failure to resist the rising tide of Hindu nationalism, the revivified interest in rebuilding the Ram Mandir at Ayodhya and failure to insist upon rebuilding the Babri Masjid which was destroyed by Hindu fundamentalists in 1992. Both organisations have chastised Indian Muslims for their parochialism and lack of interest in larger problems of the Ummah (community). While both AQIS and IS have largely failed to draw large numbers of recruits in Kashmir, this attack was likely aimed to help reclaim the initiative in Kashmir. The selection of a local Kashmiri boy, Adil Ahmad Dar, for this operation seemed well-placed to refocus the attention of Kashmiris upon the ISI-led struggle. Equally notable, Dar recorded a pre-attack video in which he criticised northern Kashmiris for shirking from the fight.

In addition to these distal causes, there is one proximate cause that likely explains the timing of the attack: a desire to influence India’s elections. While it may seem counter-intuitive (the Pakistani deep state prefers a Modi win) for the simple reason that Modi and his Hindutva supporters embody the very threats that Pakistanis have long imbibed. With Modi at the helm, the Pakistani army can continue arguing that its heavy- handed role in running the country and hogging its resources is necessary. Additionally, Pakistan is confronting some fairly serious domestic challenges and a strong enemy next door has traditionally helped the deep state justify violence when needed and to encourage elements fighting the state to put down its arms. Observers may recall that after the November 2008 attacks in Mumbai, the Pakistani Taliban leaders, Baitullah Mehsud and Maulvi Fazlullah, declared a ceasefire and Pakistani army officials called them both “Pakistani patriots”.

Pakistan has once again absconded from any meaningful consequences of using terrorism at Pulwama or escalating the conflict. There is no meaningful discussion of the US declaring Pakistan to be a state sponsor of terror

The internal challenges that the army is wrestling with include opposition to the so-called China Pakistan Economic Corridor, a simmering Baloch insurgency and a rising tide of Pashtun mobilisation against the deep state under the umbrella of the Pashtun Tahafuz Movement (PTM). PTM activists have been non-violently campaigning against human rights abuses of the Pakistan Army, which have long focused upon Pashtuns. One of the slogans protestors raise particularly disquiets the deep state: ‘Yeh jo deheshatgardi hai, is ke picche vardi hai (The men in uniform is behind this terrorism).’ The slogan summarises Pashtun beliefs that the deep state has created the terrorist menace in Pakistan but Pashtuns have been made the scapegoat and are at the receiving end of the army’s brutality so that it can show the US and others that it is seriously confronting terrorists at home, for which it had been handsomely compensated until the Trump administration ended such payments.

While the deep state can kill Baloch—who comprise about 5 per cent of Pakistan’s population—with impunity and intimidate any critics of this policy with violence, it cannot so easily kill its way out of its problems with Pashtuns. For one thing, Pashtuns are about 15 per cent of the population—and form the largest minority in Pakistan—but they may account for as much as 40 per cent of the Pakistan Army. Moreover, Pashtuns along with Punjabis have formed the ruling condominium since the late 1950s when Muhajjirs, who migrated from northern India, began to decline politically. The deep state needs to manage its Pashtun problem and having a menacing leader at the helm in India helps. It should be noted that Modi has not imposed such crippling costs upon Pakistan for its use of terrorism as a tool of foreign policy that may exceed the benefits of Modi’s continued tenure.

Grounds for impunity

Given that a far less audacious attack at Uri precipitated a cross-border raid by Indian forces in 2016, why would Pakistan think it would escape consequences after Pulwama? As is well- known, the US President Donald Trump has made it clear that he wants out of Afghanistan. Trump obsesses over fulfilling campaign promises no matter how foolish, ill-informed or dangerous they may be. He sees this as a key reason for why he has a solid 35 per cent of voters who support him no matter what other dubious things he does —whether cavorting with porn stars while his wife is nursing his child or monetising the White House. Trump has dispatched Zalmay Khalilzad to work out some means by which Trump can succeed. These negotiations between the US and the Taliban rely heavily on Pakistan to persuade their proxies to co-operate. Notably, they have excluded the Afghan government. Trump’s calculus is crude. If he wins the 2020 election, it doesn’t matter what happens in Afghanistan. If he loses in 2020, it still does not matter for him what happens in Afghanistan.

While it may seem counter-intuitive, Pakistan prefers a Modi win for the simple reason that Modi and his Hindutva supporters embody the very threats that Pakistanis have long imbibed

Given the centrality of Pakistan to Trump’s scheme, Pakistan likely expected the US to caution India to stand down after Pulwama. It is also likely that Pakistan felt that its importance to Trump’s exit strategy in Afghanistan would afford it cover to escalate to air strikes on India’s side of the LoC. Evidence for these suspicions is offered by the remonstrations of the Pakistani Ambassador to Washington DC, Asad Khan, who complained that US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s response to India’s airstrike was “construed and understood as an endorsement of the Indian position, and that is what emboldened them even more”.

What did Pakistan Learn?

With the return of Varthaman and the resulting winding down of the crisis, Pakistan has likely learnt a worrying set of lessons. First and foremost, Pakistan has once again absconded from any meaningful consequences of using terrorism at Pulwama or escalating the conflict. There is no meaningful discussion of the US declaring Pakistan to be a state sponsor of terror or any other kinds of punitive measures. Whether or not India succeeds in getting Masood Azhar, the leader of JeM, designated at the United Nations will be an important move but not one that will be a game changer. Second, coverage in papers of record such as the New York Times and the Washington Post repeated the tired false equivalence that equated India—the victim—with Pakistan—the perpetrator. Editorials and assessments of Western commentators applauded Pakistan’s Prime Minister Imran Khan for his speech which they deemed ‘conciliatory’ despite the fact that it was anything but. Similarly, editorials calling for a ‘resolution of Kashmir’, all of which demonstrate an impoverished understanding of history, also rewarded Pakistan because they seemed to imply that Pakistan has defensible equities in Kashmir when, of course, it does not.

Finally, and the most worrisome of all, there is little appetite in India to know what the Government intended to do and what it succeeded in doing. Indian citizens who are asking these questions are being dismissed as anti-national while non- Indians asking these questions are being dismissed as Pakistan apologists or worse. While accepting whatever account is offered—irrespective of the various competing claims—may seem politically loyal, it is not actually helpful to India’s overall ability to handle the beast on its border. Worse, while everyone expects Pakistan and its press to promulgate rank fictions, the international community does have higher expectations of India. Most importantly, the Pakistani deep state does know what happened. It can assess whether Pulwama was worth it in the end. And, as I’ve argued, it likely has concluded this already. But if India did not live up to the maximalist claims about the assault on Balakot, when there is another attack, Indians will demand an ever-more robust response which India may not be able to deliver. This dynamic may force India’s hands in ways that are not only counter-productive but may catalyse a conflict that India cannot control. This is something that genuine patriots should be very worried about.

Lying about facts to de-escalate tension in Kashmir is a playbook they’ve both used before.C. CHRISTINE FAIR1:00 AM ET

In May 1999, New Delhi discovered that Pakistani intruders had seized Himalayan posts in Kargil, part of Indian-controlled Kashmir. Initially, the Indian government believed that these infiltrators were scruffy mujahideen when in fact they were paramilitary soldiers, officered by Pakistan’s army. Curiously, India publicly maintained the fiction that they were militants well after their identity was discovered. Counterintuitively, the falsehood facilitated a de-escalation of a conflict that had already become a limited war.

Nearly 20 years later, Pakistan has again initiated a crisis in Kashmir that has brought the nuclear-armed states to the brink of war. Once again, the two countries have rolled out a series of partial truths, and, in the case of Pakistan, outright lies. Indeed, while the facts of the matter are up for debate, it is clear that at least one casualty of this conflict has been empirically verifiable truth.

As in Kargil, these untruths have provided a much-needed off-ramp for dampening tensions and, in the short term, the international community has welcomed any path to crisis mitigation.

In the long run, though, this normalization of fiction-weaving by India and Pakistan will likely have pernicious effects, not just on both countries’ domestic politics, but on future crises as well.

Why did New Delhi in 1999 publicly sustain the humiliating narrative that militants had taken control of its territory even when Indian forces were taking heavy losses and had to use air power to dislodge what the world believed was a ragtag bunch of fighters?

First, it was an easy cover to maintain, because Pakistan never clarified who the fighters were. Second, India was due to hold a general election within months, and the fate of Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was uncertain. The previous year, Vajpayee and his Pakistani counterpart, Nawaz Sharif, had begun a peace process, and political strategists in New Delhi worried that Vajpayee would look foolish if his Pakistani partners were anything but committed. Equally important, infiltration by mujahideen surely generated less public outrage in India than if people had learned earlier that part of Pakistan’s armed forces had deliberately snatched Indian-administered territory.

When the international community finally intervened to compel Pakistan to restore the sanctity of the line of control (LOC), the two countries’ de facto border, the United States and others also were content to permit Sharif in particular to keep up the story, providing Pakistan with an honorable exit, rather than force him to publicly humiliate his army chief, who was the mastermind of the crisis.

Here is what we know for certain about the most recent crisis in South Asia. After the February 14 suicide attack by Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM), a Pakistan-based militant group, against an Indian paramilitary convoy that killed at least 40 soldiers, the leadership in New Delhi had to respond forcefully. The country had already responded to lesser outrages and, as with Kargil, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, also of the BJP, faces an election within months.

India claims that in the early hours of February 26, a dozen fighter jets flew into Pakistan’s airspace to attack a training facility associated with JeM in the town of Balakot. Those jets returned unscathed. Indian media, citing figures leaked by the government, claimed the base was destroyed and some 300 terrorists, who were allegedly training for imminent attacks in India, were killed.

Pakistan’s military immediately disputed this account and asserted that Pakistani aircraft scrambled and expelled the Indian jets, which were forced to prematurely drop their payloads onto random forests. Pakistani officials also denied the existence of evidence tying JeM to the February 14 attack, even though JeM had taken responsibility for it. Despite claiming that the Indian jets caused no damage, Pakistan vowed a fitting response.

Pakistan then dispatched its own aircraft to hit purportedly “non-military targets” in Indian territory. This time, India claimed that it intercepted the Pakistani aircraft, after which a dogfight ensued. Pakistan said it shot down two Indian planes, and that both pilots were in Pakistani custody. Islamabad then revised its position, saying it shot down one plane and captured its pilot, Wing Commander Abhinandan Varthaman, who was returned, after gratuitous drama, on March 1.

India, for its part, claimed that Varthaman, prior to being hit, shot down an F-16, which crashed on Pakistan’s side of the line of control. Indian media claimed that this pilot was lynched when Pakistanis mistook him for an Indian pilot. Regardless, Varthaman’s return provided an opportunity to begin de-escalating the crisis.

Journalists have questioned much of this story.

Multiple analysts using commercial-satellite images have found little evidence of widespread damage to the Balakot facility, and there is no evidence of mass casualties, nor are there signs of the downed F-16 or its allegedly lynched pilot.  Some Indian media accounts even assert that New Delhi did not send 12 jets across the LOC, and that in fact they fired weapons from India’s side of the line.

Neither India nor Pakistan has been forthcoming with evidence to back up its key claims, and Pakistan, predictably, has made it very difficult for anyone to independently assess the damage at Balakot. Pakistan also has an incentive to cover up its use of American-made F-16s to attack India as doing so would likely violate the end-use agreements of the purchase. The internet, meanwhile, has been flooded with vintage photos of the Balakot site that variously confirm the preferred accounts of both sides. Some social-media users have even posted images from a popular video game, insisting they prove India’s claims. In India, the ruling party and its followers discredit any citizens asking for evidence as “anti-nationals,” while denouncing foreigners who question the official narrative as Pakistani apologists.

Given the high stakes, why are both sides obfuscating the objective truths involved?

From New Delhi’s point of view, Indians can rejoice that their air force rammed through Pakistani airspace to drop bombs on a terrorist training camp, obliterating it and its trainees. They can also celebrate that their war hero, Varthaman, felled a Pakistani jet.

From Pakistan’s side, it can claim that its jets chased off Indian fighter planes at Balakot, and then rallied into Indian territory while downing an Indian pilot. Pakistan’s prime minister, Imran Khan, titillated the international media with his ostensible statesmanship and Islamabad received numerous accolades for returning the pilot, despite the fact that doing so was required by international law. The world seemed to have forgotten that South Asia was embroiled in tension because of Pakistani use of terrorism in the first place.

Deception, in both this situation and Kargil, provided an important way for both India and Pakistan to step back from crisis. But is this a good thing?

At present, the two are nursing convenient delusions to differing degrees. But the truth matters.

Pakistanis believe that their air force protected them, while also denying that their country continues to cultivate terrorists as tools of foreign policy. If India did not do as it claims, the gains of the latest misadventure exceed the costs, which have been extraordinarily minimal. This suggests that future use of terrorist proxies killing more Indians might happen sooner than later. Alternatively, if India did in fact do as it says, then there is no problem. Islamabad knows what New Delhi can do, and that might be an important regulator in future Pakistani calculus.  

But with the available evidence, one should be cautious. If the Indian government is  fostering an inaccurate account of its military strength, its citizenry will have unreasonable expectations of future punitive measures. Civilian governments might feel compelled to engage in miscalculations of their own to satisfy the demands of a public with outsize beliefs about its military’s capabilities. This could have enormous consequences. In short, if India’s account is fundamentally braggadocious, a dangerous equilibrium will be established.

Let’s hope that in both countries, as the political stakes of honesty recede, the truth comes out.

C. CHRISTINE FAIR is the author of Fighting to the End: The Pakistan Army’s Way of War and the forthcoming In their Own Words: Understanding the Lashkar-e-Tayyaba.

Given that Pakistan seems to have used F-16s to attack India on 26 February 2019, I thought it would be a good idea to repost this piece I wrote in 2011 in which I castigated the boneheads in the U.S. government who thought the United States “owed” F-16s to Pakistan. The USG is now allegedly seeking information about the misuse of an aircraft which anyone with two firing neurons could have predicted.

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, …

BY C. CHRISTINE FAIR, FEBRUARY 3, 2011 | FEBRUARY 3, 2011, 6:16 PM

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.