US Congress Questions Military Aid to Pakistan, Saying it Won't Help Fight Afghan Militants

Key upgrades to Pakistan's US-supplied F-16 fighter jets could be in jeopardy because critics in Congress believe that the improvements are aimed more at making the jets capable of fighting India rather than the Taliban and al Qaeda.

The dispute between Congress and the administration is over whether the United States, rather than Pakistan, should pay over $250 million to add advanced targeting and communications improvements to Pakistan's fleet of F-16s. Given the symbolic role the F-16 program has taken on in the US-Pakistani relationship, even technical details such as these have quickly become caught up in larger strategic questions about whether Pakistan is a reliable ally in the US's "war on terror." The F-16 issue comes amid growing tension between the US and Pakistani governments over the use of American force against suspected militants using Pakistan as a safe haven. Washington has authorized missile attacks inside Pakistan without informing Islamabad. The latest such incident occurred September 17, when fiven militants were killed.

The history of the Pakistani F-16 program is one filled with tension. Washington originally agreed to sell Pakistan the jets in the 1980s, when Islamabad was a Cold War ally against Soviet-aligned India. But the program was cancelled in the 1990s when the United States began to suspect that Pakistan might be developing a nuclear weapon.

After the attacks of September 11, however, Pakistan's star has again risen in Washington and in 2005 the American officals signed a deal to give Pakistan 14 second-hand F-16s and sell them 18 newer versions of the jet (the money Pakistan is using to pay for the planes is US military aid).

American officials have justified the F-16 program as helping Pakistan in the fight against Islamist militants near the Afghanistan border. Skeptics of the program have argued that sophisticated fighter jets are not the best weapon against targets like militant groups and that Pakistan really intends to use the jets as a counterweight to India, which has a far more capable air force.

The debate has heated up again because the US State Department, which manages foreign military aid, has moved to use US money earmarked for counterterrorism for upgrades to the Pakistani F-16s. The entire upgrade program is budgeted at $891 million, of which Washington was originally planning to pay $108 million; the rest would come from Pakistan. But Pakistan has said that it can't make the payments, and this summer the contractor, Lockheed Martin, stopped work for a week on the jets because it wasn't paid.

The State Department has proposed spending an additional $110 million by October 15, and another $142 million next year, to assist Pakistan. "Helping with these payments will provide the newly elected Pakistani government valuable fiscal flexibility as they deal with rising food and fuel prices," said Donald Camp, principal deputy assistant secretary of state for South and Central Asian affairs. Camp testified at a September 16 hearing of the House Foreign Relations Committee subcommittee on the Middle East and South Asia on the F-16 question.

But the move has raised the ire of some representatives in Congress. They are blocking the payment because they say the money was supposed to go towards counterterror programs. "We are concerned that the administration's proposal to use military assistance to pay for the F-16 upgrades will divert funds from more effective counterterrorism tools like helicopters, TOW missiles, and night-vision goggles," said Howard Berman and Nita Lowey, heads of two key committees in the House of Representatives, in a July statement.

The administration has attempted to show that the F-16 has been a useful weapon for Pakistan in the fight against Islamists. "F-16s provide a critical counterterrorism capability to Pakistan," Camp said. "The new and enhanced F-16s will provide Pakistan with the ability to attack fleeing targets with precision during all weather conditions."

The F-16 was not designed for the sort of counterterror operations that the Bush administration wants Pakistan to engage in, but it can still be a useful tool given the particulars of the fight in Pakistan, said Richard Aboulafia, a Washington-based aviation analyst. Helicopters and slower propeller planes - which are more commonly used in ground attacks - can't fly at the altitudes necessary in Pakistan, and given the small number of airbases in the area, can take too long to get to a fight, he said. "When you're dealing with vast distances and high altitudes, you want something supersonic" like an F-16 Aboulafia said.

The administration officials at the hearing acknowledged that to most leaders of the Pakistan armed forces, India is a more important focus than the militants on the Afghanistan border. "We think that's changing and it's changing rapidly," said Mitchell Shivers, principal deputy assistant secretary of defense for Asian & Pacific security affairs. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, Shivers said, "is convinced that they get it."

Defending the F-16 program, administration officials also emphasized the symbolic value of the jets as a reminder to Pakistanis that the United States is on their side. "Not only a component of Pakistan's national defense, the F-16 has become an iconic symbol of our bilateral relationship and our commitment to each other," Camp said.

But some congressional skeptics said that symbolism was exactly the problem. "We allowed our relationship to become overpersonalized with... President [Pervez] Musharraf," said Edward Royce, a Republican from California. "Now, instead of it revolving around a person, it's centered around a fighter jet."