Pakistan: Of jets and morale

Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani will travel to Washington on Monday, and top on the agenda will be the country’s battle with Islamists on its Western border -- an ongoing source of exasperation for the US government, which feels Pakistan is doing too little. Gilani has put a greater emphasis on soft power in dealing with the threat, and the government is following a policy of striking deals with the Islamists in the North-West Frontier Province and the Federally Administered Tribal Areas, despite the failure of past such agreements and the need recently to ramp up security efforts around Peshawar.

Given the importance of counter-terrorism to United States, eyebrows may be raised by the State Department’s request last week that the majority of US military aid is allocated to upgrading Pakistan’s fleet of F-16 fighters. This is especially true given the mixed record of air power in Afghanistan and the planes’ primary 'air superiority' purpose rather than engaging in counter-terrorist actions.

The money makes much more sense if it is understood as keeping the Pakistani military on side. Even if the military has kept a less active role in politics under the sway of Army Chief of Staff Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, it remains the country’s most important institution and one that has been relatively non-ideological. Having suffered heavy losses in pursuing the ‘war on terror’, it has preferred to keep back wherever possible from frontier areas. At least its acquiescence is essential if US plans for a more proactive approach on the frontier are to be realised.

The timing of the fighter funding request is thus very significant, coming to light as the Indian government survived a confidence vote on a civilian nuclear agreement with the United States. Pakistani diplomats have been publicly critical of the deal. They claim it risks a nuclear arms race.

However, it might not be the arms race that Islamabad objects to per se, but being left behind in one. With Afghanistan critical of Pakistani efforts in the ‘war on terror’ and the US both warming to India and becoming more critical of Pakistan (Presidential candidate Barack Obama’s recent suggestion of unilateral action in Pakistan cannot be reassuring), Pakistan fears for its ‘parity’ with India. Along with nuclear weapons, fighter planes are key to the Pakistani General Staff’s idea of maintaining this balance, at least symbolically.