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Pakistan
Foreign Security Relationships
Pakistan must look abroad for both material assistance and political
support. Its principal tie has been with the United States. When
relations were good, this connection meant access to funds, sophisticated
weaponry, training, and an enhanced sense of professionalism.
When relations were bad, it meant bitter disillusionment and the
severing of support at critical junctures. These wide swings of
fortune are something to which the Pakistanis have become accustomed,
and they recognize that, whatever the provocation, the tie to
the United States has too much potential benefit to be discarded
lightly.
Relations with China in the early 1990s were less emotionally
intense and much more stable. China has been a steady source of
military equipment and has cooperated with Pakistan in setting
up weapons production and modernization facilities. Within months
of the 1965 and 1971 wars, China began to resupply the depleted
Pakistani forces. Between 1965 and 1982, China was Pakistan's
main military supplier, and matériel has continued to be transferred.
In 1989 Pakistan and China discussed the transfer of a nuclear
submarine, and China was helpful in developing Pakistan's missile
and, allegedly, nuclear weapons programs. But Chinese weaponry
was inferior to that supplied by the West and also to what India
received from the former Soviet Union and hoped to continue to
receive from Russia. The Pakistanis dispatched a military mission
to Moscow in October 1992, probably to explore the possibilities
of acquiring surplus Russian and East European equipment at cheap
prices.
The Pakistani military's close ties to the nations of the Middle
East are based on a combination of geography and shared religion.
The closest ties are with Saudi Arabia--a sporadically generous
patron; much of the equipment bought from the United States during
the 1980s, for example, was paid for by the Saudis. The smaller
Persian Gulf states also have been sources of important financial
support. The flow of benefits has been reciprocated. Beginning
in the 1960s, Pakistanis have been detailed as instructors and
trainers in Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Syria, Libya, Kuwait, and the
United Arab Emirates. Pakistani pilots, sailors, and technicians
have played key roles in some Persian Gulf military forces, and
Arabs have been trained both in their home countries and in military
training establishments in Pakistan. After unrest in Saudi Arabia
in 1979, Pakistan assigned two combat divisions there as a low-profile
and apolitical security force. This unofficial arrangement ended
in 1987, however, reportedly when Pakistan refused the Saudi demand
to withdraw all Shia (see Glossary) troops. Some 500 advisers,
however, remained behind. These exchanges had built up close contacts
between the forces of Pakistan and the Arab host countries and
were profitable to Pakistan and to the individual Pakistanis assigned
abroad, who were paid at much higher local pay scales. )
Pakistan has a particular interest in cooperating with neighboring
Iran, with which it had occasionally difficult relations after
the Iranian Revolution of 1979. In more recent years, however,
delegations have been exchanged, and Pakistan has sold military
equipment to Iran. Pakistan also has military ties with Turkey
and would like to use these, as well as its Iranian connections,
as a bridge to the new Muslim states of Central Asia. When the
situation in Afghanistan again becomes normal, Pakistan will no
doubt attempt to capitalize on the support it gave the mujahidin
by forging close military links to its second-most important neighbor
to the west.
Pakistan has sent troops abroad as part of United Nations (UN)
peacekeeping efforts. The first such troops served in West Irian
(as Indonesia's Irian Jaya Province was then called) in the 1962-63
period. In early 1994, Pakistan contributed two infantry battalions
to the United Nations Protection Force in Bosnia and Herzegovina
(UNPROFOR BH) and two infantry brigades to the United Nations
Operation in Somalia (UNOSOM). Pakistan's contribution of 7,150
troops to UNOSOM was the largest single national contingent in
any UN peacekeeping force in early 1994. At the time, Pakistan
also had participating observers in a number of other UN missions
in Croatia, the Iraq-Kuwait demilitarized border zones, Liberia,
Mozambique, and Western Sahara. Pakistan also dispatched an armored
brigade to Saudi Arabia during the 1991 Persian Gulf War. However,
it was assigned well away from the front--ostensibly to defend
the holy cities of Mecca and Medina--thus reducing the possibility
that any Pakistani troops might have somehow become involved in
actual combat with Iraqi troops. Such an eventuality could have
proven explosive in Pakistan and could have caused uncontrollable
unrest. Pakistani sentiment in favor of Iraq was widespread, and
even General Beg spoke out in support of Saddam Husayn. )
Data as of April 1994
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