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Pakistan has a right to buy arms in the international market just like any other country. On the other hand the suppliers of the arms to Pakistan have to ask where that equipment ends up, and how it is used.
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Pakistan to use US weapons in fight against India, not jihadists: Hussain Haqqani, former diplomat
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By Times of India and PTI
The
nearly USD one billion worth of attack helicopters, missiles and other
defense equipment being sold to Pakistan by the US will end up being
used in the fight against India instead of being deployed against
jihadists, according to a former Pakistani diplomat.
Pakistan's former Ambassador to the US
Hussain Haqqani said the Obama administration's decision to sell
US-made attack helicopters, missiles and other equipment to Pakistan
will "fuel conflict in South Asia without fulfilling the objective of
helping the country fight Islamist extremists."
"Pakistan's failure to tackle its jihadist challenge is not the result
of a lack of arms but reflects an absence of will. Unless Pakistan
changes its worldview, American weapons will end up being used to fight
or menace India and perceived domestic enemies instead of being deployed
against jihadists," Haqqani wrote in the Wall Street Journal in the
piece titled 'Why Are We Sending This Attack Helicopter to Pakistan'.
He said that given Pakistan's "past behavior", it is "likely" that the
15 AH-1Z Viper helicopters and 1,000 Hellfire missiles as well as
communications and training equipment will be used against secular
insurgents in southwest Balochistan province and along the disputed
border in Kashmir rather than against the jihadists in the northwest.
"Competition with India remains the overriding consideration in
Pakistan's foreign and domestic policies. By aiding Pakistan over the
years—some USD 40 billion since 1950, the US has fed Pakistan's delusion
of being India's regional military equal. Seeking security against a
much larger neighbor is a rational objective but seeking parity with it
on a constant basis is not," he said.
Haqqani said that instead
of selling more military equipment to Pakistan, US officials should
convince Islamabad that its ambitions of rivaling India are "akin to
Belgium trying to rival France or Germany."
Drawing a
comparison between the two South Asian nuclear- armed rivals, Haqqani
said India's population is six times as large as Pakistan's while
India's economy is 10 times bigger, with India's USD 2 trillion economy
managing consistent growth whereas Pakistan's USD 245 billion economy
growing sporadically and undermined by jihadist terrorism.
He
said Pakistan continues to depend on Islamist ideology — through its
school curricula, propaganda and Islamic legislation — to maintain
internal nationalist cohesion, which inevitably encourages extremism and
religious intolerance.
Haqqani recalled that between 1950 and
1969, the US gave USD 4.5 billion in aid to Pakistan partly in the hope
of using Pakistani troops in anti-communist wars, but Pakistan did not
contribute a single soldier for the wars in Korea or Vietnam but went to
war with India over Kashmir in 1965.
Again during the 1980s,
Pakistan "diverted" the US aid toward its "obsessive rivalry" with
India, training insurgents to fight in Kashmir as well as in India's
Punjab.
Haqqani said even after the December attack on a
Peshawar school where the Taliban killed 160 people, including many
schoolchildren, the "destruction, demobilisation, disarmament or
dismantling" of Afghan Taliban and other radical groups is "clearly not
on the Pakistani state's agenda."
