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WEEKLY NEWSLETTER
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Pakistan
Index
Although Pakistan's foreign policy has been dominated
by
problems with India as well as by efforts to maximize its
own
external support, its relationship with the West,
particularly
Britain and the United States, was of major importance. At
independence in 1947, Pakistan became a member of the
British
Commonwealth of Nations. After independence Pakistan
retained
Britons in high administrative and military positions.
Britain
also was the primary source of military supplies and
officer
training. Many of Pakistan's key policy makers, including
the
nation's founding father, Mohammad Ali Jinnah, had studied
in
Britain and had great faith in the British sense of
justice. Over
the years, however, there was disillusionment at what
Pakistanis
perceived as Britain's indifference toward Pakistan and
its
failure to treat Pakistan fairly in dealings where India
was
involved. Nevertheless, Pakistan remained in the
Commonwealth
even after the country became a republic under the
constitution
of 1956. Pakistan withdrew its membership in the
Commonwealth in
1972 to protest the recognition of Bangladesh by Britain,
Australia, and New Zealand but rejoined in October 1989
under
Benazir's first government.
Pakistan's relations with the United States developed
against
the backdrop of the Cold War. Pakistan's strategic
geographic
position made it a valuable partner in Western alliance
systems
to contain the spread of communism. In 1954 Pakistan
signed a
Mutual Defense Agreement with the United States and
subsequently
became a member of the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization
(SEATO)
and CENTO. These agreements placed Pakistan in the United
States
sphere of influence. Pakistan was also used as a base for
United
States military reconnaissance flights over Soviet
territory.
During the Cold War years, Pakistan was considered one of
Washington's closest allies in Asia.
Pakistan, in return, received large amounts of economic
and
military assistance. The program of military assistance
continued
until the 1965 Indo-Pakistani War when President Lyndon B.
Johnson placed an embargo on arms shipments to Pakistan
and
India. The United States embargo on arms shipments to
Pakistan
remained in place during the Indo-Pakistani War of 1971
and was
not lifted until 1975, during the administration of
President
Gerald R. Ford.
United States-Pakistani relations preceding the 1971
war were
characterized by poor communication and much confusion.
The
administration of President Richard M. Nixon was forced to
formulate a public stance on the brutal crackdown on East
Pakistanis by West Pakistani troops that began in March
25, 1971,
and it maintained that the crackdown was essentially an
internal
affair of Pakistan in which direct intervention of outside
powers
was to be avoided. The Nixon administration expressed its
concern
about human rights violations to Pakistan and restricted
the flow
of assistance--yet it stopped short of an open
condemnation.
Despite the United States widely publicized "tilt"
toward
Pakistan during the 1971 war, Pakistan's new leader,
Zulfiqar Ali
Bhutto, felt betrayed. In his opinion, the United States
could
have prevented India from intervening in Pakistan's civil
war,
thereby saving his country the trauma of defeat and
dismemberment. Bhutto now strove to lessen Pakistan's
dependence
on the United States.
The foreign policy Bhutto envisioned would place
Pakistan at
the forefront of Islamic nations. Issues central to the
developing world would take precedence in foreign affairs
over
those of the superpowers. Bhutto called this policy
"bilateralism," which implied neutrality in the Cold War
with
equal treatment accorded both superpowers. Bhutto's
distancing of
Islamabad from Washington and other Western links was
accompanied
by Pakistan's renewed bid for leadership in the developing
world.
Following the loss of the East Wing, Pakistan withdrew
from
SEATO. Pakistan's military links with the West continued
to
decline throughout Bhutto's tenure in power and into the
first
years of the Zia regime. CENTO was disbanded following the
fall
of the shah of Iran in March 1979, and Pakistan then
joined the
Nonaligned Movement. Zia also continued Bhutto's policy of
developing Pakistan's nuclear capability. This policy had
originated as a defensive measure in reaction to India's
explosion of a nuclear device in 1974. In April 1979,
President
Jimmy Carter cut off economic assistance to Pakistan,
except for
food assistance, as required under the Symington Amendment
to the
Foreign Assistance Act of 1961. This amendment called for
ceasing
economic assistance to nonnuclear weapon countries that
imported
uranium-enrichment technology. Relations between the
United
States and Pakistan were further strained in November 1979
when
protesters sacked the United States embassy in Islamabad,
resulting in the death of four persons. The violence had
been
sparked by a false report that the United States was
involved in
a fire at the Grand Mosque in Mecca.
The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in December 1979
revived
the close relationship between Pakistan and the United
States.
Initially, however, the Carter administration's offer the
following month of US$400 million in economic and military
aid to
Pakistan was spurned by Zia, who termed it "peanuts."
Under
President Ronald Reagan, the United States agreed in 1981
to
provide US$3.2 billion to Pakistan over a period of six
years,
equally divided between economic and military assistance.
However, although the Symington Amendment was waived, the
amount
was subject to the annual appropriation process. A second
economic and military assistance program was announced in
1986,
this time for over US$4.0 billion, with 57 percent for
economic
assistance. The continuation of the war in Afghanistan led
to
waivers--in the case of Pakistan--of legislative
restrictions on
providing aid to countries with nuclear programs. The
Pressler
Amendment of 1985 required that if the United States
president
could not certify to Congress on an annual basis that
Pakistan
did not possess a nuclear weapon, United States assistance
to
that country would be cut off. For several years, the
United
States president, with Pakistan's assurances that its
nuclear
program was for peaceful uses, was able to make this
certification. However, with the Soviet withdrawal from
Afghanistan in 1989 and the end of the Cold War, the
United
States took a harder position on the nuclear weapons
issue. In
1990 President George Bush refused to make the
certification
required under the Pressler Amendment, and assistance to
Pakistan
was subsequently terminated.
After 1990 Pakistan's retention of the nuclear option
became
a defining issue in its relations with the United States.
Pakistan, like India, considered the Treaty on the Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons to be
discriminatory--allowing
the five acknowledged nuclear states to keep their weapons
while
banning others from joining the club. Pakistan declared
that it
would sign the treaty only in the unlikely event that
India did
so first. India refused to join any regional accord as
long as
China possessed nuclear weapons. Although the United
States
government continued to push both India and Pakistan for a
regional solution to the threat of nuclear weapons
proliferation,
Pakistan complained that it bore the brunt of United
States
antiproliferation policies.
The underpinnings of the long and close security
relationship
between the United States and Pakistan existed as of early
1994,
although the 1954 Mutual Defense Agreement on which the
relationship rested was increasingly regarded by some in
the
United States government as outdated--and thus less
pertinent to
the post-Cold War period. Moreover, despite Pakistan's
differences with the position of the United States on
nuclear and
other issues, both countries were determined to maintain
friendly
relations.
Data as of April 1994
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