The Trump administration has released $397 million for a US-backed programme in Pakistan that a congressional aide said monitored the latter’s use of US-made F-16 fighter jets to ensure they were employed for counterterrorism operations and not against rival India.
The move was part of a release of $5.3 billion in previously frozen foreign aid, mostly for security and counternarcotics programmes, according to a list of exemptions reviewed by Reuters that included only limited humanitarian relief. According to Pakistan specific defence and analysis group Quwa, the funds will support the Technical Security Team (TST), a contingent of contractors present in the country to oversee the use of F-16s under “strict end-use monitoring rules, which seem to require the Pakistan Air Force (PAF) to only use the F-16s, especially the newer F-16C/D Block-52 fighters, for counterinsurgency and counter-terrorism operations”.
It noted that the oversight was “not new”, adding that the TST was present in Pakistan since 2019 when the US approved its current deployment with a $125m support package for the PAF F-16 fleet.
However, according to a 2019 report of Foreign Policy magazine, using an F-16 in a dogfight with India did not violate the end-use agreement that Pakistan signed while receiving the aircraft from the US.
The prominent American magazine had also contradicted India’s claim of shooting down an F-16 fighter jet of Pakistan during a dogfight amid heightened tension following the Pulwama attack in 2019.
FP had interviewed two US defence officials with “knowledge of the count” and both confirmed that all the F-16s were “present and accounted for”.
“It would be incredibly naive for us to believe that we could sell some type of equipment to Pakistan that they would not intend to use in a fight,” one of them added. The officials also said that Pakistan had invited the US to do the count after India claimed that its air force had shot down an F-16 fighter jet during a dogfight on Feb 27, 2019.