Major equipment shortfall in Pakistan army
Only around USD 500 million of the funds given to Pakistan by the United States have been spent on hardware for the army, a senior Pakistani security official has claimed, even though Washington has poured up to USD 10 billion in military aid into the country since 2003.
The official, speaking at a briefing in Islamabad on September 29, said that Pakistan's frontline field commanders deployed along the border with Afghanistan were still using Korean War-era binoculars, citing this as just one example of the poor equipment used by troops fighting the Taliban and Al-Qaeda.
Explaining details of the payments made to Pakistan, the security official, who asked not to be named, said the US had made payments of about USD 6.5 billion for Islamabad's war effort rather that the USD 10 billion figure commonly quoted.
However, this included payments for items such as building roads to Pakistan's Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), where the Pakistani military deployed for the first time ever in 2003.
Western defense analysts in Islamabad said the revelation, if true, raised serious questions also being asked in Washington about the ways in which US funding was being spent and whether the Pakistani military was being properly equipped to deal with the challenge that it faced.
"The bottom line must be if the individual soldiers gained from the hardware they got and if the resources were of direct benefit to their operational engagements," said one Western defense official, who spoke to Janes on condition of anonymity. "It was necessary to make roads and do a whole lot of things, but if individual soldiers and individual units are still in need, then there must have been a gap in the way the US equipped the Pakistani military for the actual job."
Source: Janes Defence Weekly
For all latest news, follow The Daily Star's Google News channel.
Comments