India's Ad Hoc Arsenal - Publications - SIPRI

24 INDIA'S AD HOC ARSENALtotal is undoubtedly higher.32 Rich nationals keep a nest-egg of money outsidethe country.33 Successive governments, especially military ones, have returnedsome of the worst human rights records in South Asia. Despite opportunitiesand potential, there have been as many failures as there have been successes inPakistan, witness the disappointing and ignominious failure of Benazir Bhutto'sGovernment.Strategically, Pakistan's situation is more straightforward to assess. To thenorth, Pakistan faces both Afghanistan and the former USSR. Relations are notnormally warm with either of these countries, and during the Soviet occupationof Afghanistan the Government was forced to keep two of its 15 Army divisionsin the north, and its strategic problems were further compounded by amammoth influx of some three million Afghan refugees. To the south, thecountry is dwarfed by India-one elephant among six pygmies-which hasconsistently intimidated and, on one occasion, divided Pakistan. Successivegovernments have been forced to plan around the ever-present possibility ofarmed conflict with India that would have the effect of weakening the alreadyfragile economic and political cohesion of the country. Conceivably, anaggressive Indian government could plan to drive Pakistan into a state of nonviabilitywithout actually facing the problem of absorption.Since Pakistan's creation its key ally has been the USA, although there havebeen isolated attempts by the USSR to forge better links. Relations with theUSA have never been reliably good and diplomatic problems are rarely farfrom the surface. Although in recent years Pakistan has received two massivetranches of military and economic aid from the USA, which together amount toalmost $8 billion (about 40 per cent of it for military equipment), the relationshipis a complex one. First, political and military leaders in Pakistan neverfully internalized their role as a client and cold war accomplice. Second, therecently curtailed aid agreement was based upon the dictates of the final chapterof the cold war and the erstwhile Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. It is thereforesomewhat unlikely that Pakistan will receive another opportunity of thiskind to exploit the key tenets of US foreign policy in the foreseeable future.Although relations with the Reagan Administration were good, Pakistanfailed to convince US President George Bush that they were worth the politicaland financial investment expended by his predecessor, even though military aidis currently being repaid at 14 per cent interest. Once the USSR withdrew fromAfghanistan much, if not all, of the rationale for such high levels of military aidvirtually disappeared. The USA will therefore eventually no longer require aconsistent conduit for channelling arms to the mujahideen and the appropriatemeans to transport these weapons, namely the Inter-Service Intelligence (ISI)agency. Indeed this may be seen as a significant liability given the level ofmilitarization in the region and the serious decline in law and order. Nor will32 Wickramanayake, D., 'Indian threat makes defence more important than food', Defence, vol. 22,no. 7 (July 1991), p. 14.33 'Pakistan: living on the edge', The Economist, 17 Jan. 1987, pp. 3.4.