Security & defenceThe alliance era
A secret listening post at Badaber
A ten-year agreement let the United States run a communications and intelligence facility near Peshawar, close to the Soviet border.
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Badaber, July 1959
near Peshawar, Pakistan
33° 56′ N · 71° 34′ E
Badaber, July 1959
near Peshawar, Pakistan
33° 56′ N · 71° 34′ E
Background
Peshawar, close to the Afghan border and within reach of Soviet Central Asia, was valuable to American intelligence. According to Pakistani press accounts, American agencies began looking for a site in West Pakistan for listening stations to monitor Soviet transmissions in the mid-1950s1. In January 1958 US Ambassador James Langley began high-level talks with Pakistani leaders on a communications facility to be operated by Americans at Peshawar2.
What happened
After lengthy negotiations the agreement was signed in Karachi on 18 July 1959 by Ambassador Langley and Foreign Minister Manzur Qadir. It was to run for ten years and then for a further ten unless either side gave written notice at least twelve months before the first period ended2,3. The facility at Badaber, a few miles south of Peshawar, was operated by a US Air Force communications group from July 19594. Pakistani accounts say more than a thousand American personnel were based there at its peak1.
The U-2 connection
The arrangement became public in the most damaging way in May 1960, when a U-2 reconnaissance aircraft that had taken off from Peshawar was shot down over the Soviet Union5. After the exposure, Pakistan restricted American use of Peshawar for intelligence flights, though the Badaber station continued to operate6.
The end of the lease
By the late 1960s, after the 1965 war and the arms embargo, Pakistan's attitude had changed. The Pakistani government notified Washington that it intended to terminate the agreement when it expired on 17 July 19693. The facility was evacuated and formally closed in January 19704.
Why it mattered
Badaber was one of Pakistan's most concrete contributions to the alliance and one of the clearest illustrations of the risks it carried. Its closure was one of the ways Ayub Khan's government expressed its disillusionment after 19656.
Sources
- Badaber now and in the past, Newsweek Pakistan · Press
- Foreign Relations of the United States, 1958–1960, Volume XV, Editorial Note 291 (Peshawar communications facility), Office of the Historian, US Department of State · Primary document
- Foreign Relations of the United States, 1964–1968, Volume XXV, Document 491, Office of the Historian, US Department of State · Primary document
- PAF Camp Badaber, Wikipedia · Reference
- Milestones: U-2 Overflights and the Capture of Francis Gary Powers, 1960, Office of the Historian, US Department of State · Official
- From the U-2 to the P-3: the US–Pakistan relationship (Lawrence Lifschultz), New Left Review, 1986 · Scholarly
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