Washington suspends security aid

Background

After the August 2017 South Asia strategy, US officials pressed Pakistan for specific action against Taliban and Haqqani leaders. On 1 January 2018 President Trump posted on Twitter that the United States had foolishly given Pakistan more than $33 billion in aid over fifteen years and had received nothing but lies and deceit in return, and that Pakistan gave safe haven to terrorists the US hunted in Afghanistan¹. Pakistani ministers responded angrily¹.

What happened

On 4 January 2018 State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert announced that the United States was suspending security assistance to Pakistan until its government took decisive action against groups including the Afghan Taliban and the Haqqani network, which Washington considered to be destabilising the region and targeting US personnel^2,3. The suspension covered Foreign Military Financing and Coalition Support Fund reimbursements; civilian assistance continued. Officials did not immediately give a total; press reports put the affected sums at around $900 million or more, in addition to $255 million in FMF already being withheld^2,3.

Pakistan's Foreign Office responded that the two countries had cooperated closely against al-Qaeda, that Pakistan had fought the war largely with its own resources, and that arbitrary deadlines, unilateral pronouncements and shifting goalposts were counter-productive in addressing common threats⁴. In August 2018 the US also suspended Pakistan's participation in the International Military Education and Training (IMET) programme⁷. On 1 September the Pentagon said the remaining $300 million in Coalition Support Funds had been reprogrammed because of a lack of decisive Pakistani action in support of the South Asia strategy^5,6.

The numbers in dispute

The figure of $33 billion in the president's tweet was itself contested. It roughly matched CRS tallies of US assistance and military reimbursements since 2002, but Pakistani officials pointed out that much of it consisted of Coalition Support Funds, which they described as repayment for services - use of roads, ports and airspace, and military operations on the border - rather than aid. They also cited Pakistan's own estimates of the war's cost to its economy, which ran to well over $100 billion, and its tens of thousands of civilian and military dead^1,4. American officials replied that the reimbursements had been paid on the expectation of cooperation against all militant groups, not only those that threatened Pakistan.

Why it mattered

The suspension was the sharpest US use of financial leverage against Pakistan since the 1990s, though the sums involved were modest compared with the peak years. Its practical effect on Pakistani behaviour was limited; its political effect was to confirm, for many in Pakistan, that the alliance had been transactional and that Washington blamed Pakistan for its own failures in Afghanistan.

Legacy

The freeze largely remained in place, but the US approach changed in late 2018 when Washington sought Pakistan's help in talks with the Taliban. IMET participation was restored in December 2019. CRS reporting notes that US aid to Pakistan, which peaked in fiscal 2010, fell to a twenty-year low under the Trump administration⁸.