The Defense Institute of Security Assistance Management Mobile Education Team visits Pakistan.

In response to a request from the Pakistani Ministry of Defense, the Defense Institute of Security Assistance Management (DISAM) dispatched a Mobile Education Team (MET) to Rawalpindi, Pakistan for a two-week stay in July. The four-person team conducted three security assistance classes to a total of forty Pakistani military officers and Ministry of Defense civilians. This represented a significant training opportunity for Pakistan, which has been under a variety of legislative sanctions for more than a decade.

The visit to Pakistan was DISAM's twelfth of thirteen METs scheduled during fiscal year 2003, continuing the ambitious pace of fiscal year 2002 (14 METs). Funded by Pakistan's fiscal year 2003 IMET program, the MET was led by Virginia Caudill, Director of Management Studies, and included Eddie Smith, Gary Taphorn, and U.S. Army Major Jay Conway. The principal class conducted was the two-week Foreign Purchaser's Course (SAM-F), attended by thirty civilians and officers in the grade of Major or equivalent. The students, who had extremely limited experience with security assistance, responded positively and enthusiastically to the instruction. Many commented that they could now see how their small slice of security assistance responsibilities fitted in with the big picture.

The second course conducted was the one-week Foreign Purchaser's Executive Course (SAM-FE), attended by nine brigadiers and a civilian. Like the SAM-F course, attendees represented a balanced mix across the Ministry of Defense staff, the Joint Staff Headquarter, and the three service headquarters (army, navy, and air force). Unlike the majors in SAM-F, the brigadiers represented an older generation that well remembers the hey-day of U.S. and Pakistani defense cooperation of the mid-to-late 1980s when grant military assistance to Pakistan was measured in hundreds of millions of dollars annually.

The final course was International Training (SAM-IT), taught to seven officers which the Pakistanis had identified as having responsibility for oversight of IMET and other training programs. These programs include the newly established Regional Defense Counterterrorism Fellowship Program, under which Pakistan has been allocated $1.4M in fiscal years 2002 and 2003 funds, one of the largest programs in the world. In the SAM-IT course, the Pakistanis were given access to the International Security Assistance Network (ISAN) and shown how to access and manage their country training program using both the international version of Training Management System (TMS) software and the newly developed ISAN web. Pakistan is the fourth country this year (following Brazil, Netherlands, and Bahrain) to receive SAM-IT instruction during a MET.

Mr. Muhammad Hassan, the long-time manager of Pakistan's training program in the Office of the Defense Representative to Pakistan (ODRP), was of invaluable assistance to the MET instructors in the IT course and was able to explain many of the specifics of the Pakistan program to the students. Additionally, Joint Secretary Ejaz Ilahi Piracha (in the FE course) and Navy Lieutenant Javed Latif Khan (in the F course) were very helpful to the MET instructors in a variety of ways and presented the team with gifts on behalf of the students during their respective graduation ceremonies.

The bilateral American-Pakistani relationship had reached a high in the 1980s as the U.S. pumped in millions of dollars of FMF and other aid as a counterweight to the Soviet invasion of neighboring Afghanistan. By the end of the decade, Pakistan had concluded over $3.6 billion in foreign military sales agreements. However, in 1990 the U.S. invoked sanctions under the Pressler Amendment which terminated military aid because of Pakistan's nuclear weapons program. With this action, the security assistance program in Pakistan essentially went into a deep freeze for more than a decade. Additional sanctions were imposed in the late 1990s because of Pakistan's nuclear testing, the military coup by now president Pervez Musharraf, and arrearages on debt repayment.

The terrorist attacks of September 2001 placed the bilateral relationship in a new light as the U.S. enlisted Pakistan as a key ally to combat the spread of terrorism. All existing U.S. sanctions were waived shortly after September 11, 2001 and the pipeline of military assistance was gradually re-opened after more than a decade. With the passage of a supplemental appropriation in April, Pakistan received $225M in foreign military financing for fiscal year 2003, in addition to healthy levels of funding under IMET and Counterterrorism Fellowship. During his meeting with President Musharraf in June, President Bush informally committed to a $3 billion aid program beginning in 2005 and extending for five years. With half of the aid planned on the military front, this translates into potentially $300M annually in foreign military financing. The DISAM MET was a timely training event by exposing a new generation of Pakistani officers to security assistance and helping them plan for and manage the use of substantial new levels of military aid.

Mr. Gary Taphorn is an assistant professor at the Defense Institute of Security Assistance Management. He is a retired Army lieutenant colonel and Middle East Foreign Area Officer, and has served four tours of duty with security assistance responsibilities. He earned a bachelor's degree from the Xavier University in Cincinnati, Ohio and his master's from Georgetown University, Washington, D.C.