In 2016, the United States continued to build strong cooperation with Pakistan, including through U.S. assistance, as a stable, secure, prosperous, and democratic Pakistan is in the long-term U.S. national security interest. Although assistance levels have declined in recent years, to support this partnership, the United States has allocated civilian and security assistance totaling US $8.4 billion since 2009. U.S. security assistance to Pakistan is designed to build Pakistan’s counterterrorism and counterinsurgency capacity. In addition, since 2001, the Department of Defense has reimbursed
nearly US $14 billion in Coalition Support Funds for Pakistani expenditures in support of Operation Enduring Freedom.
- Account FY 2014 FY 2015 FY 2016
Total Foreign 853.6 802.8 632.2
Economic Support Fund (ESF) 465.5 468.0 300.0
Global Health Programs (GHP) - - 22.5
Intl. Narcotics Control and Law Enforcement (INCLE) 55.4 40.0 40.0
Nonproliferation, Antiterrorism, Demining (NADR) 5.6 10.0 9.9
Foreign Military Financing (FMF) 269.9 265.0 255.0
International Military Education and Training (IMET) 4.9 4.8 4.0
Food for Peace Title II (FFP) 61.3 15.0 -
*figures in millions, US $
Since 2009, the United States has committed about US $5 billion in civilian assistance to Pakistan, in addition to more than US $1 billion for emergency humanitarian assistance. In 2016, the United States continued to focus on five sectors determined in consultation with the Pakistani government in 2011: energy; economic growth including agriculture; stabilization of areas vulnerable to violent extremism; education; and health. Emphasis on improving democracy, governance, and gender equity are integrated into programming across the five sectors.
Since 2009, U.S. assistance has made more than 2,400 megawatts available to Pakistan’s electricity grid, benefiting some 28 million Pakistanis, and has helped Pakistan take steps to reform its troubled energy sector; funded the refurbishment or construction of nearly 1,100 kilometers of roads, enabling trade, security, and mobility; trained more than 5,600 police and 1,000 prosecutors across Pakistan; provided scholarships to approximately 15,000 Pakistanis to attend Pakistani universities, 50 percent of whom were women; and supplied better access to comprehensive family planning services to more than 100,000 women.
Energy: Chronic energy shortages severely limit Pakistan’s economic development. As such, energy is our top assistance priority, supporting the goal of job creation, private sector growth, security, and political stability in Pakistan. U.S. assistance has helped Pakistan improve governance and management systems, and increase the country’s distribution companies’ revenue collection by more than US $400 million, as well as provide commercial opportunities for U.S. businesses. The United States continued to fund infrastructure rehabilitation projects, especially in clean energy, and provided technical assistance to Pakistani energy institutions, including distribution companies, to increase power generation and improve performance.
The U.S. Agency for International Development’s (USAID’s) on-budget investments in energy generation, facilitated by the Energy Policy Program (EPP), contributed to increasing generation capacity, energy production, and the reliability of power. EPP helped Pakistan develop the contractual framework that led to the first importation of liquefied natural gas. Additionally, the U.S.-Pakistan Clean Energy Partnership will help the private sector add at least 3,000 megawatts of clean power generation infrastructure to Pakistan’s national electricity system by 2020. Through the Partnership, USAID will support capacity building, technical assistance, USAID Development Credit Authority financial guarantees, business-to-business sales arrangements, and the construction of transmission lines to private projects to stimulate increased levels of private investment in clean power.
Economic Growth: Through a range of programs and public-private partnerships in agriculture and other sectors of Pakistan’s economy, U.S. assistance helped Pakistan create jobs and foster economic growth. USAID programming will improve the financial and operating performance of at least 6,000 small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in a maximum of seven industrial, manufacturing, and service sectors. In June 2016 in New York, the U.S. and Pakistan governments convened the fourth U.S.-Pakistan Business Opportunities Conference. The U.S. Department of Commerce is providing technical assistance in the areas of trade facilitation, intellectual property reform, competition and telecommunications law, and commercial law education. Pakistani participants attend trade shows and get exposure to U.S. companies and business associations on best practices. More than 200 Pakistani private sector representatives attended trade shows in 15 different U.S. states.
The Department of Commerce also trains private sector professionals in a variety of industries, including supply chain, packaging, and gems and jewelry. To leverage this growing interaction with the private sector, the USAID Islamabad Mission has established a new Innovations and Partnerships unit, which will increasingly use public-private partnerships in Pakistan to leverage private sector financial resources and knowledge. One such example was USAID’s partnership with the Nestle Foundation, which leveraged Nestle resources to increase milk yields by 11 percent and revenues on average by US $60 per month for 22,600 dairy farmers.
USAID has also provided US $72 million for the Pakistan Private Investment Initiative, which is matching U.S. funding with private equity capital to make nearly US $150 million available for investment in SMEs with high growth potential. Furthermore, the WECREATE Center, a co‑working space and incubator for women entrepreneurs, originally received U.S. funding, but in 2016 became self-sustaining. In 2016, Pakistan sent the largest foreign delegation to the annual Global Entrepreneurship Summit, which took place in Silicon Valley. To further facilitate private investment by U.S. companies, the Overseas Private Investment Corporation has facilitated US $800 million in financing and insurance for projects in Pakistan.
Stabilization: The United States used civilian assistance to support Pakistan’s efforts to make its territory inhospitable to terrorists by strengthening governance and civilian law enforcement capacity and promoting socioeconomic development, particularly in areas bordering Afghanistan and other targeted locations vulnerable to violent extremism. USAID programs in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) strengthen the civilian government’s ability to provide services, stabilize the area, and govern effectively.
Ten years of insurgency have resulted in frequent displacements of large populations to and from the FATA. In 2014, Pakistan’s military operations to clear the area of violent extremists caused an escalation of displacement from the FATA, and the region still faces dire challenges, including disproportionate rates of illiteracy, child mortality, and poverty, compared to the rest of Pakistan. USAID is partnering with Pakistan to support the return and reconstruction of displaced communities, the delivery of essential services and the expansion of economic opportunities to strengthen long-term stability. It pairs these efforts with the promotion of alternative narratives to counter the efforts of violent extremists. U.S. efforts included financing road construction, small community-based grants, police and governance training, and construction of municipal infrastructure. In 2016, USAID engaged more than 21,000 citizens in the oversight of government institutions, through the establishment of oversight forums, networks, and committees. It provided more than 270 grants to Pakistani civil society organizations that build linkages between citizens and government institutions. Additionally, USAID assistance provided policy development and leadership training for 100 political party members and assisted more than 600 individuals from marginalized groups to engage with political parties.
Education: Pakistan’s ability to educate its youth is critical to its economic growth and development, and future stability. U.S. education programs focused on increasing the number of students who enroll in and complete courses in primary and tertiary educational institutions; and improving the quality of that education – with a specific focus on early grade reading – to prepare Pakistani students for the workforce and provide high quality tertiary education that is responsive to market demands. The United States funds extensive exchange programs with Pakistan, including the largest U.S. government-funded Fulbright Program in the world, and since 2010, USAID has provided nearly 17,000 scholarships to students to attend university in Pakistan.
The United States has established 23 partnerships between Pakistani and U.S. universities to facilitate professional development for faculty, curriculum reform, joint research, and peer‑to‑peer interaction, including the U.S.-Pakistan Centers for Advanced Studies, partnerships which build Pakistani higher education capacity in three critical sectors – energy, agriculture, and water.
Under the U.S.-Pakistan Basic Education program, the United States supported Pakistan-led efforts to introduce and institutionalize improvements in reading instruction and assessment in Grades one and two across Pakistan with a goal of improving the reading skills of 1.9 million primary grade students. Reading programs have reached a total of more than 661,000 grade one and two students to date. The United States has also funded the rebuilding or renovation of more than 1,000 schools, helped upgrade 16 faculties of education, and provided English language training to 9,400 underprivileged Pakistani teenagers countrywide. To improve girls’ education, Let Girls Learn was launched in October 2015, and since then the United States has worked with communities in KP and FATA to address community-specific barriers to education for adolescent girls – reaching more than 265,000 girls with reading programs and assisting more than 38,000 girls to enroll or reenroll in school in FATA, KP, and Sindh.
Health: The provision of basic health services in Pakistan is inadequate for much of the population, particularly for rural communities. U.S. health programs supported the Government of Pakistan’s efforts to deliver healthcare, particularly in the areas of immunization programs and maternal, child health, and family planning. U.S. assistance was also used to provide technical assistance to support Government of Pakistan initiatives to procure essential medicines and commodities, construct health clinics and hospitals, strengthen the use of health data at the provincial and district level to guide resource allocation, fund the acquisition of medical materials, and to support maternal and child health care. Since 2010, USAID has trained more than 47,000 health care workers, who served more than 7.35 million community members throughout Pakistan.
International Narcotics Control and Law Enforcement (INL): Pakistan took important steps to counter violent extremists operating in the conflict-affected areas bordering Afghanistan during 2016; these steps included intensifying support to civilian law enforcement and border security agencies. Over the course of 2016, INL helicopters flew more than 2,000 hours, providing reconnaissance, surveillance, casualty, and medical evacuation missions. In addition, INL helicopters provided defensive fire support to the Frontier Corps Balochistan while Pakistan security forces advanced on terrorist strongholds. INL oversaw the initiation, completion, or continued construction of 24 border outposts, bringing the total constructed by INL to 340 in KP and FATA, protecting the lives of the Frontier Corps, Frontier Constabulary, and the FATA Levies. In addition to training prosecutors in trial advocacy, INL built and furnished an office for the Prosecutorial Service in each of the 14 districts in KP, which provides the prosecutors, for the first time ever, a place other than their homes and police stations in which to work. INL also supported the opening of the 28-kilometer Matani Bypass road in 2016 creating greater access for KP farmers to get to market, commercial carriers to run between Pakistan and Afghanistan, and law enforcement agencies to access the remote areas of KP and the FATA. Collectively, these efforts enhanced the counterinsurgency, law enforcement, and counter-narcotics capacities of Pakistan’s civilian law enforcement and border security agencies. Improved security will, in turn, facilitate economic development, which is necessary for long-term Pakistani stability and progress.
Nonproliferation, Antiterrorism, Demining, and Related Programs (NADR): The United States, through its Export Control and Related Border Security Program (EXBS) provided assistance to strengthen Pakistan’s export control system to prevent transfer of WMD and related technology. The EXBS program focused on assisting the Pakistani government with enhancing Pakistan’s regulation of strategic trade through increased licensing, building law enforcement capacity (with particular focus on commodity identification, investigations training, and cross border engagement), and expanding outreach to industry with the goal of promoting strategic trade control compliance. The Government of Pakistan made significant improvements to its national control list, which is now closely harmonized with the Missile Technology Control Regime, Australia Group, and Nuclear Suppliers Group control lists. During FY 2016, EXBS Pakistan carried out the End-Use/End-User Risk Analysis Workshop, the Regional Advance Identification Training Workshop targeting Pakistan’s Chemical Industry Representatives, and organized the International Visitor Leadership Program for the Pakistani Strategic Trade Controls and Enforcement officials. In April, EXBS donated weapons of mass destruction detection and identification equipment in the amount of US $1.6 million to Pakistan. The United States also provided targeted assistance to build Pakistani law enforcement capacity to detect, deter, and respond to terrorist threats. Specifically, the Department of State’s Antiterrorism Assistance Program provided nine courses focused on instructor development, soft targets, counterterrorism investigations, and crisis response.
Humanitarian Assistance: Since October 2009, more than US $1 billion of emergency humanitarian assistance has been provided to Pakistan in response to floods and conflict, in addition to bilateral assistance. In 2016, USAID provided approximately US $60 million in humanitarian aid, early recovery assistance, and post-conflict development assistance to support the return of 600,000 internally displaced persons to their communities in the FATA.
Foreign Military Financing (FMF): FMF promotes the development of Pakistan’s long-term counterinsurgency and counterterrorism capabilities to enhance security and stability throughout the country, particularly in the conflict-affected areas bordering Afghanistan, and to improve Pakistan’s ability to lead and participate in U.S.-led maritime security operations that support maritime counterterrorism and counter piracy objectives in the Arabian Sea. The United States continued to focus FMF towards seven core capabilities: precision strike; air mobility/ combat search and rescue; battlefield communications; night operations; survivability and countering improvised explosive devices; border security; and maritime security.
International Military Education and Training (IMET): The IMET program supported professional military education for Pakistan’s military leaders, emphasizing respect for the rule of law, human rights, and democratic values, including civilian control of the military. IMET also supported effective management of Pakistan’s defense establishment through training in logistics, defense acquisition, and resource management. A portion of this funding supported modest technical and operational training that enhances Pakistan’s overall professionalism and improves its counterterrorism and counterinsurgency capabilities. Pakistan received the largest amount of IMET of any of our global partners, at nearly US $5 million annually. Since 2009, the United States has trained more than 2,300 members of the Pakistan military and defense establishment. At approximately 1.5 percent, Pakistan consistently has the lowest IMET course forfeiture rate in the region and consistently remains well below the world-wide objective of 5 percent.
Measures to ensure that assistance has the greatest long-term positive impact on the welfare of the Pakistani people and their ability to counter terrorism: More than a quarter of U.S. civilian assistance is implemented via Pakistani partners, including the Government of Pakistan, private-sector actors, and civil-society and community-engagement partners, as practicable. This is done to strengthen local capacity and increase sustainability, providing the greatest possible long-term impact of U.S. assistance. Increasingly, U.S. assistance is also used for public-private partnerships to engage the private sector as a long-term partner in Pakistan’s development.