US President Donald Trump has authorised the reinstatement of a military training and educational programme in Pakistan more than a year after suspending it, according to the US Bureau of South and Central Asian Affairs late Friday evening.
The move indicates a thawing in relations between Washington and Islamabad following a meeting between Trump and Prime Minister Imran Khan last year. The decision also comes as Pakistan plays an essential role in the Afghan peace process.
“It is the first step towards a wider and deeper engagement between the two countries,” Talat Masood, a retired general, said to German news agency DPA.
In January 2018, the Trump administration cancelled nearly all security assistance to Pakistan after the US president accused Pakistan of not doing enough to counter the actions of terrorist groups.
In August that same year, the US also suspended the military training programme.
The US International Military Education and Training (IMET) programme’s aim is to build military-to-military cooperation and advance the goals of US national security, US acting Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asia Alice Wells said in the tweet. The suspension of the overall security assistance programme, however, remains in effect, Wells added.
The IMET programme remained the bedrock of the US-Pakistan military collaboration for decades until it was suspended by the Trump administration since it thought that the South Asian state was not doing enough to secure American interests in Afghanistan and the rest of the region.
“The United States has foolishly given Pakistan more than 33 billion dollars in aid over the last 15 years, and they have given us nothing but lies & deceit, thinking of our leaders as fools,” the American president launched a Twitter onslaught against Islamabad on the very first day of 2018.
As Washington once again started leaning more heavily on Islamabad to pacify the situation in Afghanistan, the State Department announced last month it would resume the training programme for Pakistan. On December 19, 2019, the Trump administration had given the approval for the resumption of Pakistan’s participation in a coveted US military training and educational programme.
Wells echoed the same decision in the Twitter post just a few hours after there was a dangerous military escalation in the Middle East and US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo discussed with Chief of Army Staff (COAS) General Qamar Javed Bajwa the American action in Baghdad, where it killed a top Iranian general, Qassem Soleimani.
In the call, Pakistan encouraged all parties to exercise “maximum restraint, engage constructively to de-escalate the situation, and resolve issues through diplomatic means, in accordance with UN Charter and international law”.
According to the US State Department the decision to resume Islamabad’s participation in IMET – for more than a decade a pillar of US-Pakistani military ties – underscored the warming relations that have followed meetings this year between President Trump and Prime Minister Imran Khan.
A State Department spokeswoman had said in an email that Trump’s 2018 decision to suspend security assistance authorised “narrow exceptions for programmes that support vital US national security interests”. The decision to restore Pakistani participation in IMET was “one such exception”, she said.
The programme “provides an opportunity to increase bilateral cooperation between our countries on shared priorities,” she added. “We want to continue to build on this foundation through concrete actions that advance regional security and stability.”
Pakistan’s suspension from the programme in August 2018 prompted the cancellation of 66 slots set aside that year for Pakistani military officers in one of the first known impacts of Trump’s decision to halt security assistance.
The US military traditionally has sought to shield such educational programmes from political tensions, arguing that the ties built by bringing foreign military officers to the United States pay long-term dividends.
