In a recent interview with an international news organization, InterimPrime Minister Anwarul Haq Kakar denied the sale of Pakistani arms to Kyivand attributed their presence in Ukraine to the black market. However, anew report claims that the arms might have ended up in Ukraine throughlegal channels.
In a video report released today, a Pakistani digital media platform SochVideos has shared the trail of legal sales based on open-source data,revealing a significant surge in the export of Pakistan ammunition not toUkraine but to American defense contractors who in turn sold them to the USgovernment. The arms eventually ended up in Ukraine as part of the US’sUkraine Special Assistance Initiative.
Even before Kakar, Pakistan’s former foreign minister Bilawal Bhutto hadcategorically denied the supply of Pakistani weapons to Ukraine. “We findit regrettable that certain media outlets have tried to publish unfoundedreports alleging military supply to Ukraine,” he had said.
The sentiment was also shared by the Foreign Office spokesperson MumtazBaloch, albeit with a caveat – “any official exports would have listed theend user and purpose of purchase.”
The report shows an unprecedented surge in the State Bank’s trade data forweapons exports starting in the latter half of 2022.
The verifiable data available on the SBP website shows that between fiscalyear 2004/05 and fiscal year 2021/22, Pakistan’s total arms exportsamounted to $423m. However, between July 2022 and June 2023, arms exportsrecorded by the SBP were over $460m. This means that Pakistan has exportedmore arms since the beginning of the war in Ukraine than it had in the 18years prior to it.
In fiscal year 2022, Pakistan exported about $13m of weapons. In the monthof February 2022, when the war in Ukraine began, Pakistan’s arms exportswere $509k, rising to $1.1m by April. By August 2022, it shot up to $30mfor the month and by January 2023, arms exports stood at almost $75m. Theexports are almost entirely made to the United States.
In fiscal year 2023, the exports figures for arms and ammunition rose to astaggering $350m that primarily falls under two HS codes. The first code isHS 9306 for explosives and explosive ammunition such as artillery shells,and the second is HS 9302 for firearms and ammunition such as handguns andbullets as per Federal Board of Revenue definitions.
The report cites a June 2022 Washington Post piece that claimed Russia wasusing around 60,000 artillery shells a day while the Ukrainians required6,000 shells a day just to defend themselves.
According to Soch, to overcome the gap, the United States turned to variouscountries to fill the gap in supply and reached out to them either directlyor via American military contractors to buy arms and ammunition for theUkraine Security Assistance Initiative. Citing publicly availableprocurement data published by the United States Federal Procurement DataSystem, the report tallies the numbers with that of the SBP data to findout that two American military contractors sold a total of $364m worth of155-millimeter artillery shells to the US government with their country oforigin being Pakistan – the contractors being Global military products andNorthrop Grumman, according to the report.
Read Top Stories
The report also cites the United States Under Secretary of Defence’s officeof acquisition and sustainment website that shared a press release listingcontracts awarded under the US’s Ukraine Special Assistance Initiativewhich can be linked to the purchases.
Another US government website which contains data about contracts awardedby different agencies and the source of funds for those contracts suggestthat these contracts were awarded under a larger parent contract forammunition worth a total of $750m.
In addition to buying arms from Pakistan, these two companies have alsopurchased similar munitions from countries such as Bosnia, Bulgaria, andRomania, as a part of the larger indefinite delivery vehicle contracts asper the report.
Munitions originating from these countries were then sold to the USGovernment under the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative, and the USgovernment subsequently supplied them to Ukraine.
According to a report published in The Express Tribune in October 2022,“Pakistan maintained a delicate balance on the brewing conflict. WhileIslamabad expressed concerns over the humanitarian situation in Ukraine, itstopped short of condemning Russia.” It quotes the then spokesperson of theFO as saying that Pakistan did not want to be a part of any ‘bloc politics’in the world and that its stance on Ukraine was based on principles.
Meanwhile, Pakistan has also warmed up to trade ties with Russia and hasalready made a small crude import of Russian oil. Reports suggest that itis eyeing a ‘deeper discount’ on oil after the last import proveduneconomical.
Pakistan’s wheat imports from Russia have also surged more than eightfolddue to disruptions in supply from Ukraine. In the first eight months of theagricultural 2022–23 marketing year, Pakistan, the fifth-most populouscountry in the world, became the fifth-largest importer of Russian wheat,according to S&P Global.
As with any sovereign country, Pakistan might be trying to tread a moreneutral path, but it remains unclear as to why exports worth hundreds ofmillions of dollars are not celebrated in times of economic turmoil insteadof issuing denials.