The Trump administration has released $397 million for a US-backed programme in Pakistan that a congressional aide said monitored the latter’s use of US-made F-16 fighter jets to ensure they were employed for counterterrorism operations and not against rival India.
The move was part of a release of $5.3 billion in previously frozen foreign aid, mostly for security and counternarcotics programmes, according to a list of exemptions reviewed by Reuters that included only limited humanitarian relief.
According to Pakistan specific defence and analysis group Quwa, the funds will support the Technical Security Team (TST), a contingent of contractors present in Pakistan to oversee the use of F-16s under “strict end-use monitoring rules, which seem to require the Pakistan Air Force (PAF) to only use the F-16s, especially the newer F-16C/D Block-52 fighters, for counterinsurgency and counter-terrorism operations”.
It noted that the oversight was “not new”, adding that the TST was present in Pakistan since 2019 when the US approved its current deployment with a $125m support package for the PAF F-16 fleet.
In 2022, the US government had notified Congress of a proposed foreign military sale of $450m to Pakistan to sustain the Pakistan Air Force’s F-16 programme as well.
Contrary to the congressional aide’s claim, according to a 2019 report of Foreign Policy magazine, using an F-16 in a dogfight with India did not violate the end-use agreement that Pakistan signed while receiving the aircraft from the US.
The prominent American magazine had also contradicted India’s claim of shooting down an F-16 fighter jet of Pakistan during a dogfight amid heightened tension following the Pulwama attack in 2019.
FP had interviewed two US defence officials with “knowledge of the count” and both confirmed that all the F-16s were “present and accounted for”.
“It would be incredibly naive for us to believe that we could sell some type of equipment to Pakistan that they would not intend to use in a fight,” one of them added.
The officials also said that Pakistan had invited the US to do the count after India claimed that its air force had shot down an F-16 fighter jet during a dogfight on Feb 27, 2019.
An end-user agreement, signed when the foreign military sale was finalised, allows the US to do such counts.
The United States also understood Pakistan’s need to use F-16 fighter jets to defend itself during the Indian intrusion in February 2019, according to a document published by US News and World Report.
The document, obtained by the magazine, however, also showed that Washington was not happy with Islamabad’s decision to deploy these US-supplied aircraft and missiles to forward positions during the skirmish.
US exempts security funds from aid freeze but little for social programmes
The freeze sparked a scramble by US officials and humanitarian organisations for exemptions to keep programmes going. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who has said all foreign assistance must align with Trump’s “America First” priorities, issued waivers in late January on military aid to Israel and Egypt, the top US allies in the Middle East, and for life-saving humanitarian aid, including food.
The waivers meant those funds should have been allowed to be spent. Current and former US officials and aid organisations, however, say few humanitarian aid waivers have been approved.
Reuters obtained a list of 243 further exceptions approved as of February 13 totalling $5.3bn. The list provides the most comprehensive accounting of exempted funds since Trump ordered the aid freeze and reflects the White House’s desire to cut aid for programmes it doesn’t consider vital to US national security.
The list identifies programmes that will be funded and the US government office managing them.
The vast majority of released funds — more than $4.1bn — were for programmes administered by the US State Department’s Bureau of Political-Military Affairs, which oversees arms sales and military assistance to other countries and groups. Other exemptions were in line with Trump’s immigration crackdown and efforts to halt the flow of illicit narcotics into the US, including the deadly opioid fentanyl.
More than half of the programmes that will be allowed to go forward are run by the State Department’s Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs, or INL, and are aimed at helping fight drug trafficking and illicit migration to the US, according to the list.
Those exemptions were worth $293m and included funds for databases to track migrants, identify possible terrorists and share biometric information.
A State Department spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.
Reuters could not determine if some exemptions had been granted but were not on the list.
Trump has long railed against foreign aid, which has averaged less than two per cent of total federal spending for the past 20 years, according to the nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. Trump has described the US “foreign aid industry” as “in many cases antithetical to American values”.
Billionaire Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency has led an effort to gut the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the main delivery mechanism for American foreign assistance and a critical tool of US “soft power” for winning influence abroad.
In contrast to security-related programmes, USAID programmes received less than $100m in exemptions, according to the list. That compares to roughly $40bn in USAID programmes administered annually before the freeze.
Exempted USAID programmes included $78m for non-food humanitarian assistance in Gaza, which has been devastated by Israel’s invasion. A separate $56m was released for the International Committee of the Red Cross related to the ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas, the list showed.
The list did not include specific exemptions for some of the world’s worst humanitarian crises, including Sudan, Syria, Ukraine, Myanmar and Afghanistan, which means funds for those places appeared to remain stopped.
Security exemptions included $870m for programmes in Taiwan, $336m for modernising Philippine security forces and more than $21.5m for body armour and armoured vehicles for Ukraine’s national police and border guards, the list showed.
The biggest non-security exemption was $500m in funding for PEPFAR, the flagship US programme fighting HIV/AIDS, which mainly funds healthcare services in Africa and is credited with saving millions of lives. That compares with PEPFAR’s annual budget in 2024 of $6.5bn. PEPFAR is administered by the State Department’s global health bureau.
A current USAID employee, speaking on condition of anonymity, described the process for requesting exemptions as “very dysfunctional” and said the agency’s remaining staff have sought clarity on what criteria are being used.
Rubio has said the Trump administration reached out to USAID missions overseas to identify and designate programmes that will be exempted.
J. Brian Atwood, USAID’s administrator from 1993 to 1999, said reducing foreign aid to a narrow set of exemptions was shortsighted. “When people are starving or feeling desperate, they are going to become a security problem eventually,” he said. “They’ll migrate or become an immigration problem or they will be more inclined to move to terrorism.”
The foreign aid that was paused by Trump had previously been approved by Congress, which controls the federal budget under the US Constitution. As a candidate and as president, Trump has said he opposes foreign aid for “countries that hate us” and would prefer to instead spend the money at home.
The exemptions in the list were granted before a federal judge last week ordered the Trump administration to restore funding for foreign aid contracts and awards that were in place before January 20. Reuters was unable to establish what exemptions, if any, had been granted since February 13.
Many of the unfrozen programmes reflect Trump’s focus on drug trafficking, including funds supporting fentanyl interdiction operations by Mexican security units and efforts to combat transnational criminal organizations.
Trump’s aid freeze has thrown a wrench into those efforts, however.
Reuters reported last week that the pause halted anti-narcotics programmes funded by the INL Bureau in Mexico which for years had been working to curb the flow of the synthetic opioid into the US.
More than $64m was released to support Haitian police and a UN-approved international security force that is helping Haiti’s government fight escalating gang violence that has displaced more than one million people.
The money covers supplies of small arms, ammunition, drones, night vision goggles, vehicles and other support for the force, according to the list. The force is led by Kenya and includes personnel from Jamaica, Belize, the Bahamas, Guatemala and El Salvador.
The Bureau of International Security and Nonproliferation, focused on preventing the spread of nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction, received 17 exemptions worth more than $30.4m, the list showed.
Some of the released funds were for small expenditures — including $604 for Musk’s Starlink satellite internet system to run biometrics registration programmes in the Darien Gap, a treacherous 60-mile route linking South and Central America used by US-bound illegal migrants.
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