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Pakistan signed CIS-MOA (Communications Interoperability and Security Memorandum of Agreement) with the USA in 2005 for 15 years. That means, the agreements lasted until 2020. After three years of hiatus, this month, they renewed it for another 15 years.

My questions are,

  1. What did Pakistan gain from signing CIS-MOA with the USA in 2005?
  2. Why the gap of three years before they renewed it?
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Generally speaking, since 2006 (at least) such an agreement is required before US companies can sell a foreign country [C4ISR] equipment with certain intel interoperability features.

C3.3.8.4. Bilateral INFOSEC Agreement Signature. The bilateral agreement (e.g., CISMOA or COMSEC MOU, INFOSEC Equipment Agreement) must be in place in order for a purchaser to receive INFOSEC products or services associated with a C4ISR system.

The list of products covered is pretty broad, including anything containing cryptography for instance, which nowadays is pretty much any non-trivial military equipment.

While I'm not entirely certain about this and public details are scant, the lapsing of the agreement probably had something to do with the more anti-US stance of the previous Pakistani (Khan) government. One article notes that the renewal came shortly after the US approved $450 million sale in F-16 parts to Pakistan in late 2022.

The Pakistani government didn't seem too keen to answer press questions about this:

[...] there was no official announcement from either side about the signing of the CIS-MOA. Federal Minister for Information Marriyum Aurangzeb was approached but she did not respond till the filing of this report.

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