WASHINGTON—The Trump administration said it would freeze all security assistance to Pakistan until the country takes a tougher stance against terror networks on its territory, a move that reflects new tensions and could lead to problems in supplying U.S. troops in neighboring Afghanistan.

“Pakistan has played a double game for years,” U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley said this week as she announced the U.S. would continue to withhold $255 million in already budgeted military aid. She said while working with the U.S., the country is also harboring terrorist groups that target American troops in Afghanistan. The U.S. originally suspended that payment in August.

The Trump administration went further on Thursday, vowing to freeze more than $1 billion in other forms of security assistance, bringing the total of security funds that could be held back to at least $1.3 billion, U.S. officials said. The freeze doesn’t affect more than $220 million in economic support and health-related funding, and the U.S. can make exceptions to the freeze on a case-by-case basis.

U.S. Ambassador to the U.N.Nikki Haley speaking at U.N. headquarters on Tuesday. Photo: Drew Angerer/Getty Images

U.S. officials said the suspension of funds was motivated in part by frustration that Pakistan wouldn’t grant Washington access to a member of the Haqqani network captured by Pakistani forces late last year when they freed a Canadian-American family held hostage by militants, and was also denying the U.S. access to other people of interest.

The funds freeze came as U.S. ties with Pakistan deteriorated further under President Donald Trump, who tweeted on New Year’s Day: “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. They give safe haven to the terrorists we hunt in Afghanistan, with little help. No more!”


In that context, Thursday’s move didn’t come as a surprise in Islamabad. “The behavior of America is not the behavior of an ally or friend,” said Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Khawaja Muhammad Asif, speaking Thursday before the U.S. action was announced. “They have abandoned us at every difficult moment in our history.”

Mr. Trump’s New Year’s tweet has united Pakistan’s political opposition, government and the powerful military against the U.S, causing a pause in the infighting among amid a continuing political crisis in the country.

A U.S. soldier stands beside a U.S. military post in the Achin district of Afghanistan’s Nangarhar province on Wednesday. Photo: GHULAMULLAH HABIBI/EPA/Shutterstock

Mr. Asif said Pakistan wasn’t diplomatically isolated and that Iran, Turkey, China and Russia agreed with its stance on Afghanistan, namely that the U.S. should enter peace talks with the Taliban instead of pursuing a military approach.

Beijing, which has a multibillion-dollar infrastructure-building program in Pakistan, complimented Pakistan for its “great efforts and sacrifices” in combating terrorism, adding the international community should fully recognize its efforts.


Pakistan insists it can live without U.S. aid, and has said it won’t be bullied by Washington. The government says taking part in America’s war on terror has cost it tens of thousands of lives and over $100 billion in economic losses, sacrifices it complains haven’t been acknowledged.

“We did not fight for money,” Maj. Gen. Asif Ghafoor, the spokesman of the powerful military, said Wednesday. “We have done enough and we cannot do any more.”

Pakistani officials say the country’s already stretched armed forces would be overly strained by starting a war with the militant Haqqani network, Instead, they say, Islamabad is “pushing” the Haqqani network fighters and leadership across the border into Afghanistan.

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At the Pentagon, some officials expressed concern that Pakistan could respond to the suspension of funding by restricting the U.S. military from using its border crossings to send supplies, food, fuel and equipment to the nearly 14,000 U.S. troops stationed in neighboring Afghanistan.


The U.S. military could use alternative surface routes into the landlocked country, but that would be costly and some supplies might not reach American troops because of restrictions imposed by other countries on goods transiting their borders.

“It costs a lot of money to feed 14,000 if you fly everything in,” a U.S. defense official said. “We would rather spend those funds directly on the mission and not logistics.”

Pakistan closed the border to the U.S. military for several months in 2011 after it alleged that U.S.-backed airstrikes killed 24 of its troops. That closure slowed the distribution of nearly everything to U.S. troops in Afghanistan, leaving them with limited food and other critical supplies. At the peak of the U.S. war in Afghanistan, nearly half of supplies transited through the Pakistan border.

Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said Thursday during a briefing with reporters that he didn’t believe a policy change would lead to another such border closure. “We have no indication of anything like that,” he said.


—Farnaz Fassihi at the United Nations contributed to this article.

Write to Felicia Schwartz at Felicia.Schwartz@wsj.com, Nancy A. Youssef at Nancy.Youssef@wsj.com and Saeed Shah at saeed.shah@wsj.com