By Eric Vandenbroeck and co-workers
Afghanistan and the Durand Line
Following a standoff
between the Russian British Armies, Afghanistan's frontier with British India was
drawn by Sir Mortimer Durand, in 1893 and was accepted by representatives of
both governments. Recognizing Afghanistan as a buffer between the two empires
saved the Russians and the British from having to confront each other
militarily. The border, named the Durand Line, intentionally divided Pashtun
tribes living in the area in order to prevent them from becoming a nuisance for
the Raj. On their side of the frontier, the British created autonomous tribal
agencies, controlled by British political officers with the help of tribal
chieftains whose loyalty was ensured through regular subsidies.
Adjacent to the
autonomous tribal agencies were the settled Pashtuns living under direct
British rule in towns and villages. Here, too; the Pashtuns were divided between
the NWFP and Balochistan, which did not enjoy the
status of a full province under British rule. Although Muslim, Pashtuns
generally sided with the cause of anti-British Indian nationalism they were
reluctant, in embracing the Muslim separatism of the All-India Muslim League's
campaign for Pakistan.
Almost forgotten
today, is the paradoxical fact that the foremost Pashtun leader that time was a
dedicated pacifist, Abdul Ghaffar Khan once famous as the "frontier
Gandhi." His followers, nicknamed the Red Shirts (imitating Garibald), had first to swear, "I shall never use
violence. I shall not retaliate or take revenge, and shall forgive anyone who
indulges in oppression and excesses against me." For upwards of two
decades Ghaffar Khan and his Khudai Khidmatgar ("Servants of God") fought alongside
Mahatma Gandhi and the Congress Party for a united, democratic and secular
India.” Mukilika Banerjee first heard of the Red
Shirts in the 1990s while a graduate student in New Delhi. Impressed and
curious, she settled on the frontier, learned Pushto, and managed to interview
seventy surviving ex-Servants of God for her study, The Pathan Unarmed. She
found that Ghaffar Khan's pacifism derived from his concept of jihad, or holy
war: "Nonviolent civil disobedience offered the chance of martyrdom in its
purest form, since putting one's life conspicuously in one's enemy's hands was
itself the k y act and death incurred in the process was not a defeat or a
tragedy: rather the act of witness to an enemy's injustice. In his recruiting
speeches, therefore, [Ghaffar Khan] was offering to each and every Pathan not
the mere possibility of death, but rather the opportunity of glorious sacrifice
and martyrdom. Banerjee wrote that Ghaffar Khan, starting in the 1920s, managed
to recruit a nonviolent army of 100,000 followers, who shared a uniform
frugally stained with brick dust. The army's power was confirmed in 1930, when
its general strike paralyzed Peshawar, the provincial capital, for five. days,
its supporters having braved arrest and torture by the Raj's police. Initially,
because they were deemed so intractable, Pashtuns were denied even the limited
franchise granted in the early 1900’s elsewhere in British India, but this
changed with the passage of the 1935 Government of India Act. In successive
elections, the Red Shirts prevailed, forming provincial governments under Chief
Minister Dr. Khan Sahib (as he is usually styled), the British-educated
physician brother of Ghaffar Khan. Meanwhile, Ghaffar, standing six feet, three
inches, instantly recognizable with his nobbly nose
and homely features, became an arm-in-arm companion to Mahatma Gandhi, who
pronounced the Red Shirt movement a miracle.
Notwithstanding his
liberal views on secularism and women's rights, Ghaffar Khan became a Pashtun
folk hero, acclaimed as Badshah Khan, or khan of khans. This is documented in a
book by the Indian historian Parshotam Mehra, The
North-West Frontier Drama, 1945-1947. Combing through long unexamined records,
the author found that in 1932, the NWFP, with a population of just 3 million,
accounted for 5,557 convictions for civil disobedience compared with 1,620 in
the Punjab, which had five times as many inhabitants.
Muslims constituted
so overwhelming a majority on the frontier that the Muslim League's cry of
"Islam in danger" failed to resonate. This helps explain why a
movement allied with Gandhi's Hindu-led Congress took root. No less important,
Ghaffar Khan had tapped into a sense of frustrated common identity among
Pashtuns living on both sides of the Afghan border. He and his movement talked
of a "Pashtunistan," an independent or
quasi-autonomous Pashtun homeland, the content of the idea varying from time to
time. It was this aspect of the movement that most troubled the British and,
even more, the Muslim League. It led to Ghaffar Khan's encounter with another
important if forgotten figure, the British Governor in Peshawar Sir Olaf Caroe.
A few months before
‘partition’ took place, a U.S. official reported about his interview with Olaf Caroe in May 1947: "Sir Olaf indicated that the
Foreign Office tended too much to look upon India as a peninsular unit like
Italy.... He felt it did not sufficiently realize the great political
importance of the Northwest Frontier Province and Afghanistan, which he
described as `the uncertain vestibule' in future relations between Soviet
Russia and India."(Document held at the National Archives/Washington,
quoted in K.E. Meyer, The Dust of Empire 2003 , p. 107)
As a gesture to
Congress, the that time Viceroy of British India General Mountbatten determined
that Caroe was "suffering badly from
nerves" and asked him to request a leave as provincial governor until the
transfer of power. Caroe complied. A deputy presided
as the referendum took place on July 17, its one-sided judgment in favor of
joining Pakistan marred by charges of fraud and intimidation and by a boycott
that kept half the 5 million eligible Pashtun voters from the polls.
Ghaffar Khan's
brother, Dr. Khan Sahib, was dismissed from the office of chief minister of
NWFP soon after Pakistan's independence, and his cabinet peremptorily dismissed.The two brothers, other family members, and
several of their supporters were imprisoned, thereby prolong¬ing
the pre-independence conflict among pakistan's Pashtuns.
In newborn India Ghaffar Khan was all but abandoned by his former Congress
Party allies, while in newborn Pakistan he was charged with sedition. It made
no difference that he took an oath of allegiance to the new Afghanistan. His
earlier demands for Pashtunistan became part of the
combination of perceived security threats that required Pakistan's military
buildup backed by great-power alliances. See also:
British journalist
Ian Stephens, in an interview with one of Pakistan founding fathers and
President of Pakistan Zia ul-Haq on January 1979, was
given following account of the emergence of Pakistan. Stephens, who said he was
speaking "virtually as an honorary Muslim," voiced his concern over
the attention being paid to Islamization "to the detriment of the basic
economic problems" of Pakistan. Zia ul-Haq
replied:
The basis of Pakistan
was Islam. The basis of Pakistan was intended in a way that the Muslims of the
sub-continent are a separate culture. It was on the two-nation theory that this
part was carved out of the sub-continent as Pakistan. And in the last 30 years
in general but more so in the last seven years there has been a complete
erosion of the moral values of our society. You will hear that Pakistan is full
of corruption today. In spite ofone-and-a-half years
of Martial Law, corruption is at large, people are dishonest; they want to make
money overnight. The moral fiber of the society has been completely broken and
this was done basically in the last seven and a half years. Mr. Bhutto's way of
flourishing in this society was by eroding its moral fiber ... He eroded the
moral fiber of the society by pitching the students against the teachers, sons
against the fathers, landlords against the tenants, and factory workers against
the mill owners ... The economic ills of the country are not because Pakistan
is incapable of economic production. It is because Pakistanis have been made to
believe that one can earn without working ... Therefore, to my mind the most
fundamental and important basis for the whole reformation of society is not how
much cotton we can grow or how much wheat we can grow. Yes, they are in their
own place important factors; but I think it is the moral rejuvenation which is
required first and that will have to be done on the basis of Islam, because it
was on this basis that Pakistan was formed ... We are going back to Islam not
by choice but by the force of circumstances. If we had chosen we might as well
have stayed with India. What was wrong with that? ... It is not because of
anything other than our cultural and moral awareness that in Islam is our only
salvation ... Islam from that point of view is the fundamental factor. It comes
before wheat and rice and everything else. I can grow more wheat; I can import
wheat but I cannot import the correct moral values." (President Zia ul-Haq's interview to Ian Stephens, January 6, 1979, in
President of Pakistan General Mohammad Zia ul-Haq-Interviews to Foreign Media, vol. II, Islamabad:
Government of Pakistan, undated, pp. 2-6.)
Until recently,
serving and retired Pakistani officials have played down Pakistan's role in
support of the Afghan Islamist insurgency in the pre-Soviet days.(1) Later, in
the aftermath of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, the
Pakistan-sponsored Islamist rebellion became the U.S.-backed jihad against
Soviet occupation. The massive covert operation in support of the Afghan
mujahideen enhanced Pakistan's value as a U.S. ally.
After the Soviet
withdrawal, when the United States walked away from Afghanistan and terminated
aid to Pakistan in retaliation for its nuclear program, Pakistan claimed it had
been betrayed by the United State.s
By emphasizing
Pakistan's role as the conduit for U.S. arms for Afghans fighting Soviet
occupation, the Pakistanis are able to divert attention away from their
ambitions in Afghanistan. The fact remains, however, that Pakistan did not
merely oblige the United States by launching resistance to the Soviet
occupation of Afghanistan in 1979. With U.S. money and weapons, and with
support from other Western and Arab governments, Pakistan was able to expand
the scope of an operation that had been ongoing long before, and especially
since 1973.
In 1976, Afghan's
Gulbuddin Hekmatyar split off from Jamiat-e-Islami Afghanistan to form the Hizbe
Islami (Islamic Party), which also operated from
Pakistan. Rabbani wanted to move cautiously and gradually, building broader
support before seeking power. Like Maulana Maududi,
Rabbani's original scheme for Islamic revolution did not envisage armed
struggle or certainly anything that could be described as terrorism. Although
Maulana Maududi's followers have been involved in
militant struggles for the past several decades, none of his writings openly
advocated violence. Rabbani, too, in the initial stages was reluctant to
convert Jamiat-e-Islami
into a militia or a guerrilla army although later, after the Soviet occupation,
the party became a leading band of mujahideen.
Hekmatyar, on the
other hand, from the beginning was willing to embrace radical methods. His
militancy soon made him a favorite of the ISI, which was at that stage more
interested in generating military pressure on Afghanistan President Daoud's
regime than in laying the foundations of a sustainable Islamic revolution in
Afghanistan. The ISI also had an eye on identifying future leaders for an
Afghanistan more closely linked to Pakistan. As an ethnic Pashtun, Hekmatyar
seemed qualified for that role.
Between 1973 and
1977, Afghanistan and Pakistan fought what can best be described as a
low-intensity proxy war. Sardar Muhammad Daoud supported rBaloch
rebels in Pakistan while Pakistan backed the Afghan Islamist insurgents based
in Peshawar. Accounts by Pakistani officials from that period also suggest that
Pakistan's decision to back the Afghan Islamists was initiated by Bhutto in
retaliation for Daoud's support to Baloch and Pashtun groups in Pakistan."
The Pakistani covert operation was not merely retaliatory, however; it
reflected the longeerm Pakistani interest in the
affairs of Afghanistan.
The insurgency in Balochistan started soon after Bhutto's dismissal of the
provincial government in February 1973. Sardar Daoud's coup d'état against Zahir Shah took place on July 17,1973, and it was followed
immediately by the arrival in Peshawar of Rabbani, Massoud,
and Hekmatyar. The Baloch were fighting the Pakistan army before Daoud took
power, and Pakistan was playing host to Afghan Islamists almost simultaneously
with the proclamation of an Afghan republic. After coming to power, Daoud
established training camps for Baloch rebels, training between ten and fifteen
thousand tribesmen for war against Pakistan.(Raja Anwar, The Tragedy of
Afghanistan, London:, 1988, p. 78.)
He also renamed one
of Kabul's central squares as Chowk Pashtunistan (Pashtunistan Square) Daoud's actions on behalf of the
Baloch tribesmen and his revival of propaganda for Pashtunistan
may have added another reason for the ISI's support for Rabbani and Hekmatyar,
but it was certainly not the primary instigator. Pakistan had thought hard
about expanding its influence in Afghanistan, and the plan for the Islamist
insurgency took shape as a result of this evaluation. General Khalid Mahmud Arif, who served in Pakistan's GHQ at the time and who
later served as the principal lieutenant to General Zia ul-Haq
has described the "Afghan cell" that was created in the Pakistan
Foreign Office as early as July/August 1973. He has also described the role of
the ISI in conducting "intelligence missions inside Afghanistan"
during that time and its contacts with Hekmatyar, Rabbani, and the exiled
Afghan king, Zahir Shah.
The Pakistan-trained
Afghan insurgents were able to accomplish little against the Kabul regime.-'
More effective were the efforts by the Shah of Iran to offer Daoud economic
assistance comparable with that provided by the Soviets. Anticommunists within
Daoud's inner circle opposed sharing power with Afghan communists, leading to
the purge of communists from Daoud's regime beginning in 1975. Daoud reached
out to traditional Islamic leaders at the same time. At the Shah's prodding,
Daoud and Bhutto began a dialogue to resolve the differences beween Pakistan and Afghanistan, a dialogue that was
interrupted by Bhutto's ouster from power in July 1977 but was resumed with
General Zia ul-Haq a few months later.
After distancing
himself from the Soviet Union and Afghan communists, Sardar Daoud proceeded to
build a new relationship with conservative Arab regimes, Iran, and the United
States. Afghanistan was now more dependent on foreign aid than ever, with aid
being the source of 60 percent of Afghanistan's budget expenditures for
1977-1978. Raja Anwar, The Tragedy of Afghanistan (London, 1988, p. 78.) By
reaching out to the West and pro-Western neighboring states, Daoud was
gradually diversifying the sources of aid and backing away from Afghanistan's
special relationship with the Soviet Union. During a visit to Pakistan in March
1978, Daoud came close to concluding a deal with Pakistan that would have
recognized the Durand Line and ended Afghanistan's support for Pashtunistan in return for Baloch and Pashtun autonomy
within Pakistan." These foreign policy changes were accompanied by
significant changes on the domestic front as well. Daoud cracked down on the
PDPA and informed the Baloch and Pashtun activists from Pakistan that
Afghanistan would no longer be their sanctuary.
On April 27,1978,
Daoud was overthrown and killed in a coup d'état carried out by procommunist
military officers who had not yet been purged. The coup d'état was led by some
of the same officers who had helped Daoud come to power almost five years
earlier. Several accounts of the coup suggest that "it was a last-minute
operation, orchestrated by Afghans, in which support from Soviet intelligence
agencies and military advisers, if any, came only after they were confronted
with a virtual fait accompli." (and Harrison, Out of Afghanistan, p.
22.37. Ibid., p. 25; see also Louis Dupree, The Accidental Coup American
Universities Field Staff Reports, 1979, p. 5, and Anwar, Tragedy of
Afghanistan, pp. 94-96.)
The military officers
involved in the coup d'état released the PDPA leaders who had been imprisoned
by Daoud, and leading figures of the PDPA assumed top positions in the new,
revolutionary government. Pakistan recognized the new regime and maintained
diplomatic relations with it, but the coming to power of communists in
Afghanistan accelerated the Pakistan-backed Islamist insurgency. During a
meeting between General Zia ul-Haq and the new Afghan
president, Nur Muhammad Taraki, in September 1978,
both leaders saw the contrast in their fundamental beliefs. General Arif wrote, "the two Muslims disagreed on the
interpretation of Islamic philosophy (Gen. Khalid Mahmud Arif,
Working with Zia: Pakistan's Power Politics, 1977-1988, Oxford University
Press, 1995, p. 306.)
Taraki
was introduced to Zia ul-Haq as "comrade,"
and he began by sharing his view of Afghan history with the Pakistani leader.
He told Zia that the Afghan royal family "had exploited the Afghan nation
for 200 years. Now everything belongs to the people. The revolution has given
land to eleven million people." This caused Zia ul-Haq
to remind Taraki that Muslims must consider all
property as belonging to Allah and should see man only as His custodian. Taraki responded by saying, "All land belongs to the
tiller."
Zia ul-Haq's invitation to be fearful of God and to recognize
obligations toward God were met with Taraki s comment
that "God is aadil (just). We don't have to fear
a just God." After saying "To serve the people is to serve God,"
Taraki poked fun at Pakistan's membership in CENTO,
pointed out that Pakistan had not got what it wanted from the United States,
and was sarcastic about Zia ul-Haq's deference to the
Shah of Iran. Although both leaders spoke of the need to resolve their
differences peacefully, Zia ul-Haq felt no obligation
to make life easier for a man whose beliefs and interests were diametrically
opposed to his own Islamist convictions. Pakistan continued supporting the
Afghan Islamist parties operating out of Kabul and formally transferred
responsibility for them from the paramilitary Frontier Scouts to the ISI.
Zia ul-Haq calculated that it was only a matter of time before
Pakistan's Islamist protégés would become more than a mere nuisance in
Afghanistan. As the PDPA regime implemented its radical social and economic
policies, resentment against the new order in Kabul spread through the Afghan
countryside. Land reform limited landholding to five acres, which made a large
number of Afghan landowners into enemies of the regime. Disrespect toward
clerics and traditional tribal leaders coupled with efforts to change
conservative social norms by decree created a larger pool of disgruntled
Afghans from which Islamists could now recruit insurgents. In addition to the Jamiat-e-Islami and Hizbe Islami, which were already
active, several new Afghan groups began to organize. These anti-communist
parties were led by conservative politicians and tribal leaders excluded from,
or persecuted under, the new political order in Afghanistan.
Soon after the April
1978 coup d'état, Pakistan revived its Afghan cell. General Arif
recalled that the task of the cell was "to analyze the available
information and suggest policy options. The defense plans were updated as a
destabilized Afghanistan had adversely affected the security of Pakistan.
(Khalid Mahmud Arif, Working with Zia, p. 307)
But the Afghan cell's
primary functions were to coordinate the resistance to communist rule in
Afghanistan as well as secure international backing for Pakistan and the
resistance. In December 1978, when the PDPA government in Afghanistan signed a
treaty of friendship with the Soviet Union, the Pakistanis tried to ring alarm
bells in Washington by reviving Pakistani requests for U.S. aid. The Carter
administration was unmoved. Even the assassination of the U.S. ambassador in
Kabul in February 1979 was overshadowed by the fall of the Shah in Iran and the
return to Tehran of Ayatollah Khomeini.
General Arif lamented, echoing the sentiment of the Zia ul-Haq regime at the time. The revolution in Iran did serve
to revive intelligence cooperation between Pakistan and United States, paving
the way for Pakistan getting what it wanted in Afghanistan later. The United
States had lost its listening posts in Iran because of the revolution. When
U.S. officials contacted Zia ul-Haq for
"collaboration in the collection of communications intelligence, Zia
readily agreed. (Kux, United States and Pakistan,
1947-2000, p. 241.)
Although U.S.
specialists were not immediately stationed in Pakistan, the CIA worked with
Pakistani intelligence to "improve Pakistan's electronic intercept
capabilities."' Data collected by these intercept installations were then
passed on to U.S. intelligence, laying the foundation for close ties between
the Pakistani ISI and the CIA. By July 1979, President Carter had approved a
modest program of covert assistance to the Afghan Islamist resistance, which
was routed through Pakistan. Robert Gates, then deputy director (later,
director) of the CIA narrated in his memoirs the sequence of events leading to
this initial covert operation:
The Carter
Administration began looking at the possibility of covert assistance to the
insurgents opposing the pro-Soviet, Marxist government of President Taraki at the beginning of 1979. On March 5, 1979, CIA sent
several covert action options relating to Afghanistan to the SCC [Special Coordinating
Committee]. The covering memo noted that the insurgents had stepped up their
activities against the government and had achieved surprising successes. It
added that the Soviets were clearly concerned about the setbacks to the Afghan
communist regime and that the Soviet media were accusing the United States,
Pakistan, and Egypt of supporting the insurgents. The SCC met the next day and
requested new options for covert action ... Meanwhile, in Saudi Arabia, a
senior official also had raised the prospect of a Soviet setback in Afghanistan
and said that his government was considering officially proposing that the
United States aid the rebels. The DO [Directorate of Operations] memo reported
that the Saudis could be expected to provide funds and encourage the
Pakistanis, and that possibly other governments could be expected to provide at
least tacit help. The memo conceded that the Soviets could easily step up their
own resupply and military aid, although "we believe they are unlikely to tiative. Gates confirms that President Jimmy Carter signed
the first authorization "to help the Mujahideen covertly" on July 3,
1979, "almost six months before the Soviets invaded Afghanistan. (Robert
M. Gates, From the Shadows New York, 1996, pp. 143-44)
But Carter's first
authorization covered only support for insurgent propaganda and other
psychological operations in Afghanistan; establishment of radio access to the
Afghan population through third-country facilities; and the provision either
unilaterally or through third countries of support to the Afghan insurgents, in
the form of either cash or nonmilitary supplies. The Afghan effort began
relatively small. Initially, somewhat more than half a million dollars was
allocated, with almost all being drawn within six weeks.
General Zia ul-Haq was not satisfied with the relatively low levels of
U.S. support for his Afghan operation. He recognized the nervousness of U.S.
policy makers resulting from the fall of the Shah of Iran, and he wanted to
rebuild the U.S.-Pakistan alliance in more or less the same way that Ayub Khan had joined the anticommunist treaties of the
1950s. Zia ul-Haq also faced serious legitimacy
problems at home after executing popular Prime Minister Bhutto and abandoning
promises of free elections within ninety days of his coup d'état. Funding from
the United States to expand an Islamist jihad in Afghanistan would solidify
support for Zia ul-Haq's rule among Pakistani
Islamists, and U.S. military assistance would help Zia retain the support of
Pakistan's military; however, U.S. opinion about Pakistan was now more divided
than it had been when Ayub Khan won over the U.S.
national security establishment in the early 1950s. Pakistan's track record
vis-à-vis India, the persistence of military domination in Pakistan's politics,
and the emerging intelligence about Pakistan's incipient nuclear program all
caused concerns among various constituencies in Washington.
Zia ul-Haq had to overcome the skepticism of his U.S. critics.
He focused on Americans who were concerned with containing the Soviet Union,
and he pitched the insurgency in Afghanistan as having the potential to halt
the expansion of communism; in other words, communism in Afghanistan could be
rolled back and Soviet prestige would diminish provided the Pakistani and U.S.
intelligence services undertook a joint venture. Pakistan had decided to try to
generate support within the United States for higher levels of aid by allowing
U.S. journalists to report on Pakistani efforts to train anticommunist Afghan
guerrillas even as Islamabad officially denied such operations from Pakistani
soil. The Washington Post was thus able to report on February 2, 1979, that at
least two thousand Afghans were being trained at Pakistani bases guarded by
Pakistani troops." By leaking word of a substantive effort by Pakistan to
roll back communism in Afghanistan, Zia ul-Haq
justifiably expected to rally anti-Soviet hard-liners in the United States to
his cause.
On the one hand,
Pakistan was eager to secure U.S. support for its Afghan venture; on the other,
Pakistani officials spoke of the "risk" of "Soviet wrath"
unless there was a firm, large-scale U.S. commitment to Pakistan's security.
Zia ul-Haq wanted U.S. support not only for the
insurgents, whom he was already backing, but also for Pakistan's armed forces.
Expanding the insurgency in Afghanistan was the service Pakistan would provide
for the United States. Greater economic and military aid was the reward it
sought for this service. Gates records how Zia ul-Haq
lobbied for U.S. aid during the months preceding the Soviet invasion:
By the end of August
[1979], Pakistani President Muhammad Zia ul-Haq was
pressuring the United States for arms and equipment for the insurgents in
Afghanistan. He called in the U.S. ambassador to make his pitch and indicated
that when he was in New York for the UN General Assembly session in September,
he would raise the issue at higher levels in the Department of State.
Separately, the Pakistani intelligence service was pressing us to provide
military equipment to support an expanding insurgency.When
[CIA Director Stansfield] Turner heard this, he urged the DO to get moving in
providing more help to the insurgents. They responded with several enhancement
options, including communications equipment for the insurgents via the
Pakistanis or the Saudis, funds for the Pakistanis to purchase lethal military
equipment for the insurgents, and providing a like amount of lethal equipment
ourselves for the Pakistanis to distribute to the insurgents Despite the cooperation
between the CIA and the ISI, Pakistan's relations with the United States at the
political level were, at this stage, not particularly warm. On November 21,
1979, students affiliated with the Jamaat-e-Islami's
student wing burned down the U.S. embassy in Islamabad on the basis of rumors
that the United States had had a hand in the seizure of Islam's holiest shrine,
the Grand Mosque in Mecca. Several embassy officials were trapped in the
burning building, and it took the Pakistan military four hours to arrive at the
site and several more to restore order despite the fact that Zia ul-Haq's residence as military chief and the Pakistan
army's headquarters in Rawalpindi were less than a half hour's drive from the
U.S. embassy in Islamabad. Two Americans and two Pakistani employees of the
embassy died in the incident.
A similar effort to
attack the U.S. consulate in Karachi was foiled by cooperation between more
moderate student leaders and police. Although Pakistan later agreed to pay for
the reconstruction of the embassy, the incident alerted U.S. diplomats to
anti-Americanism among Pakistan's Islamists and the possibility of the
government's complicity in it. The government's role in the episode was the
subject of much controversy among U.S. officials, who wondered why it took so
long for the Pakistan army to come to the embassy's rescue. By way of
comparison, in 1999, when the Pakistan army decided to stop Prime Minister
Nawaz Sharif from announcing the removal of General Pervez Musharraf from his
command, it took the army less than 35 minutes to move troops between the two
same general areas. Dennis Kux summed up the various
U.S. views of the 1979 sacking of the U.S. embassy:
Although Pakistani
officials attributed the slow reaction to bureaucratic snarls, lack of
preparedness, and plain incompetence, the less charitable views of U.S.
officials on the scene appear closer to the mark. Some Americans thought that
the Pakistanis were hesitant about intervening lest the rumors of U.S.
involvement in [Mecca] prove true. Others felt that the Pakistanis found it not
a bad idea to let the Americans "sweat a bit." Still others believed
that Pakistani intelligence had instigated the embassy demonstration (U.S.
facilities in Rawalpindi, Lahore, and Karachi were also attacked), which then
had gotten out of hands Zia ul-Haq privately cited
the incident as further evidence of why the United States needed a military
strongman like himself to control an emotional and volatile Pakistani nation
and to channel the religious fervor of Pakistanis against the Soviets instead
of allowing it to run against the United States. Zia ul-Haq
portrayed himself as a friend of the United States, willing to defend U.S.
interests in a turbulent region despite the hostility of his countrymen toward
the United States. He was not the first Pakistani general to do so and, as we
will see later, certainly not the last.
Meanwhile, events in
Afghanistan took a course that helped Zia ul-Haq in
his ambition to secure massive U.S. assistance for Pakistan as well as to
qualitatively expand the jihad that Pakistan was already supporting in
Afghanistan. For as long as it had existed, the PDPA had comprised two major
factions, which were named after their respective publications-the Khalq (masses) and the Parcham
(flag). In addition, clashes of personalities existed within each faction.
Within a few months of the April 1978 coup d'état that brought the PDPA to
power, the Khalq faction managed to exile Parcham leaders, sending them abroad as ambassadors. A
power struggle within Khalq led to the rise to power
of Hafizullah Amin, "an intensely nationalistic,
independent man who exuded a swaggering self-confidence. (Harrison, "How
the Soviet Union Stumbled into Afghanistan," in Cordovez
and Harrison, Out of Afghanistan, p. 29.)
Meanwhile, events in
Afghanistan took a course that helped Zia ul-Haq in
his ambition to secure massive U.S. assistance for Pakistan as well as to
qualitatively expand the jihad that Pakistan was already supporting in
Afghanistan. For as long as it had existed, the PDPA had comprised two major
factions, which were named after their respective publications-the Khalq (masses) and the Parcham
(flag). In addition, clashes of personalities existed within each faction.
Within a few months of the April 1978 coup d'état that brought the PDPA to
power, the Khalq faction managed to exile Parcham leaders, sending them abroad as ambassadors. A
power struggle within Khalq led to the rise to power
of Hafizullah Amin, "an intensely nationalistic,
independent man who exuded a swaggering self-confidence. (Harrison, "How
the Soviet Union Stumbled into Afghanistan," in Cordovez
and Harrison, Out of Afghanistan, p. 29.)
Concerned by these
developments, and not willing to allow a satellite to leave the Soviet constellation,
the Soviet Union intervened militarily in Afghanistan on Christmas Eve of 1979.
Ibid., pp. 42-49; Harrison argues that the Afghan regime was not in danger of
collapse and that the Soviet intervention was aimed primarily at getting rid of
Amin and replacing him with the more pliant Karmal.
Amin was killed; Babrak Karmal, leader of the Parcham faction of PDPA and at the time serving as
ambassador to an East European country, was installed by the Soviets as
Afghanistan's new leader. The Soviets claimed they had intervened in response
to Karmal's request for military assistance under the
friendship treaty signed a year earlier. Because Karmal
was installed through their military intervention, that claim was nothing more
than a fig leaf. The Soviet invasion caused great consternation around the
world because it raised questions about the future intentions of the Soviet
Union. Earlier, opinion in Washington had been divided between those who saw
the Afghan communist regime as a Soviet cat's-paw and those who considered
developments in Afghanistan independent of superpower rivalry. President
Carter's secretary of state, Cyrus Vance, was among those who had refused to
consider the April 1978 coup d'état that brought the PDPA to power as part of
the Soviet agenda for the region. (Cyrus Vance, Hard Choices: Critical Years in
America's Foreign Policy, New York, 1983, p. 384.)
Given the global
environment at the time and the all-too-real threat of Soviet expansion, some
experts concluded that, by invading Afghanistan, the Soviets were planning to
extend their influence in Southwest Asia. The ultimate Soviet goal, they
argued, was to control the Persian Gulf. With Iran already in the throes of a
revolution, Pakistan was now the pivotal state in Western security strategy for
the region. Zia ul-Haq's moment had arrived. Publicly
he gave the impression of being fearful for Pakistan's security, but he asked
his close confidant and ISI chief, Lieutenant General Akhtar Abdul Rahman, to
draw up plans for a large-scale guerrilla war against the Soviet occupation of
Pakistan's neighbor. He was certain he would now be able to persuade the United
States to seek alliance with Pakistan on Pakistan's terms. See also Haroonur Rashid, Faateh:
Afghanistan Mein Roosi Shikast
kay Memaar General Akhtar Abdul Rahman ki Daastaan-e-Hayat [The victor: life story of the architect
of Russian defeat in Afghanistan General Akhtar Abdul Rahman] (Lahore, 1997).
Some former ISI
officials who worked with General Abdul Rahman insist that the idea for
expanded resistance against the Soviets came from the Pakistani intelligence
chief, and Zia ul-Haq endorsed it only after being
assured of its viability as a military proposition. Brigadier Mohammad Yousaf,
who ran ISI's Afghan operation between 1983 and 1987, credited Abdul Rahman
with planning a guerrilla war that would hurt the Soviets but not to a point
where they might lash out at Pakistan.
Akhtar Abdul Rahman
argued that not only would [support for the Afghan resistance] be defending
Islam but also Pakistan. The resistance must become a part of Pakistan's
forward defense against the Soviets. If they were allowed to occupy Afghanistan
too easily, it would then be but a short step to Pakistan, probably through Balochistan province. Akhtar made out a strong case for
setting out to defeat the Soviets in a large scale guerrilla war. He believed
Afghanistan could be made into another Vietnam, with the Soviets in the shoes
of the Americans. He urged Zia to take the military option. It would mean
Pakistan covertly supporting the guerrillas with arms, ammunition, money,
intelligence, training and operational advice. Above all it would entail
offering the border areas of the NWFP and Balochistan
as a sanctuary for both the refugees and guerrillas, as without a secure,
cross-border base no such campaign would succeed. Zia agreed.
According to
Brigadier Yousaf, General Zia ul-Haq's motives in
agreeing to make Afghanistan a Soviet Vietnam were not exclusively related to
global security. Regime survival and Pakistan's traditional policy paradigm of
seeking leadership in the Muslim world, securing national unity through Islam,
and obtaining Western economic and military assistance were also factors that
weighed in his decision: In 1979 Zia had just provoked worldwide consternation
and condemnation by executing his former prime minister; his image both inside
and outside Pakistan was badly tarnished, and he felt isolated. By supporting a
jihad, albeit unofficially, against a communist superpower, he sought to regain
sympathy in the West. The US would surely rally to his assistance. As a devout
Muslim he was eager to offer help to his Islamic neighbors. That religious,
strategic and political factors all seemed to point in the same direction was
indeed a happy coincidence. For Zia, the final factor that decided [the matter
for] him was [Lieutenant General] Akhtar's argument that it was a sound
military proposition, provided the Soviets were not goaded into a direct
confrontation, meaning the water must not get too hot. Zia stood to gain
enormous prestige with the Arab world as a champion of Islam and with the West
as a champion against communist aggression. (Brig. Mohammad Yousaf and Major
Mark Adkin, The Bear Trap: Afghanistan's Untold Story, Lahore, 1992, p. 25.)
Although Pakistan had
been backing Afghan Islamists since 1973 and U.S. covert assistance had begun
several months before the Soviet military intervention, Zia ul-Haq
gave an impression to his U.S. interlocutors that he was fearful of a Soviet
threat to Pakistan. He said, in effect, that an opportunity existed to create a
Vietnam-like quagmire for the Soviets, but for it to be successful the United
States would have to commit itself to Pakistan's security and pay the right
price for Pakistan's cooperation. Zia ul-Haq also
asked for assurances that would cover the possible threat of attack from India.
President Jimmy Carter's national security adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski,
publicly reassured Pakistan that "the United States stands behind them
(Zbigniew Brzezinski, Power and Principle, New York: 1983, p. 448.)
and reiterated the
terms of the 1959 U.S.-Pakistan mutual defense treaty, which committed the
United States to come to Pakistan's aid in case of communist attack. Brzezinski
wrote later that the Pakistanis were rather concerned that they might be the
next target of Soviet military aggression, but he stated plainly that the
United States could not guarantee support in the event of an Indian attack. The
purported fear of Soviet military action did not keep the Pakistanis from
escalating their support for the mujahideen. During a visit Brzezinski made to
Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, discussions were held on an expanded covert action
program. (Gates, From the Shadows, p. 148.) Brzezinski noted that Zia ul-Haq had asked him to emphasize the importance of
Saudi-Pakistan cooperation and that the Americans had secured the Saudi
undertaking "to facilitate Pakistani arms purchases, in return for a
Pakistani military input to Saudi security." An arrangement was made
whereby "the Saudis would match the U.S. contribution to the
mujahideen." (Brzezinski, p.64)
Within a few months
of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the Pakistanis had managed to receive
significantly higher levels of U.S. support for their covert operations. Saudi
Arabia had started matching the U.S. contribution. General Zia ul-Haq also wanted economic assistance and military aid for
his government-the reward from the United States for taking on the Soviets
directly. Pakistan had invested heavily in its intervention in Afghanistan, and
all along Zia ul-Haq had been increasing the level of
intervention with the expectation of high levels of U.S. aid. He never doubted
that the Americans would support his covert operation, and in fact the United
States had begun its support even before the Soviets sent troops into
Afghanistan. Zia also wanted the benefits for Pakistan's economy and its
military that Pakistani military leaders expected from an alliance with the
United States. He coveted the respect and legitimacy he would acquire as the
military ruler of a frontline state in the struggle against Soviet expansion.
The Carter
administration offered an initial package of $400 million in economic and
military aid, which fell short of Pakistan's expectations. General Zia
described the offer as "peanuts" in a briefing for journalists on
January 18, 1980. The amount was inadequate to ensure Pakistan's security, he
declared, adding that it would "buy greater animosity from the Soviet
Union, which is now much more influential in this region than the United
States. (William Borders, "Pakistan Dismisses $400 Million in Aid Offered
by U.S. as 'Peanuts'," New York Times, January 19, 1980.)
With his January 18
statement, Zia ul-Haq was bargaining for an offer of
far greater levels of aid from the United States. Even after describing the
public offer of aid as inadequate, Zia ul-Haq
continued to accept U.S. covert assistance. Cooperation between the CIA and the
ISI in support of the Afghan mujahideen increased progressively. Within a few
months, Saudi funding added to the size of Pakistan's Afghan jihad. Had Zia ul-Haq really been concerned about upsetting the Soviets,
he would probably not have deepened Pakistan's involvement with the mujahideen
before resolving the issue of U.S. security assistance. Zia had clearly
calculated that covert cooperation would build support for Pakistan's position
within the U.S. national security apparatus and pave the way for more aid down
the road.
Zia ul-Haq's plan came to fruition in 1980 with the election of
Ronald Reagan as president of the United States. The Reagan administration was
less concerned than the Carter administration about Pakistan's human rights
record or, for that matter, the question of Pakistan's nuclear program. Within
its first few months, the Reagan administration put together a package of $3.2
billion in economic and military aid to be allocated over a five-year period. A
State Department memorandum described the purpose of the aid as "to give
Pakistan confidence in our commitment to its security and provide reciprocal
benefits in terms of our regional interests. (Kux,
United States and Pakistan, 1947-2000, p. 25)
The new U.S.
administration appeared to have communicated tacitly that it "could live
with Pakistan's nuclear program as long as Islamabad did not explode a
bomb."
The U.S. Congress
waived sanctions against Pakistan, imposed earlier because of Pakistan's
nuclear program, soon after President Reagan came to office. The Pakistan
government soon began receiving U.S. aid once again. The five-year aid package
was followed in 1986 by a commitment of $4.02 billion in aid to be distributed
during the next six years.
U.S. military
assistance pleased the Pakistan army and solidified support for the
continuation of Zia ul-Haq in power. The United
States also rescheduled and wrote off part of Pakistan's outstanding debt. The
flow of U.S. aid was accompanied by economic support from other Western and
Arab donors. The U.S.-brokered security relationship with oil-rich Arab states
like Saudi Arabia generated an additional benefit: large numbers of Pakistani
workers were employed in the Persian Gulf states, where massive infrastructure
development projects were then under development. Workers' remittances, coupled
with the inflow of aid, contributed to Pakistan's enjoyment of a period of
rapid economic growth. For an analysis of Pakistan's economy under Zia ul-Haq. (John Adams, "Pakistan's Economic Performance
in the 1980s: Implications for Political Balance," in Baxter, ed., Zia's
Pakistan, pp. 47-62.)
Zia ul-Haq considered the Afghan jihad as the core of his
regime's policies. Once the security relationship with the United States had
been consolidated, the quantum and quality of Pakistan's support for the
mujahideen increased dramatically. The inflow of refugees escaping the fighting
in Afghanistan provided an opportunity for Pakistan to recruit a much larger
number of Afghans for the resistance organizations that had been organized in
Peshawar. Although the CIA provided money and arms for the mujahideen, their
recruitment, training, and political control was in the hands of the ISI.
Tracing the history of the CIA's involvement in Afghanistan, journalist Steve
Coll explained the terms of the arrangement between the United States and Pakistan:
Zia sought and
obtained political control over the CIA's weapons and money. He insisted that
every gun and dollar allocated for the Mujahideen pass through Pakistani hands.
He would decide which Afghan guerrillas benefited. He did not want Langley setting
up its own Afghan kingmaking operation on Pakistani soil. Zia wanted to run up
his own heart-and-minds operation inside Afghanistan ... For the first four
years of its Afghan jihad, the CIA kept its solo operations and contacts with
Afghans to a minimum ... To make his complex liaison with the CIA work, Zia
relied on his chief spy and most trusted lieutenant, a gray-eyed and patrician
general, Akhtar Abdul Rahman, director-general of ISI. Zia told Akhtar that it
was his job to draw the CIA in and hold them at bay ... Akhtar laid down rules
to ensure that ISI would retain control over contacts with Afghan rebels. No
American-CIA or otherwise-would be permitted to cross the border into
Afghanistan. Movements of weapons within Pakistan and distribution to Afghan
commanders would be handled strictly by ISI officers. (Steve Coll, Ghost Wars ,
New York, 2004, p. 63.)
By the end of 1980, almost
one million Afghans had come to Pakistan as refugees. By 1988, the number of
refugees reached three million. These refugees had fled Afghanistan because of
the upheaval following the Soviet invasion. As the mujahideen's guerrilla
attacks made Afghanistan unsafe for Russian and Afghan communist forces,
security in small towns and the countryside became fragile. Some of the
refugees were religiously minded subsistence farmers escaping the godlessness
of communism at the urging of village clerics. Middle-class professionals,
landowners, small shopkeepers, civil servants, royalist military officers, and
businesspeople also joined the flood of refugees headed toward Pakistan and
Iran.
Pakistan housed
Afghan refugees in tented villages, mainly in the NWFP and Balochistan.
The refugees' expenses were paid primarily by the Office of the UN High
Commissioner for Refugees. A Pakistani civil servant was also appointed
commissioner for Afghan refugees, to administer the provision of basic services
to the refugees. Pakistani officials gave the mujahideen groups an unofficial
role in registering refugees upon their arrival in Pakistan, which created a
linkage between access to refugee aid and membership in one of the seven
mujahideen parties that Pakistan recognized. In addition to the Jamiat-e-Islami and Hizbe Islami that had been active
since 1973, two other fundamentalist parties had emerged by the time U.S. and
Arab aid started flowing through Pakistan. One was the Ittehad-e-Islami (Islamic Union) led by the Wahhabi cleric, Abdur Rab Rasool Sayyaf. The
other was the faction of Hizbe Islami
led by an elderly Pashtun theologian, Yunus Khalis, who broke away from Hekmatyar's group in 1979. In
addition, there were three moderate groups led by conservative leaders who did
not share the radical Islamist worldview of the Islamists. Although Pakistan
allowed all seven groups to operate, it clearly favored the two factions it had
worked with the longest-Jamiat-e-Islami
and Hekmatyar's Hizbe Islami.
Sayyaf managed to secure the sponsorship of Saudi Arabia by virtue of his
affiliation with Wahhabi theology. The three moderate groups were preferred by
Western diplomats and journalists, but the size of their political and military
following was limited by Pakistan's refusal to give them more than a small
percentage of money and arms.
One of the earliest
Pakistani refugee commissioners, Abdullah, was closely linked to Pakistan's
Jamaat-e-Islami. In a pattern similar to that
followed by the ISI in dealing with the mujahideen, Abdullah worked to minimize
donor influence in refugee camps. Although in principle the refugee
administration had nothing to do with the jihad or military activities, the
refugee camps became recruitment centers for mujahideen groups. In addition to
making use of the refugees' religious and political sentiments, mujahideen
recruiters could also take advantage of refugees' need for survival. Most young
refugees could not find work, but they could be offered jobs as mujahideen
soldiers. Over time, Pakistani officials set up the education system for
refugees in a manner that converted young Afghans to the cause of jihad and the
Islamist worldview. Zia ul-Haq also encouraged
Islamist charities from Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states to build mosques and
madrassas both for Afghan refugees and Pakistan's own population. As the scope
of the Afghan jihad expanded, so did the influence of Islamist ideology in
Pakistan. Ever mindful of the need to retain control, Zia ul-Haq
made sure that Jamaat-e-Islami was not the only Pakistani
party involved with the Afghan refugees and militants. One faction of the Jamiat Ulema Islam comprising clerics from the influential
Deobandi school joined in the distribution of charity received from Arab
countries and in the setting up madrassas. In his pan-Islamic zeal, Zia ul-Haq allowed volunteers from all over the world to come
and train alongside the Afghan mujahideen. By 1984, Islamists from Morocco in
North Africa to Mindanao in South Philippines had arrived in Pakistan. Some
enrolled in Pakistani madrassas and at the International Islamic University at
Islamabad. Others, like the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (a group dedicated to
an Islamic state in the Muslim areas of the Philippines) and the Rohingya
Muslim Liberation Front (which sought autonomy for Burma's Muslim minority),
opened offices, albeit small ones, to raise funds and issue statements for
their respective causes.
These global
mujahideen received grants from the Saudi-based Rabita
al-Alam al-Islami. Rabita enabled members of the Arab Muslim Brotherhood to
travel to Pakistan and work with both the refugees and the mujahideen. The Motamar al-Alam Islami (Muslim World Congress), another pan-Islamic network
that had been founded in Pakistan in 1949 under the leadership of the former
grand mufti of Palestine, Al-Haj Amin al-Husseini, established a liaison
relationship with Muslim communities in Southeast Asia. Since Motamar's founding, the Pakistan government had provided it
with a small annual grant. Now, with U.S. and Arab aid flowing for the Afghan
jihad, Motamar's funding could be increased, and
Pakistan's government handed over a large mosque in Islamabad to serve as
headquarters for the Motamar. From its new
headquarters, Motamar al-Alam
Islami aided efforts to spread the message of jihad
and of Pakistan's support for Islamic causes around the world.
The most significant
person to arrive in Pakistan at the time was the Palestinian scholar Abdullah
Azzam, who created the Maktab al-Khidmaat
(Services Bureau) to facilitate the participation of foreign mujahideen in the
Afghan jihad. Azzam cited the Quran and Hadith to remind Muslims of their
obligation to assist the jihad. Osama bin Laden, scion of a prosperous Saudi
business family, was one of many who were moved by Azzam's call. Azzam moved to
Pakistan in 1984 and started funding the Maktab al-Khidmaat. His contributions increased the number of foreign
recruits for mujahideen activities.
Western journalists
reporting on Afghanistan at the time often saw only the side of the Afghan refugee
relief effort that involved Western governments and nongovernmental
organizations. In their reporting of the jihad, described widely as the
Afghans' freedom struggle, the CIA's role was highlighted. Parallel to the
U.S.-led effort on behalf of the Afghans was the operation run by the
Islamists. To this day, no one knows how much money the Islamist charities
raised or spent. Reliable figures are also not available for the number of
foreign mujahideen who went through Pakistan at the time. The ISI was the only
organization that dealt with both Western and Islamist participants in the
anti-Soviet jihad.
Although Zia ul-Haq had been keen to obtain U.S. funding and weapons for
his venture in Afghanistan, he had always known that U.S. objectives were different
from those he had defined as Pakistan's goals. For Zia, Afghanistan marked an
important turning point in Pakistan's quest for an Islamic identity at home and
for leadership of the Islamic world. Although he publicly voiced his Islamist
sentiments, Zia shared the full extent of what he hoped to accomplish only with
a small group of confidants, one of whom, journalist Ziaul Islam Ansari,
explained Zia's overarching vision:
As a Pakistani
soldier and practicing Muslim, General Muhammad Zia ul-Haq
believed that Islamic precepts should be influential in Pakistani social life
to such an extent that those seeking to move Pakistan in the direction of
secularism and socialism should fail in their designs ... [In Zia ul-Haq's view] Pakistan would be turned into a self sufficient, stable and strong country with a strong posi¬tion within the Islamic world, South Asia and West
Asia, capable of providing strength to Islamic revivalist movements in
adjoining countries and regions. This includes that region of the Far East that
has become distant from us because of the loss of East Pakistan. [This
Pakistani sphere of influence] comprises the region encom
passing the area from Afghanistan to Turkey, including Iran and the Muslim
majority states of the Soviet Union in Central Asia.' (Ziaul Islam Ansari,
General Muhammad Zia ul-Haq: Shakhsiat
our Karnamay, General Muhammad Zia ul-Haq: the man and his achievements, Lahore, 1990, p. 24.)
Ansari s description
shows a Zia ul-Haq who believed that his policies of
Islamization at home would strengthen Pakistan against those conspiring to move
Pakistan away from Islam. By codifying Islamic principles in the country's
constitution and legal system, Zia ul-Haq was paving
the way for the day when "the lower rungs of society are mobilized in
favor-of greater Islamization. At the same time, the Afghan jihad would make
Pakistan "the instrument for the creation of an Islamic ideological
regional block that would be the source of a natural Islamic revolutionary
movement, replacing artificial alliances such as the Baghdad Pact. This would
be the means of starting a new era of greatness for the Muslim nations of Asia
and Africa.
While Zia ul-Haq pursued an ideological dream in Afghanistan, U.S.
objectives were more specific and somewhat limited. In Afghanistan, the United
States hoped to roll back what had been an expanding Soviet influence in the
third world. For the United States, Afghanistan was just the largest in a
series of covert wars-others were being fought in Nicaragua and Angola-that
were meant to punish the Soviet Union and inflict a heavy cost in men, money,
and prestige. The CIA estimated that Soviet costs between 1981 and 1986 in
Afghanistan, Angola, and Nicaragua amounted to about $13 billion.76 Soviet
casualties in Afghanistan amounted to eighteen thousand dead and numerous
wounded. By contrast, the United States spent $2 billion in covert aid to the
Afghan resistance between 1980 and 1989 and lost no soldiers in its proxy
engagement with the Soviets.
Once the United
States decided to supply sophisticated ground-toair
missiles to the mujahideen in 1986, the Soviet Union's one major
advantage-airpower-against the mujahideen became ineffective. The mujahideen
were described as "freedom fighters" in the international media, and
their successes were a symbol of Soviet humiliation. By 1987-1988, the United
States had achieved its objective in Afghanistan, and the Soviets, now led by
the reformer Mikhail Gorbachev, were willing to negotiate a way out of their
Afghan quagmire. In Pakistan, Zia ul-Haq held
parliamentary elections in 1985 and appointed a civilian prime minister whom he
expected to be weak and compliant. The new prime minister, Muhammad Khan Junejo, slowly extended press freedom and demanded the
removal of martial law. Although Zia ul-Haq kept Junejo away from briefings about Afghanistan for almost a
year," Junejo intervened in the conduct of
Pakistan's foreign policy. During an official visit to the United States in
1986, Junejo indicated to his American interlocutors
that he would follow the U.S. lead in a negotiated settlement of the
Afghanistan issue. He also directed his Minister of State for Foreign Affairs,
Zaim Noorani, to forward cables from Pakistani
embassies abroad to him first, before routing them to the president." Noorani, a politician like Junejo,
agreed with the need to assert the civilian government's role in international
relations. Zia ul-Haq was not always informed first
of routine diplomatic developments.
In 1986, Juunejo also allowed Benazir Bhutto daughter of former
prime minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, the man Zia ul-Haq
had overthrown and executed-to return to Pakistan from exile. The younger
Bhutto returned home to a rapturous welcome. During her exile she had made a
favorable impression on Western journalists, diplomats, and some members of the
U.S. Congress. Although she was careful not to criticize After the large
shipment of arms for the post-Soviet phase of the Afghan jihad had been
received, Zia ul-Haq in May 1988 dissolved Parliament
and dismissed Prime Minister Junejo, acts that
divided the conservative political coalition Zia had put together during the
decade. Even some Islamist groups, notably the Jamaat-e-Islami,
did not publicly agree with what they saw as Zia ul-Haq's
final power grab. Zia was politically isolated at home and unsure of U.S.
support. With the ISI's help, Zia planned to hold a referendum that would give
him absolute power to complete Pakistan's Islamization.' On August 17, 1988,
General Zia ul-Haq and several of his key generals
died in a mysterious plane crash. Those killed included the U.S. ambassador to
Pakistan and the architect of the Afghan jihad, General Akhtar Abdul Rahman,
who had been promoted to chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff, some
time earlier and whom some considered Zia u-Haq's
possible successor. Those who shared Zia ul-Haq's
vision of an Islamized Pakistan and a forward policy of Islamic revival felt
that at one stroke the Afghan mujahideen had lost their two most influential
champions.
With the death of Zia
ul-Haq, Pakistan's military and ISI did not give up
jihad or the pursuit of strategic depth in Afghanistan. If anything, the
divergence of Pakistani and U.S. interests during negotiation of the Geneva
accords on Afghanistan made Pakistan's security establishment more suspicious
than ever before of U.S. intentions. The numerous conspiracy theories about who
killed Zia ul-Haq invariably included the United
States as a possible suspect.
Islam as a factor in
Pakistan's national security policy grew severalfold during the period of jihad
against the Soviet Union. The much enlarged ISI-its covert operations
capability enhanced tenfold became a greater factor in Pakistan's domestic and
foreign policies. Pakistan's military and security services were deeply influenced
by their close ties to the Islamist groups. Islamists staunchly adopted the
Pakistani state's national security agenda and, in return, increasing numbers
of officers accepted the Islamist view of a more religious state been involved
in militant struggles for the past several decades, none of his writings openly
advocated violence. Rabbani, too, in the initial stages was reluctant to
convert Jamiat-e-Islami
into a militia or a guerrilla army although later, after the Soviet occupation,
the party became a leading band of mujahideen. Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, on the
other hand, from the beginning was willing to embrace radical methods. His
militancy soon made him a favorite of the ISI, which was at that stage more
interested in generating military pressure on Daoud's regime than in laying the
foundations of a sustainable Islamic revolution in Afghanistan. The ISI also
had an eye on identifying future leaders for an Afghanistan more closely linked
to Pakistan. As an ethnic Pashtun, Hekmatyar seemed qualified for that role.
Between 1973 and
1977, Afghanistan and Pakistan fought what can best be described as a
low-intensity proxy war. Sardar Muhammad Daoud supported rBaloch
rebels in Pakistan while Pakistan backed the Afghan Islamist insurgents based
in Peshawar. Accounts by Pakistani officials from that period also suggest that
Pakistan's decision to back the Afghan Islamists was initiated by Bhutto in
retaliation for Daoud's support to Baloch and Pashtun groups in Pakistan."
The Pakistani covert operation was not merely retaliatory, however; it
reflected the longerterm Pakistani interest in the
affairs of Afghanistan.
The insurgency in Balochistan started soon after Bhutto's dismissal of the
provincial government in February 1973. Sardar Daoud's coup d'état against Zahir Shah took place on July 17,1973, and it was followed
immediately by the arrival in Peshawar of Rabbani, Massoud,
and Hekmatyar. The Baloch were fighting the Pakistan army before Daoud took
power, and Pakistan was playing host to Afghan Islamists almost simultaneously
with the proclamation of an Afghan republic. After coming to power, Daoud
established training camps for Baloch rebels, training between ten and fifteen
thousand tribesmen for war against Pakistan. (Arif,
Working with Zia, p. 306.)
Daoud's actions on
behalf of the Baloch tribesmen and his revival of propaganda for Pashtunistan may have added another reason for the Pakistan
still wanted U.S. economic and security assistance as it had since its
inception, but its military leaders were more convinced than ever that they
also needed to chart their own course.
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