Magnificent Delusions (39 page)

These policies created a larger pool of disgruntled Afghans from which the Islamists could now recruit insurgents. In addition to the Jamiat-e-Islami and Hizb-e-Islami (Islamic Party founded by Hekmatyar in 1976), which were already active, several new Afghan groups began to organize. These anticommunist parties were led by conservative politicians and tribal leaders who had been excluded from or persecuted under the new political order in Afghanistan. Meanwhile, Zia ensured that the ISI exercised overall control over the insurgency across the border.

Pakistani officials started ringing alarm bells about the spread of communism in the region. But the Carter administration was unmoved. Then Zia made what Hummel saw as an “uncharacteristically sarcastic” remark. “Although US-Pakistan relations are now at the lowest ebb,” he said, “it is not good that they should be seen publicly as being at the lowest ebb.” Pakistan's Foreign Secretary Sardar Shahnawaz, who was present in Zia's meeting with Hummel, insisted that Pakistan needed international support against Afghanistan because of “the highly aggressive and ominous statements from Kabul” about Pashtunistan.
¹⁷

In February 1979 the American ambassador in Kabul, Adolph Dubs, was killed in a botched rescue attempt after an extremist leftist faction had kidnapped him to demand the release of their leader from prison, whom the Afghan government denied holding. Security forces attempted to rescue Dubs, against the advice of the US government, and the ambassador was killed in the ensuing gunfight.

The event was, however, eclipsed by the fall of the Shah in Iran and the return to Tehran of Ayatollah Khomeini. Pakistani officials complained about Washington's lack of interest in developments in Afghanistan. The State Department responded by talking to members of the US Congress and their staff about the need to “reknit” ties with Pakistan. The briefing material prepared for winning over Congress cited Pakistan's importance to US foreign policy and the danger of a “disintegrating or radicalized” Pakistan as reasons for restoring economic and military aid.
¹⁸
With hindsight, it appears that the State Department expressed the fear of Pakistan's disintegration and radicalization at regular intervals and asked Congress to approve aid, as though that were the only cure available for a recurring ailment.

But the nuclear proliferation problem had not yet been solved. A CIA study found that Pakistan had a strong motivation to “develop at least a potential nuclear capability, in part for prestige purposes but more strongly because it genuinely believes its national security could ultimately be threatened by India.” It also spoke of the possibility of Chinese cooperation with Pakistan in the nuclear field. But
the CIA misread Zia, who it thought gave “relatively lower priority” to the pursuit of a nuclear option than did Bhutto.
¹⁹

The State Department downplayed the prospects of Pakistan actually making an atom bomb, saying the country “lacked the technical skills and industrial capacity to complete the French project in the near future.” Intelligence about Pakistanis “shopping around” to acquire technology for a gas centrifuge was accompanied by comments about the “enormous” problems in developing such technology.

According to the State Department the United States could “restrict Pakistani purchases of items which might be used in a centrifuge” program. Pakistan, it asserted, would hesitate to proceed with developing nuclear weapons if Washington made it clear that Pakistan's US aid would be at risk. “Pakistan feels troubled both from within and without,” said the Department's brief for members of Congress. Reviving substantial US aid would help Pakistan overcome its difficulties and would provide the United States “some influence.”
²⁰

Just as the State Department started making the case for reopening aid for Pakistan, the US ambassador in Paris, Arthur Hartman, reported a conversation he had with his Pakistani counterpart, Iqbal Akhund. “Akhund told me the other day that Pakistan has every intention of finishing the reprocessing plant on its own,” he wrote. According to Hartman, Akhund “virtually admitted that the purpose of the plant was military—to give the Pakistani people, Indians and others a perception of a Pakistani military capability.”

Akhund had vigorously justified Pakistan's nuclear program on other grounds as well. He had insisted that Pakistan was not breaking US laws on nonproliferation. The Pakistani ambassador had apparently told Hartman that “the Indian and Afghan situations” mandated the need for a nuclear weapons capability. “This did not mean that Pakistan would explode a device,” the US diplomat summed up Pakistani thinking as conveyed by Akhund. “It meant simply that Pakistan should have the capability to do so.”
²¹

The Pakistani diplomat had confirmed CIA suspicions that Pakistan planned to acquire nuclear weapons capability at all costs. John Despres, the national intelligence officer for nuclear proliferation,
had informed his superiors at the beginning of 1979 that Pakistan's nuclear acquisition network was growing and that it would soon have all it needed for a bomb. Despres forecast that Pakistan would be able to produce highly enriched uranium possibly by 1982 and had “probably already acquired the technology—designs, plans and technical expertise” that was needed for this purpose.
²²
As it turned out, he was right.

Hummel met Zia twice after the CIA report, and both times Zia denied Pakistan's nuclear program. The ambassador showed satellite photographs of a top-secret facility at Kahuta, near Islamabad, where Abdul Qadeer Khan (often referred to as A. Q. Khan), the Pakistani metallurgist who had brought stolen designs for a uranium enrichment plant from the Netherlands during Bhutto's tenure, had set up shop to eventually enrich uranium. With a straight face Zia said, “That's absolutely ridiculous. Your information is incorrect.”

Then he insisted that “We have to clear this up. Tell me any place in Pakistan you want to send your experts and I will let them come and see.” But Hummel's efforts to follow up on the offer proved futile. The Foreign Ministry denied permission for US inspectors to visit Pakistani nuclear installations, stating that India had also refused inspections.
²³

US officials considered their options to get Pakistan to give up the nuclear program. Hummel thought that because Pakistan's greatest concern related to India, the United States should consider negotiating “reciprocal India-Pakistani guarantees” or “multilateral security guarantees for Pakistan.” The United States could also “buy time” by seeking control over nuclear supplies without imposing sanctions until security guarantees against India “were all that was left to get Pakistan out of the nuclear business.”
²⁴

Officials at the National Security Council also proposed an “audacious buy off” involving a “security and stability package” totaling $290 million for the first year in military and economic aid to help allay Pakistan's fears of India. The United States would then propose a “no weapons building, no weapons use” understanding between the two South Asian states. But this proposal was difficult to get through Congress. Because there was also no guarantee that Pakistan
would accept the buyoff, it could as easily take the aid and still go ahead with its own plans.
²⁵

So Deputy Secretary of State Warren Christopher traveled to Rawalpindi to meet Zia and Shahi. According to Hummel's account of the meeting, neither Zia nor Shahi denied Pakistan's effort to build the bomb, and both refused to halt it. Christopher warned them that Pakistani nuclear activities could lead Washington to impose sanctions as specified by the Symington Amendment. In response, Shahi spoke of America's “double standard” in its treatment of India and Pakistan. According to him, the United States never pushed India as hard as it was pushing Pakistan.
²⁶

By now Senator John Glenn, a Democrat from Ohio, had added a further amendment to the Foreign Aid Act dealing with nuclear proliferation. This amendment called for sanctions against countries that acquired or transferred nuclear reprocessing technology or exploded or transferred a nuclear device. Zia's “virtual confirmation” of the uranium enrichment program had made action under the Symington and Glenn Amendments inescapable.
²⁷
After examining all possible courses available to it under US law, the Carter administration announced that aid to Pakistan would be terminated.

Pakistan reacted with calculated anger. As before, it denied that it was trying to develop nuclear weapons and denounced Washington's decision to terminate aid. But it then went a step further. A senior official of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs attributed the US policy to the influence of “Zionist circles.” He said the Zionists “feared that an atomic bomb developed in this Islamic country would be used by ‘the Moslem world' to menace Israel.”
²⁸

Ironically, at this stage no one in the US or Israeli government had even hinted at the possibility of a Pakistani bomb being a threat to Israel, nor had there been much mention thus far of an Islamic bomb in the media. In fact, Zia was the only one who had spoken in some interviews about Pakistan's nuclear program being an asset for the Muslim world.

The aid cutoff had coincided with Bhutto's execution on April 4, 1979. Pakistan was, as the
Washington Post
noted in an editorial, “in convulsions” over Zia's decision to eliminate the popular leader. This
was not a moment when Pakistan could be expected to “respond positively to pressure on the sensitive nuclear question.”
²⁹
But for Zia, who had no intention of stopping the nuclear program anyway the US decision offered a way of dealing with the negative sentiment that his virtual assassination of Bhutto generated.

By blaming “Zionists” for the US decision on aid, Zia was trying to stem the tide of criticism in the Muslim world over his decision regarding Bhutto. He was also trying to secure the interest of oil-rich Arab rulers in Pakistan's nuclear program. The termination of US aid meant that Pakistan would need an alternative source of funding both for its economy and its rising military expenditures. Thus, labeling Pakistan's nuclear program a shared asset for all Muslims could open the door for more petro-dollars.

Officials within the US administration were sharply divided over the best way to stop Pakistan from conducting a nuclear test and to prevent the transfer of nuclear technology to other countries. Approaches were made to create consensus among Western nations for a “no-test, no-transfer” approach to Pakistan. There was little support in Europe for applying pressure, and administration officials disagreed over what “carrots” could be offered. No one knew if a sale of F-16 fighter aircraft jets would be enough to convince the Pakistani military to scale back the nuclear program.

Secretary of State Cyrus Vance and Carter's special representative on nonproliferation, Gerard C. Smith, met with Shahi in Islamabad, warning him that a nuclear test would harm US-Pakistan relations. Smith said that Pakistan was “entering the valley of death” because India “can utterly destroy you.” Shahi responded that “the value of a nuclear capability lies in its possession, not in its use.”
³⁰
Realizing that the Americans were desperate to get Pakistan to comply with US laws on nonproliferation, Pakistan ratcheted up its demands for military assistance, making it harder for those who wanted to buy Pakistan out of its nuclear ambitions.

The Americans were equally frustrated when they tried to get the Indians to agree to a joint India-Pakistan agreement on the nonuse and nondevelopment of nuclear weapons. Indian Prime Minister Morarji Desai told the US ambassador to India, Robert Goheen,
that he had already made a pledge to that effect. If the United States could get Pakistan to do the same, “the two pledges would be as good as a joint agreement,” he argued. Desai also said that if he discovered that Pakistan was ready to test a bomb or if it exploded one, India would act “to smash it.”
³¹

Zia had two messages for two audiences. In pursuit of American aid he told the
New York Times
that “Pakistan is not making a bomb.” He also insisted that “Pakistan is not in a position to make a bomb and has no intention of making a bomb.” But in order not to disappoint Pakistanis and others in the Muslim world who wanted Pakistan to go nuclear, he confirmed reports that Pakistan had embarked on a program to produce enriched uranium, saying, “Pakistan is close to it, if we have not already acquired the technology of making enriched uranium.”
³²

The game of hide-and-seek over Pakistan's nuclear weapons program continued for almost two decades. Pakistan's leaders, notably Zia, defined Pakistan's nuclear capability as a shared asset for all Muslims. But in later years Pakistanis expressed indignation over the Western media describing the Pakistani bomb as the “Islamic Bomb.”