Magnificent Delusions (40 page)

T
HE CARTER ADMINISTRATION
initially paid little attention to Pakistan's Jihad in Afghanistan, as it was preoccupied with the fast-moving events in Iran; Pakistan's nuclear program was also a major irritant. But Zia did not give up. He sought American attention for Pakistan through a series of interviews with the US media.

“The Soviet Union is now sitting on our borders,” Zia told Sig Gissler of the
Milwaukee Journal
soon after Carter's inauguration. He recalled Pakistan's role in bridging the relations between China and the United States. “Has the free world any interest left in Pakistan?” he asked, insisting that the country could still be “a bastion” of US policy
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“The USA has never been able to stand by its allies,” he said in another interview with CBS. “They have always let them down.”
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Zia's solicitations led the CIA to decide that it could use Pakistan's services in dealing with the operational fallout of the Iranian revolution. Tehran had been the center of a huge network of American spies in the Middle East and Central Asia, but many of the CIA's human intelligence assets had to be moved out of Iran to safety. The CIA had also lost its listening posts in Iran. When US officials contacted Zia for “collaboration in the collection of communications intelligence,” he readily agreed.
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But he sought a greater role for the ISI in all operations.

Many Iranians with American connections moved out of their country through Pakistani Balochistan and onward through Karachi. The CIA also worked with Pakistani intelligence to “improve Pakistan's electronic intercept capabilities.”
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Zia insisted that, to cover Pakistan's tracks, the number of American intelligence specialists in the country be kept to a minimum. The CIA had to deal extensively with the ISI to access data that American intercept installations had collected.

The Iranian connection formed a closer bond between the CIA and ISI than before. Zia then made a strong pitch for US involvement in Pakistan's Afghan project. Together, he argued, the United States and Pakistan could help roll back communism in Afghanistan and diminish Soviet prestige. American journalists were invited to report on the training program for anticommunist Afghan guerrillas even though Islamabad officially denied the program's existence. The
Washington Post
reported that at least two thousand Afghans were being trained at Pakistani bases, guarded by Pakistani troops.
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Anticommunist hard-liners were Zia's target audience in Washington. Pakistan had recruited Afghan Islamist warriors in its effort to finally end the notion of Pashtunistan, but Zia wanted the Americans to believe that this was part of their ideological struggle against global communism. A breakthrough for Zia came when, in July 1979, Carter approved a modest program of CIA assistance to the Afghan Islamist resistance, routed through Pakistan.

Zia had already convinced the Saudis to join his project. Saudi intelligence officials raised with their US counterparts the prospect of defeating the communists in Afghanistan. The CIA's directorate
of operations reported that the Saudis could be expected to fund and encourage the Pakistanis. Other governments could also be expected to join in. At one meeting of US officials dealing with national security, Defense Department official Walter Slocombe asked if there was value in keeping the Afghan insurgency going, “sucking the Soviets into a Vietnamese quagmire?”
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The Americans also weighed the risk of provoking the Soviets before initiating covert support for the Pakistani project. For years the conventional narrative about the war in Afghanistan has revolved around the Soviet invasion in December 1979. But Carter signed the first authorization “to help the Mujahideen covertly” on July 3, 1979, “almost six months before the Soviets invaded Afghanistan.”
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And Pakistan had been recruiting and training the Mujahideen for years before that.

Americans like to believe that the war in Afghanistan was “Charlie Wilson's War.”
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In fact, however, it was Zia-ul-Haq's war, which the Americans expanded with their money and sophisticated weapons. Carter's first authorization only covered “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.” A little over half a million dollars was allocated. All of it was drawn within six weeks.
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The US embassy in Kabul made a feeble attempt to alert Washington about the retrograde beliefs of its new Afghan allies. “The available manifesto issued by some opposition groups calls for a social and economic system based on the ‘fundamentalist' tenets of Islam,” an embassy cable stated. “An opposition-led regime would probably not have social and economic reforms (so necessary for this backward country) high on its priority list.” It also warned that, if successful, the Mujahideen would probably carry out “thousands of personal vendettas” against officials serving in the communist regime.
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The Americans got another warning about the perils of partnership with Pakistan when Islamist students burned down the embassy
in Islamabad on November 21, 1979. The students were reacting to rumors that the United States was responsible for the seizure of Islam's holiest shrine, the Grand Mosque in Makkah. Several embassy officials were trapped in the burning building, resulting in the death of four people, including two Americans. The Pakistan military took four hours to arrive at the site and several more to restore order.

“Some Americans and some Western diplomats maintained that the police here stood by for several hours without challenging the irate crowd,” the
New York Times
reported the next day. “Among the Americans who lived through the violence there was not much gratitude” for the police or the Pakistan army, the paper said. Its reporter also did not find “much contrition among Pakistanis.”
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A group of fifty students marched in Rawalpindi the next day to honor one of the demonstrators who had been killed.

Zia's cabinet “expressed its understanding for the enraged sentiments of the Moslems in Pakistan,” even though it regretted its “inappropriate and irresponsible” expression. Hummel, for his part, avoided direct comment on the government's inadequate and delayed response in protecting the embassy. He said that the judgment of whether Pakistan bore some responsibility for the US embassy's destruction would have to be made in Washington.
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This reflected the Islamists' potential for anti-American violence and the government's sympathy with their sentiment. US diplomats wondered why the Pakistan army took so long to come to the embassy's rescue. In subsequent coups troops were able to move between their quarters in Rawalpindi to the general area where the US embassy was located in less than thirty-five minutes. Some American officials felt that the Pakistanis wanted the Americans to “sweat a bit,” whereas others believed that Pakistani intelligence instigated demonstrations in several cities, but the one in Islamabad got out of hand.
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Zia privately cited the incident as evidence of why the United States needed a military strongman like him to control an emotional and volatile Pakistani nation. Only a dictator like him could channel the religious fervor of Pakistanis against the Soviets instead of allowing it to run against the United States, he averred.
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In the context
of developments in Iran, this argument found some favor among Americans. Eventually Zia agreed that Pakistan would compensate the United States for its totally gutted embassy building. But he was already working on ensuring that Pakistan received enough American assistance to cover much more than the building's cost.

Almost a month after the attack on the US embassy in Islamabad Soviet troops marched into Afghanistan in support of the country's embattled communist government. The Soviet intervention was a response to the complex infighting between Afghan communist factions. With access to Soviet archives, several scholars have concluded that there was no grand design in the Soviet military's move. Opinion in Washington had so far 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.
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The direct induction of Soviet troops settled that argument: the Soviets had been sucked into their “Vietnam quagmire.”

The Carter administration was already looking weak to Americans as a result of the Iranian hostage crisis, in which revolutionary students had taken fifty-two Americans from the US embassy in Iran. The crisis was ongoing when Soviet tanks crossed into Afghanistan. So Carter could not afford to respond weakly to this new challenge. For the American public both events symbolized a decline in US power. There was little Carter could do at this stage about the hostages, but he could certainly flex some muscle over Afghanistan to project strong leadership.

In February 1979 Carter had played down the importance of Afghanistan during a speech at the Foreign Policy Conference for Editors and Broadcasters. He had said that the regime in Afghanistan, a nation under Soviet influence, was replaced by a regime more closely aligned with the Soviet Union.
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But after the Soviet invasion he said that Afghanistan “was a sovereign nation, a nonaligned nation, a deeply religious nation, and the Soviets invaded it, brutally.”
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Carter described “the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the installation of a puppet government” as a serious threat to peace.
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The day after the Soviet troops marched into Afghanistan, National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski wrote a memo to
Carter in which he said that although Afghanistan “could become a Soviet Vietnam,” it posed a grave challenge for the United States in the short term. The Carter administration, he feared, would come under pressure to be as decisive militarily in Iran as the Soviets had been in Afghanistan. But the United States had to be careful to avoid direct confrontation with the Soviet Union.

Brzezinski argued that Iran and Afghanistan were now both “in turmoil,” while Pakistan was “both unstable internally and extremely apprehensive externally.” Soviet success in Afghanistan, he argued, “could produce Soviet presence right down on the edge of the Arabian and Oman Gulfs.” In his analysis it was essential that the Afghan resistance continued. “This means more money as well as arms shipments to the rebels, and some technical advice,” he wrote.

Consequently, the national security adviser proposed a review of US policy toward Pakistan to include “more guarantees” and “more aid.” He stated that the United States “should encourage the Chinese to help the rebels also” and “should concert with Islamic countries both in a propaganda campaign and in a covert action campaign to help the rebels.”

In Brzezinski's view the Afghan guerrillas were “badly organized and poorly led.” They had limited foreign support and “
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sanctuary, no organized army, and no central government—all of which North Vietnam had.” Instead of being “sanguine about Afghanistan becoming a Soviet Vietnam,” the United States would have to create circumstances for that to happen. “The Soviets are likely to act decisively,” he warned, adding that “in world politics nothing succeeds like success, whatever the moral aspects.”
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Carter initiated discussion within his administration over the appropriate American response to the new Afghan situation. At a meeting of the National Security Council, chaired by Carter, the question of the Soviet invasion's impact on Pakistan came up. CIA Deputy Director Frank Carlucci, Secretary of Defense Harold Brown, and Brzezinski agreed that the United States needed to bolster Pakistan through greater economic and military assistance.

White House Counsel Lloyd Cutler reminded everyone present of the legal problem of providing aid to Pakistan. Secretary of State
Vance explained that the Symington Amendment precluded the US government from providing military credits to Pakistan. After reading the law from his brief, he concluded that money could not be provided to Pakistan under the foreign assistance act as long as Pakistan persisted with its nuclear program.

Carter said he thought Zia had given an assurance that he would not test nuclear weapons but that he could not bind his successor. Vance replied that the Pakistanis had pulled back from that commitment; Zia was now saying only that “they would not test a nuclear weapon in the next six months.” That was inadequate to provide the US president room to waive the restrictions under the Symington Amendment.

Vance pointed out that the United States could try to change the provisions of the Symington Amendment, but “if we take this approach we also confront the whole non-proliferation issue head on.” Another way, in his view, would be to have a “special provision” that simply said that, notwithstanding any other provision of law, the United States would go ahead with assistance to Pakistan. Brzezinski suggested that if the administration offered one-time emergency support to Pakistan, Congress might support the idea of the “notwithstanding any other provision of law” approach.
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While the Americans worried about a Soviet military presence in Afghanistan threatening Pakistan, Zia looked upon it as an opportunity. Fifty thousand Soviet troops were now in a country that shared a long mountainous border with his own. If Pakistan was able to elicit so much interest from the United States based on its relative proximity to the Soviet Union, it could do much better now.