Magnificent Delusions (43 page)

The new administration also changed the US objective from stopping Pakistan's nuclear program altogether to building a “closer security relationship,” which would make the Pakistanis develop the sense of being “more secure.” Such a relationship would “provide Pakistan with incentives to forego, or at least delay, a nuclear test” and would work better than alternative approaches, argued a new CIA paper on nonproliferation.
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But Zia repeatedly made it clear that making Pakistan feel secure, especially in relation to India, was not going to be easy.

The Pakistani dictator continued his media offensive even after the contours of an aid program had been agreed on by the spring of
1981. He told
Newsweek
that India had been building its military strength “not for China or any smaller neighbor but Pakistan.” The Jaguar aircraft and tanks from the Soviet Union, he said, could not be used against China “because of the mountainous terrain.”
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According to Zia, Pakistan could not pose a threat to India, so the only plausible reason for its military buildup had to be its desire for Pakistan “to remain a weak state” that “accepts Indian hegemony.”
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He told the BBC that Pakistan wanted “Indians to realize that they must accept the existence of Pakistan; that they must reconcile themselves to Pakistan being a reality.”
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In June the State Department announced that the United States and Pakistan had agreed on a $3.2 billion military and economic aid program to strengthen Pakistani defenses against a serious threat from Soviet troops in Afghanistan. The statement made no reference to the nuclear weapons issue.
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Included in the package were advanced F-16 fighter jets that Pakistan had sought for many years.

Zia saw this as a major success. He would now receive US money to maintain domestic government spending as well as to equip his military. American assistance would consolidate his dictatorship, just as it had enabled Ayub to rule for a decade. The military would get much-needed equipment, and Pakistani Islamists could be trained alongside the Afghans to become a secondary militia for both regional and domestic purposes. Pakistanis also assumed that they could continue their nuclear program as long as they did not conduct a nuclear test.

In an effort to ensure that the US commitment remained long term, Zia also revived the idea of US bases in Pakistan that had earlier been mooted by Ayub in the 1950s and by Bhutto immediately after the Pakistani defeat in the 1971 war with India. Zia raised the matter with State Department Counselor Robert “Bud” McFarlane during a meeting in Islamabad. “Why don't you ask us to grant bases?” asked Zia. McFarlane was unprepared for the question. He responded that it would be “inconceivable” for the United States to seek military bases in Pakistan.
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But the offer reinforced Pakistan's willingness to be a close American ally.

The US Congress, however, challenged the Reagan administration's new Pakistan policy. Hearings on Capitol Hill focused on the nuclear issue, forcing the administration to cite Pakistan's “absolute assurances” that it was neither developing nor planning to develop nuclear weapons. Under Secretary of State James Buckley, who had visited Islamabad to conclude the aid agreement, told the Senate Government Affairs subcommittee: “I was assured by the ministers and by the President himself that it was not the intention of the Pakistan Government to develop nuclear weapons.” He insisted on the distinction “between the nuclear option and a nuclear weapon.”
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Although there was widespread support in Washington for the Afghan Mujahideen and the idea of undermining the Soviet Union, aid to Pakistan remained unpopular. The
Washington Post
advised against visibly embracing Zia, whose position it deemed unpredictable. Pakistan should only be given arms that show “clearly which Pakistani purpose the U.S. supports—not competition with India but defense of its Afghan border against Soviet incursions.”
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The
New York Times
demanded that legal restrictions be imposed that force Pakistan “to choose between usable weapons and a costly nuclear badge.”
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One of the most prescient warnings appeared in a letter to the editor in the
Times
by Jeremiah Novak, a former corporate executive who wrote occasional columns about Asian affairs, captioned, “How Pakistan Can Get U.S. Jets and Build the Islamic Bomb.” It pointed out that the Reagan administration's willingness to believe Pakistani assurances on the nuclear issue had failed to analyze “the divergence between U.S. and Pakistani goals.” Novak highlighted reports about Saudi Arabia providing Pakistan with nearly $2 billion of aid, an additional economic package in return for the stationing of Pakistani troops in Saudi Arabia, and the money for Pakistan's purchase of American F-16s. “This second package is linked to the Islamic bomb Pakistan is alleged to be building,” Novak wrote, adding that “the bomb may be ready for a test explosion in October 1982, when the Saudi-financed F-16's are to be delivered.” He argued that an American withdrawal of aid would be too late to stop Pakistan from going nuclear. He cited Shahi's statements about the “Israeli menace” and
his support for the Islamic revolution of Iran so as to suggest that Pakistan expected broad backing of the Islamic countries in its nuclear endeavors.

According to Novak, Shahi had said that the United States had to defend Pakistan because of its confrontation with the Soviet Union, not “for altruistic reasons but because the whole balance of power in the gulf region will come under danger.” Assisting Pakistan while compromising on US policy goals, he argued, could “give the Arabs access to the bomb, entangle Pakistan in Middle East politics and endanger India.”
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The Reagan White House, however, most likely paid no attention to a letter in a newspaper, as it was also ignoring more official correspondence on the same issue.

Around the same time the US embassy in London informed Washington that West German national Heinz Mebus “may attempt to circumvent French export control regulations concerning calcium metal.” According to the embassy's report, Mebus had previously “supplied a large amount of equipment to Pakistan's uranium enrichment program.” His attempts to buy calcium metal would advance Pakistan's nuclear program. The State Department understood that Pakistan was procuring the calcium metal not for use in an energy program but instead “for use in a nuclear explosive device.”
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But for the Reagan administration, fighting the Soviet Union through proxies in Afghanistan was more important.

Soon after taking office Reagan had appointed his presidential election campaign manager, William Casey, as director of the Central Intelligence Agency. Casey enjoyed the president's confidence and was the first CIA head to attend meetings as a fully participating cabinet member. According to Gates, “Bill Casey came to the CIA primarily to wage war against the Soviet Union.”
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He faced the task of building up the CIA's capability for military and political action outside the United States at a time when the agency was recovering from criticism of its past illegal and inappropriate activities.

Casey hoped to enhance support for anticommunist insurgent organizations around the world. Under his leadership the CIA helped more than a quarter of a million people take up arms against communism. The CIA extended support to rebels in Nicaragua, Angola,
Cambodia, and Ethiopia as well as Afghanistan. But in all of these theaters of war CIA personnel were directly involved in the planning, training, and conduct of operations. For Afghanistan, however, Zia offered a different model. Pakistan's ISI would run the show for the CIA as long as it received funding and weapons.

Since June 1979 the ISI was headed by General Akhtar Abdul Rahman, an infantry officer loyal to Zia who shared his ideological vision based on Islamic nationalism. As a junior officer, Rahman had aided the tribal militias raised in 1947 to fight in Kashmir. Thus, he was not new to managing religiously motivated irregular fighters. Soon after taking command of the ISI he crafted a detailed plan for expanding the insurgency in Afghanistan. Once Casey became chief of the CIA, Rahman built a close relationship with him and other CIA officials.

Pakistan's interest was not only to help the Americans drive the Soviets out of Afghanistan but also to ensure that the next government in Kabul was totally beholden to Pakistan. Strengthening Afghan Islamists would create a counterweight to Pashtun nationalism. Pakistan could always divert covert funds from the Afghan insurgency toward fomenting insurgencies against the source of its perceived principal threat, India. Support from all over the Muslim world was expected to fulfill Pakistan's pan-Islamist aspirations. Zia also hoped to rally Pakistanis around the banner of Islam and Jihad.

There was some concern that the Soviets might use India to wage direct war against Pakistan in case the war in Afghanistan became unbearable for Moscow. For that reason, Zia told Casey that the US-Pakistan objective in Afghanistan should be “to keep the pot boiling, but not boil over.”
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Casey did not see any problem with the more local aspects of Zia's ambitions; for him Afghanistan was just one battlefield in a global war. Letting the ISI take the lead role saved Casey the headache of operational details of a covert war as it also protected him from blame if anything went wrong.

The ISI recruited and trained Mujahideen from among the three million Afghan refugees in Pakistan. Peshawar and Quetta became the major centers for the Afghan Jihad. Although many secular and liberal Afghans also joined the fight against Soviet occupation, the
ISI showed preference for radical Islamist factions. The CIA provided money and arms and was content with taking credit in the United States for the successes of the Afghan “freedom fighters.” From 1981 to 1983 the CIA's covert program was funded at the same level as Carter proposed—around $60 million a year from the United States, with a matching amount from Saudi Arabia.
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But beginning in 1984 funding levels increased dramatically.

A colorful Texan congressman, Charlie Wilson, adopted the cause of the Afghan Mujahideen, partly under the influence of Joanne Herring, the Texas socialite. Wilson was the senior Democrat on the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee. He pushed a $40 million increase in funding through Congress just as Casey persuaded the Saudis to raise their contribution to $75 million for 1984 and to $100 million in 1985. Increased Saudi commitment required the United States to increase its contribution because of the matching funds agreement already in place.

There was another big increase in the fall of 1984. On October 11, 1984, Casey proposed to the Saudis that each country provide $250 million for the next year to handle larger Soviet offensives expected in the spring and to bring increasing pressure on the Soviets. This was a huge jump. Two weeks later Casey sent word to the Pakistanis and the Saudis that the United States was planning to spend $250 million in 1985. By the end of the year Wilson was urging that the US commitment go up to $300 million.
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These vast amounts were almost entirely funneled through the ISI, which by the mid-1980s had become several times larger than its original size. Not surprisingly, then, the ISI really liked Casey. Brigadier Mohammad Yousaf, who ran the Afghan operation, appreciated the autonomy Casey allowed his agency. “Whatever his personal motivations,” he wrote of Casey: “the result for us was always positive. He would often turn to his staff who were perhaps disputing some request of ours with the words: No, the General knows what he wants”—a reference to ISI's General Rahman.
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According to Yousaf, the CIA supported the Mujahideen by buying arms, ammunition, and equipment. “It was their secret arms procurement branch that was kept busy,” he wrote. But “a cardinal rule
of Pakistan's policy” barred the Americans from being “involved with the distribution of funds or arms once they arrived in the country. No Americans ever trained or had direct contact with the Mujahideen, and no American official ever went inside Afghanistan.”
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The Pakistanis justified operational control not by acknowledging their separate agenda but by claiming that the CIA was not competent to deal with the ground realities of Afghanistan. “I stress that the CIA's strength was in their access to sophisticated technology,” explained Yousaf. “If it was possible to solve a problem by technical means they would get the answer, but if military decisions had to be made on the basis of experience, military knowledge, or even applied military common sense, then in my view few CIA officers could come up with workable solutions,” he observed.
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The CIA and other American supporters of the Pakistan-based insurgency focused solely on Soviet losses. The Red Army lost more men and equipment than they had in any military engagement since World War II. Once the Mujahideen had been provided shoulder-borne Stinger surface-to-air missiles, the Soviet ability to keep the insurgents at bay diminished further.

Meanwhile, Pakistan took advantage of its operational autonomy to pursue its own agenda. Barely a year after the United States resumed large-scale aid to Pakistan and got deeply involved in the Afghan war, the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research noted concern about Pakistan's nuclear program. The Pakistanis, it said, “have not slowed their efforts to get the bomb,” and it reported that there was “new evidence of significant Peoples Republic of China assistance on at least the weapons-design side.”
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