Victory Point - Ed Darack [13]
Pakistan, which had won its independent statehood through partition from British India in 1947, has maintained a tenuous relationship with Afghanistan for decades. While those unfamiliar with the region might believe that the two countries have enjoyed close, almost familial ties (if for no other reason than they share Islam as a national religion and stan as the last syllable in their names), Pakistan aligned itself strategically on the other side of the table from Afghanistan’s global commitments—with the United States—while the Soviets embraced Afghanistan. Few can forget the shoot-down of American Francis Gary Powers’s USAF/CIA U2 spy plane over the Soviet Union—or Khruschev’s ominous PR move of drawing a red circle on a map around the city from which Powers launched his craft: Peshawar, Pakistan.
Afghan-Pakistani relations have been marked by tension ever since Pakistan emerged as an independent state. In 1955, hostilities over their shared border culminated in Pakistan closing its trade route with the Afghans, threatening to harm Afghanistan’s fragile economy—an act Pakistan would repeat through the years. But then the Soviets intervened and provided an alternative logistical plan, which furthered the bond between the Afghans and the Soviets. The Durand Line was also a source of conflict between the two countries. The Durand Line effectively split in two a region known to the Pashtuns as Pashtunistan, and many Afghans to this day refuse to acknowledge it, crossing unchecked over the invisible line just as people in the southwestern United States pass from Utah to Colorado. Afghans, during the drawing of their borders, sought to have included as part of their country those areas now known as the Northwest Frontier province and the Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan; although this effort was to end in failure, the Pakistani government, in a wink-and-nod style compromise, pretty much keeps out of many of these regions, allowing the people to govern themselves.
The greatest single element shaping Pakistan’s strategic planning and positioning through the years, however, lies to its east: India. Pakistan and India have fought three bloody wars throughout the years, and as India developed close ties with the Soviet Union in the decades following World War II, Pakistan felt increasingly squeezed by inimical flanking powers, particularly in the late 1970s with the aggressive Soviet influx into Afghanistan. Furthermore, many historians believe that Pakistan has long considered Afghanistan to be a buffer zone, providing “strategic depth” into which Pakistan can retreat, regroup, and realign its forces in the event that India overruns its eastern border. In the late 1970s, Pakistani president Zia-ul-Haq envisioned a continuous Islamic union, stretching from Pakistan, through Afghanistan, to Iran. As the Soviet-backed campaign against the mujahideen exploded in magnitude and viciousness, Zia felt that providing support to the resistance was not only necessary, but that Pakistan’s very survival hinged on supporting it. But he’d have to do this covertly, as a direct war with the Soviet Union—which India could easily join on Pakistan’s eastern front—would virtually assure Pakistan’s demise.
Still reeling over the U.S. military pullout from the Vietnam War, in which the Soviet Union was globally regarded as the behind-the-scenes victor over the United States, many officials within U.S. national security circles began to pay ever-closer attention to the Soviet’s involvement in Afghanistan in the late 1970s. The United States had been monitoring the steady inflow of financial, human, and military resources over the years, and when the Communist Taraqi government engaged the mujahideen in “hot” military campaigns, many in these circles smelled blood—of a thousand little insurgent cuts. Chief among these U.S. strategists was President Carter’s national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, who believed that if the United States jumped in early enough, the Soviets could be pressed to move from