Critical Triangle continues.....

What was to happen next, however, would in effect bind Afghanistan towards ever closer ties with the USSR. The Northern Flank strategy first evolved into the Baghdad Pact and then into CENTO. Given Pakistan’s assurances to the US that it would not use these weapons against India, the only other avenue for their use was Afghanistan. Eisenhower had assiduously asked Dulles to calm down Indian reactions but far less attention was paid to Afghanistan, even though it was a frontline state with a Soviet border.

Obviously if US weapons were to be used against the USSR, the only avenue Pakistan would have for doing so would be through Afghanistan and on Afghan territory, as was to become the case much later. The very fact that this was not about ideology but rather about Pakistan’s own threat perceptions should have been clear when Dulles snapped at Prime Minister Bogra. He thought “Pakistan had undertaken its anti-communist stand because it was right, not just to make itself eligible for certain sums of dollar aid.”In much the same way as Dulles’ adoption of the Northern Flank strategy would determine US policy towards Pakistan for the next 35 years, it would also determine Afghanistan’s counter
strategy. Afghanistan had effectively been thrown to the wolves.

Sitting in Kabul one would have seen an alliance forming comprising both Pakistan and Iran, and being specifically left out
of this, it would have nowhere to turn geographically than the communist North.

To be continued.....