Critical Triangle continues ......

The contradictions of the Northern tier policy—especially after the Afghan debacle began to emerge almost instantly, when the operationalisation of the policy for obvious reasons was handled by the Department of Defence. Assistant Secretary for Defence Struve Hensel concluded almost immediately after a trip to Pakistan that no one “had any clear idea of the part Pakistan was expected to play … it seems quite clear that Pakistan regards the Indian threat as much more serious to Pakistan than the Russian or Communist China threats.”

Consequently, the pace of aid slowed and grumbling within Pakistan began to grow that while the alliance had brought no support to Pakistani positions on Kashmir and Pashtunistan, it had driven the USSR to stand solidly behind the Indian and Afghan positions on those issues. By June 1956, the National Intelligence Estimate discounted any meaningful role for Pakistan in the defence of the Middle East and by January 1957 Eisenhower himself in a damning indictment said, “This was the worst kind of a plan and decision we could have made. It was a terrible error, but now we seem hopelessly involved in it.” By December 1957, Pakistan had a new Ambassador James Langley
who confirmed that “it is not too difficult to make a rather
convincing case that the present military program is based on a hoax, the hoax being that it is related to the Soviet threat.”

It can safely be assumed here that while the reality was the arms Pakistan received were aimed at India, the optics led Afghanistan to believe that they were in fact, quite probably aimed for use on Afghan soil. During Eisenhower’s visit to Pakistan in 1959, Ayub Khan was already talking as though Afghanistan had become a Soviet satellite. He believed the roads the Soviets were building there were for Soviet Strategic Purposes, was convinced that Afghan Prime Minister Daoud Khan had placed his bets on the USSR winning the Cold War, and believed that Afghanistan had gone beyond the point of no return advocating a complete US aid cut-of.

To be continued.......