Critical Triangle Continues.....

Afghanistan did in fact try hard to become part of the Northern Flank. Prince Naim the Foreign Minister of Afghanistan met Dulles in October 1954 and requested US arms after expressing serious concerns about Soviet intentions. He specifically requested joining the northern-tier arrangement.However, the State Department responded negatively. In December 1954, an aide-memoire was handed to the Afghan Ambassador Ludin, which claimed that American military help would only create problems for Afghanistan, “which would not be offset by the strength that such aid might create.” The concern here was not for the Pakistani reaction to such aid, but rather the US genuinely believed that such aid would create more friction between Afghanistan and the USSR. Assistant Secretary Byroade told Ludin, “a US-Afghan military aid program might provoke a very strong Soviet reaction. The consequences might be very serious for Afghanistan, and the interests of neither of our countries would be served thereby.”

The very next year in 1955 the Afghans accepted Soviet military aid. This was to be the point from which a consolidating northern-tier, turned Baghdad Pact, turned CENTO would push Afghanistan further and further into the Soviet embrace culminating in the 1979 invasion. If anything this begs the question why was it that Dulles was willing to think of Pakistanis as soldiers and not extend the same benefit to the Afghans despite their demonstrated martial prowess. Mostly this can be attributed, both to the deeply personalised prejudices that Dulles translated into policy as well as the haziness of the strategy itself, which was after all a State Department initiative that did not have any major inputs from the Department of Defence.

To he continued.....