Critical Triangle continues.....

On 5 July things came to a head and the Army
under Gen Ziaul-Haq ousted Bhutto from power and the nuclear issue continued
to see a downward spiral in bilateral ties. When confronted with evidence by Ambassador Hummel, Zia flatly denied the charge of having a clandestine nuclear weapons programme claiming “that’s absolutely ridiculous.”However, once again events were to reverse the course of ties.

The year 1978-79 saw massive protests in Tehran that eventually ousted the Shah of Iran. In April 1978, the leftist President of Afghanistan Daoud had been ousted in yet another coup that installed a communist government. In line with their ideology this
government initiated painful social reforms, which created a powerful counter movement in what was still a deeply religious and socially conservative society. This religious reaction dovetailed perfectly into Pakistan’s use of religion to trump ethnic irredentism. As a result, the two divergent strands of Pakistani retaliation for Afghan backed insurgency and the religious reaction to the Afghan Communist Government’s social agenda combined into one insurgency.

The loss of Iran as an ally, and the communist takeover of Afghanistan meant that for all intents and purposes Pakistan was a frontline state. While a full policy reversal was slow the first signs of improvement in US-Pakistan ties came in the field of intelligence and covert operations. While the Zia regime was approached for possible cooperation on signals intelligence intercept facilities, in July 1979 Carter approved a covert assistance programme for anti-communist rebels in Afghanistan.

The CIA and ISI, which had taken over control of the insurgency from the Frontier Scouts, worked together on the programme, though the US did not provide military equipment at this stage and had limited insight into the groups supported by the ISI. Initially this small operation would become the kernel from which the Afghan Jihad was born.

To be continued......