Critical Triangle continues...

However, knowing where American priorities lay Zia would give every American visitor he met an alarming presentation showing them, on a map, the distance between Afghanistan’s southern tip and the sea—a mere 350 odd miles, which he claimed was part of the old Russian empire’s plans since the time of Catherine the Great to wet its feet in the Arabian Sea.

The aim here was to trap the Soviets into a Vietnam style debacle, and was part of the larger Reagan doctrine that was aimed at bogging the Soviets down in small, but exhausting wars of attrition across the world. For Pakistan, this turned into a strategy of forward defence, one where fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan would mean not having to fight them later in Pakistan. Critical to this plan was the calibration of the insurgency “to keep the pot boiling but not to have it boil over.” Ultimately this strategy would be subsumed into Pakistan’s quest for “strategic depth.”

To avoid being tainted by the Cold War, it was Pakistan that took up the Afghan cause at the UN and other international fora. Pakistan managed spectacular successes in getting both Muslim and non-aligned countries to vote against the Soviet invasion—starting with 104 votes in favour in the first vote in 1980, then 111 in the second vote in 1980 and in 1981 rising 102 to 116.

The increased flow of aid from the US was a huge economic boost to Pakistan. Getting about US$ 600 million annually in military and economic aid the average annual GDP growth average for the 1980s reached 6.5 percent very close to the 6.8 percent achieved during the Ayub period of high growth.

To be continued.....