At long last the Americans are beginning to be concerned over president Zia-ul-Haq’s dangerous moves in respect of Afghanistan. The Washington Post has quoted an US official to say that the Reagan administration is considering the appointment in Islamabad of a whole-time diplomat to assess the situation in Afghanistan and to deal with the Peshawar-based Mujahideen leaders and the local commanders inside Afghanistan. It has quoted diplomats and relief workers (clearly western) to express dismay over the US total reliance on Pakistani intelligence agencies for its assessment of developments in Afghanistan and over US surrender of its Afghan policy to President Zia who is determined to install a Muslim fundamentalist regime in Kabul. The Washington Post is concerned that a fundamentalist regime in Afghanistan will be close to Iran and thus be anti-American.
It would be premature to predict a change in the orientation of US policy towards Afghanistan and to that extent towards Pakistan. For all we know, the American friends of Pakistan in the Pentagon and the CIA may continue to prevail with their argument that Pakistan is too valuable a strategic asset in the long-term US scheme for the Gulf and central Asia to be alienated. Even so, it would be foolish to ignore the possibility of Pakistan-US difference over Afghanistan. We drew attention to this possibility in these columns as early as April 2,1988, in our editorial “The Afghan Trap”. Incidentally, we were perhaps the first to do so among major publications anywhere at least in the English-speaking world.
We wrote: Most of the US aid has gone to the fundamentalist groups. But it is by no means certain that Washington would wish to help the fundamentalists capture power in Kabul. It cannot possibly be insensitive to the possibility that they might make common cause with the Islamic Republic of Iran which is the only regime in the history of Islam which can be called theocratic. The fundamentalist Mujahideen are, of course, mostly Sunnis. But the significance of the Shia-Sunni divide among the fundamentalists should not be exaggerated. Ayatollah Khomeini’s appeal cuts across this divide, as should-be evident from the Islamic upsurge in Egypt and the Maghreb.
Two points are reasonably well established. First, that serious differences had arisen between President Zia and prime minister Junejo over Afghanistan and that these accounted partly for the dismissal of the latter by the former on May 29. By all available accounts, Mr Junejo was far more flexible and accommodating to both the Soviets and the Americans in connection with the Geneva accords than President Zia who was insistent that Moscow dismantle the Najib set-up in Kabul and replace it with the fundamentalists. Second, that even though the American ambassador in Islamabad happened to meet President Zia only hours before Mr Junejo’s dismissal, the Pakistani leader did not inform him of his impending move. These two facts do not quite add up to substantiate the proposition that President Zia had become distrustful of the Americans and that he decided to eliminate Mr Junejo precisely because he feared that the then prime minister might go along with them and jeopardize his long-laid plans for installing the religious bigots in power in Kabul. But this possibility too should not be dismissed altogether. General Zia is not a US-stooge; he has a will of his own, as he has more than amply demonstrated on the question of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons programme. It is thus by no means inconceivable that he has once again decided to assert himself. He has had his way with the Reagan administration in the past and he may have his way this time as well. The next administration is still more than six months away and the coming six months will be crucial in respect of Afghanistan. Meanwhile those of us who have been sharply critical of Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi’s invitation to President Najib and recent statements that a fundamentalist regime in Kabul will be an element of instability in the region should feel embarrassed, now that some influential Americans have begun to speak in a similar refrain.