The US defence secretary, Mr. Weinberger, did not need to visit Islamabad to discuss military supplies for Pakistan. At least as far as is publicly known, no problem in this regard has arisen between the two governments. Only recently the US administration agreed to provide Pakistan the deadly Harpoon missiles. It follows that the purpose of the trip was political. On the face of it, it would appear that Mr. Weinberger wanted to demonstrate the US administration’s support for General Zia-ul-Haq, however strong the current agitation against him, especially in Sind. Or else, he could have found some pretext for avoiding the visit. There can be another possible explanation which is that he went to Islamabad to assess for himself whether General Zia still enjoyed the confidence of other generals and to find a suitable replacement for him in case the general had ceased to be a viable proposition. In a sense, this is not a particularly good explanation on two counts. First, the US administration must have a sufficiently large and well-informed intelligence network in Pakistan to keep it posted with General Zia’s political health, maintain contact with other military leaders and recommend a possible successor. Secondly, the trip was too brief (it lasted a mere 36 hours) to enable Mr. Weinberger to study the situation for himself on the spot. But the Iranian experience might be haunting the Reagan set-up. Surely it would not like to be taken by surprise by events in Pakistan as it was in Iran in 1978-79. This makes it difficult to be sure about the purpose of Mr. Weinberger’s trip. But it does appear that Washington has decided to be seen to be standing behind General Zia.
If this is in fact the case, it raises another issue. What is the US government’s advice to the general on how he should handle the present agitation? To try to crush it or to try to open talks? But talks with whom? It would be a reasonable inference that the hard-faced men in Washington would not want serious negotiations which could pave the way for early elections. For in that event, the Pakistan People’s Party, headed in effect by Benazir Bhutto, would sweep the poll. And the Americans would not like to deal with her. She is too independent for their liking and she would be coming to power on the crest of a wave. The Reagan administration would, of course, want General Zia to go through the motions of seeking a political solution if that could help him split the opposition. The general himself would love to do so. That is presumably why he has agreed to open talks with the Jamiat-ul-Ulema-i-Pakistan headed by Maulana Noorani. But parties truly involved in the current struggle are not likely to fall a prey to this kind of tactics. And in Sind the PPP is bearing almost entirely the brunt of the fight. By this reckoning, the inference, at least tentatively, would be that Washington would back General Zia in his bid to crush the agitation. Perhaps President Reagan and his aides have, like Mr. Kissinger, viewed the Iranian experience as well differently from the rest of us. They could have concluded that it was a show of weakness that proved the undoing of the Shah. If this deduction is accurate, Pakistan is in for a long dark night. Blood will continue to flow in its towns.