U.S., Soviets Vie for Pakistan’s Support in Afghanistan Conflict

For a few days in Islamabad last month, the United States and the Soviet Union were like rich baseball teams vying to sign a star free agent, Pakistan. Both superpowers sent high-ranking diplomats to court Pakistan’s leaders.

After seven years of steadfastly supporting the U.S. position in Afghanistan, Pakistan was suddenly wavering. The Soviet Union and the Soviet-backed Afghan regime in Kabul had come up with an attractive peace package aimed at ending the Afghan guerrilla war.

The package, announced in mid-January by the Communist Afghan leader Najib, included an immediate six-month cease-fire, the phased withdrawal of Soviet troops from Afghanistan, amnesty for political prisoners and the moujahedeen, as the rebels are known, as well as an invitation to the rebels to take part in a government of “national reconciliation.”

Faster Withdrawal

In addition, the Soviets have promised to offer a shorter schedule for withdrawing their troops when U.N.-sponsored peace talks are reconvened this month in Geneva. In the past, the Soviets have said that it would take three years to pull out their troops, which by Western estimates now number 115,000. The Pakistanis have insisted that the withdrawal be carried out within four months, and Defense Secretary Caspar W. Weinberger has suggested, half-jokingly, that it should be done in two weeks.

Even usually skeptical U.S. officials admitted that the Soviet-Afghan peace initiative has potential, although they cautioned against premature acceptance of it.

“It’s sort of like the dance of the seven veils,” one senior official said. “What is behind the seventh veil, a lovely young lady of peace without the Soviets in Afghanistan? Or is it something else?”

The American position is that a peace plan that leaves Najib’s Communist government in place is no settlement at all but a surrender of the moujahedeen.

Still, the Soviet-Afghan peace proposal has caught Pakistan’s government in a weakened and therefore receptive mood. Pakistan is weary as a result of the role it has had in supporting the Afghan rebel cause.

Resolve Fades

Without Pakistan, which serves as a conduit for rebel weapons and a safe site for their headquarters, the war might have been decided long ago. Now, Pakistan’s resolve is clearly fading.

Faced with mounting internal political and social pressures as a result of seven years of war in Afghanistan, many Pakistanis would like nothing more than finding a way to get the 3 million Afghan refugees in Pakistan to return home.

American officials, while encouraging the Pakistanis to explore the Soviet offer, want them to wait at least a year before making a commitment.

“We are more skeptical about what is there, particularly in the short run,” one official said. “But I think that a year from now we may really get somewhere.”

Semantic Details

U.S. enthusiasm for the proposal is based mainly on semantic details that suggest the Soviets may be “disengaging ideologically” from Afghanistan.

“If you look at the fine print,” a Western diplomatic source said, “you will find that the Soviets no longer refer to the Afghan regime as a ‘socialist revolution’ in which the Brezhnev Doctrine is applicable. It has become a ‘national democratic revolution.’ ”

(The Brezhnev Doctrine was enunciated by Soviet leader Leonid I. Brezhnev in 1968 to justify Soviet intervention in Czechoslovakia; it holds that Moscow may intervene in any Soviet Bloc country where the Communist system is threatened.)

Such subtle shifts, the Americans say, suggest that if the Pakistanis can hold out long enough, the Soviets may offer a proposal that abandons its commitment to the Najib government.

In an attempt to shore up Pakistan’s position, Michael H. Armacost, the under secretary of state for political affairs, flew into Islamabad last month to meet with top Pakistani officials, including President Zia ul-Haq and Prime Minister Mohammed Khan Junejo.

Soviet Delegates Arrive

Not to be outdone, although they say it was coincidence, the Soviets responded with a high-level delegation headed by Deputy Foreign Minister Anatoly Kovalev.

Significantly, Pakistan television and radio gave much more prominent coverage to the Soviet visitor. However, an American official sought to minimize the imbalance by saying: “They get senior American visitors all the time. So it is nothing new. But a Soviet big shot is something new.”

The mood in Pakistan’s capital provides a striking contrast to the time when refugees began arriving here after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in December of 1979. At that time, they were welcomed as “Islamic brothers.” Pakistan became a hero to the Muslim world. Sympathetic Muslims from the Persian Gulf region arrived in the frontier regional capital of Peshawar with suitcases full of money for the jihad --the holy war against the Soviet infidels.

U.S. aid to Pakistan had been cut off by the Carter Administration in 1979 because of Pakistan’s continued development of a nuclear weapon, but Pakistan quickly parlayed its support of the Afghan cause into a new $3.2-billion aid package from Washington. Included in this multi-year package of military and economic assistance were 40 advanced F-16 jets that became the pride of the Pakistani air force.

Aid Seen as Payment

There are few Pakistanis who do not see American aid as a direct trade-off for allowing Pakistan to be used as a conduit for CIA-supplied weapons to the Afghan rebels and as a haven for Afghan refugees. But now all 40 of the F-16s have been delivered, and pressure in the new, Democratic Congress is mounting against Pakistan on the nuclear-weapon issue, as well as on the drug question, for the Afghan-Pakistan corridor has become one of the the major sources of heroin for the United States and Europe.

Meanwhile, the refugees in Pakistan have turned into a political liability for the Zia government. Intrigue between Afghan political parties in Peshawar and terrorism blamed on the notorious Khad , or secret police, of the Kabul regime, has resulted in dozens of bombings in Pakistan’s North-West Frontier province.

Blamed for Everything

“Every little thing is being blamed on the Afghans these days,” Mushahid Hussain, editor of the daily newspaper, The Muslim in Islamabad, said recently.

Every opposition party in Pakistan except the large Pakistan People’s Party headed by Benazir Bhutto has come out for accepting the Soviet-Afghan peace proposal. The politicians have sensed a weariness among the people of Pakistan about continuing to carry the main load in the Afghan war, which they see increasingly as a modern extension of the Victorian Age “Great Game” between the British and Russian empires.

Immediately after Najib, the Afghan leader, offered his peace proposal, the government dispatched emissaries to key allies, including China, Saudi Arabia and Iran. Foreign Secretary Abdul Sattar went to Moscow and returned buoyed by the prospect for peace.

He met afterward with U.S. Ambassador Deane Hinton, who said, “I urged him to probe the offer with prudence and patience.”

But for the first time in the seven years of the conflict there appears to be a small crack between the positions taken by Pakistan and the United States.

New Soviet Image

Ironically, all these developments have created an atmosphere in which the Soviet Union, widely condemned as the aggressor in Afghanistan, is being portrayed in some circles as a peacemaker. By opposing Soviet overtures or urging caution, Pakistan and the United States run the risk of being cast as warmongers.

This public relations reversal is due largely to the skillful diplomacy of Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev. In February of last year, Gorbachev suggested a mood of humility and remorse by describing Afghanistan as a “bleeding wound” for the Soviet Union.

Then, at a press conference Nov. 29 with Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi in New Delhi, Gorbachev declared: “It is up to the Afghan people to decide what system to have. . . . We stand for a nonaligned, independent, sovereign Afghanistan which would be the master of its resources and everything that belongs to it, for a neutral Afghanistan. What kind of regime will be there (after the Soviet withdrawal) is up to the Afghan people.”

For now, only the moujahedeen--the 90,000 or so Afghan rebels actually fighting the Soviets and Afghan government forces in Afghanistan--seem to be unimpressed by the peace initiative. On Jan. 17, at a mass rebel rally in Peshawar, leaders of the seven largest moujahedeen political organizations issued a fierce statement rejecting the Soviet cease-fire offer.

“The acceptance of a cease-fire after all these sacrifices and sufferings,” they said, in a rare instance of agreement, “would be tantamount to a shameful accommodation and ignominious surrender to the enemy.”

Rebels Bitter

Afghan rebels interviewed in Peshawar appeared to be particularly bitter about the positive reaction to the peace proposal in Pakistan and in some segments of the Western press.

Abdul Haq, commander of guerrilla elements operating around Kabul, said, “The actual Soviet program is not to make peace with the moujahedeen but to make peace with the Western press.”

Asked about the possibility of Pakistan making a separate peace with the Soviets, Abdul Haq said the war will continue, with or without Pakistan or American support, and he added:

“I don’t think Pakistan is going to do anything with blind eyes. But if they do, we will not have lost our country. It is not like Palestine. We still have our land and our people. We will continue.”