Soviets. Washington had effectively turned Afghanistan into a Vietnam-style
quagmire from which all Moscow could hope to do was withdraw. It was a
stunning blow to Soviet prestige at the worst possible time for Moscow.
Throughout the 1980s, the U.S.-Pakistan partnership offered Islamabad the
autonomy to support its chosen Afghan groups and, for the most part, to
manage the Afghan fight as it saw fit. Not surprisingly, Pakistan aided Afghan
fighters who took direction from Islamabad. In practice, this meant chan-
neling money and supplies to the most extreme Islamists of the bunch, like
Jalaluddin Haqqani and Gulbuddin Hekmatyar.72 These same groups retained
Islamabad’s favor after the Soviet withdrawal and throughout the 1990s when
Afghanistan fell into a bloody civil war. Even 9/11 and the start of America’s
new war in Afghanistan did not sever the ties between these seasoned fighters
and their Pakistani handlers. Pakistan’s aid to Afghan militants, now drenched
in American blood, is today one of the deepest causes of friction between
Washington and Islamabad.
The tiny U.S. footprint in Pakistan throughout the 1980s meant that some
of the most significant American action in Afghanistan’s fight against the Red
Army took place back home in Washington, DC. The scandal-prone Texas
congressman, Charlie Wilson, waged the battle on Capitol Hill to secure fund-
ing for the mujahedeen. George Crile’s 2003 bestseller and the Hollywood
adaptation of Charlie Wilson’s War delivered this most unlikely chapter of
American history to bookshops and multiplexes around the world.73 Suffice
it to say, Wilson’s Hugh Hefner tendencies were mixed up with a rabid anti-
communism that, in time, resulted in a deep attachment to the Afghan cause.
His unorthodox working relationship with Gust Avrakotos, the cranky CIA
officer who fought off agency bureaucrats and kept the whole secret operation
alive, broke a lot of rules along the way to victory. As Crile records in his
70 Coll, Ghost Wars, p. 57.
71 Kux, The United States and Pakistan, 1947–2000, p. 263.
72 On Haqqani, see Coll, Ghost Wars, p. 131. On Hekmatyar, see Coll, Ghost Wars, p. 67.
73 George Crile, Charlie Wilson’s War (New York: Grove Press, 2003).
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No Exit from Pakistan
jaunty history, when Pakistan’s President Zia was asked to explain the defeat
of the Russians in Afghanistan, he uttered but three words: “Charlie did it.”74
Of course, that was only a part of the story. The stage for Congressman
Wilson’s bravura performance was not set by itself. A trickle of U.S. support for
the Afghan insurgents was already flowing through Pakistan before he came on
the scene. Immediately after the 1979 Soviet invasion, the Carter administration
slammed the door on d étente with Moscow and announced that “any attempt
by any outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region will be regarded
as an assault on the vital interests of the United States of America, and such
an assault will be repelled by any means necessary, including military force.”75
The White House cut off wheat and technology sales to Russia, pulled the
plug on a nuclear arms treaty, started a new round of draft registrations, and
boycotted the 1980 Moscow Olympics in protest.
Rhetoric aside, the Carter and Reagan administrations cared rather little
about Afghanistan per se. What drove them to oppose the Soviet intervention
was the concern that Afghanistan might be little more than a first step in
Moscow’s march to the Arabian Sea. To American cold warriors, it required
a warm water port.76 After Afghanistan, the Soviets would strike Pakistan
or Iran. That would put vital oilfields and shipping routes within Moscow’s
reach, precisely as John Foster Dulles had feared during the early days of the
Cold War.
President Carter had arrived in office without any expectation that he would
turn up the heat on Moscow. By the end of his term, however, he bequeathed to
the Reagan administration the makings of a global American military expan-
sion and a firm commitment to oppose Soviet aggression in and around the
Persian Gulf. Carter’s national security advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski, a Polish-
born émigr é whose greatest cunning was reserved for fighting Russians, charted
out the first steps for American aid to the Afghan resistance. Within twenty-four
hours of the initial Soviet invasion, he concluded that Washington would need
a new relationship with Pakistan to channel assistance to Afghan insurgents.
For Brzezinski, circumstances required the United States to set aside concerns
about Pakistan’s nuclear program, at least temporarily.77
This about-face by the Carter team was not enough to get back into General
Zia’s good graces. Zia preferred to wait until the new Reagan team took office.
74 Crile, Charlie Wilson’s War, p. 4.
75 From Carter’s January 23, 1980, State of the Union address, cited in Gaddis, Strategies of Containment, p. 345.
76 It is worth noting, however, that contrary to Washington’s apprehensions, Moscow may have been sucked into Afghanistan by “mission creep” rather than a considered strategic offensive to conquer warm water ports. See “Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan a Case of Mission Creep, According to New Book and Original Soviet Documents,” National Security Archive, October 13, 2012, http://www.gwu.edu/∼nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB396/.
77 Coll, Ghost Wars, p. 51.
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Why Do They Hate Us?
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For Zia, hawkish Republicans were more committed to the fight against com-
munism and more likely to put aside issues that had plagued his relationship
with Carter, such as Pakistan’s nuclear program and his dictatorship’s human
rights violations. Zia was correct. Pakistan drove a hard bargain, winning a
U.S. assistance package of $3.2 billion over six years and a fast-tracked deal
for forty F-16 fighter jets.78 For Islamabad, such assistance would go a long
way toward rebalancing its military competition with India. Even more, Zia
got what he took to be a wink and a nod on the contentious nuclear issue and
a promise that Washington would not meddle in Pakistan’s internal affairs.
The Reagan administration also framed the strategy for expanding the
Afghan conflict well beyond anything Brzezinski had earlier considered. Charlie
Wilson and his CIA friends deserve credit for realizing that, if properly armed,
the mujahedeen might actually manage to beat the Soviet empire. They deserve
even more credit for pulling out all the stops to bring that goal to fruition.
Yet the scheme to use Moscow’s own aggression – its involvement in brushfire
wars across the globe – against it, to bleed the Soviet empire b
y way of a thou-
sand cuts, was neither their work alone nor Afghanistan-specific. Eventually it
would come to be known as the “Reagan Doctrine,” and it was most vigor-
ously applied in Nicaragua and Angola along with Afghanistan. From the Rea-
gan White House came authorization for dramatic expansions of the Afghan
war, first with improved weapons and satellite intelligence, later with the
Stingers.79
In hindsight, critics of the Reagan administration argue that the Cold War
victory in Afghanistan was purchased at the cost of causing 9/11. There can
be no doubt that the jihadist seeds planted in that war eventually grew into
the hopelessly crooked trees of al-Qaeda, the Afghan Taliban, and other ter-
rorist groups. Even in the 1980s, questions were raised within and outside
government about the wisdom of supporting Afghan and Arab fighters with
decidedly anti-Western worldviews.80 That said, to draw a straight line from
Charlie Wilson to Osama bin Laden skips too many steps. Washington may
have planted the seeds of jihad, but they were well tended in Pakistan’s fertile
soil.81
78 In contrast, the Carter administration had offered an initial deal of $400 million. “Peanuts,”
Zia scoffed. See Kux, The United States and Pakistan, 1947–2000, p. 249. In addition to U.S.
funds, Pakistan also profited from the support of the Saudis, equally engaged on the side of the Afghan anti-Soviet mujahedeen.
79 Coll, Ghost Wars, p. 127, pp. 149–51; Crile, Charlie Wilson’s War, pp. 403–21.
80 Dennis Kux attributes State Department intelligence analyst Eliza Van Hollen with some fore-sight on this point, but she was overruled by the CIA. See The United States and Pakistan, 1947–2000, p. 275.
81 For a broader discussion on the evolution of extremism in Pakistan, see Ayesha Jalal, Partisans of Allah: Jihad in South Asia (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008); Hassan Abbas, Pakistan’s Drift into Extremism: Allah, the Army, and America’s War on Terror (Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 2005); and Zahid Hussain, The Scorpion’s Tail: The Relentless Rise of Islamic Militants in Pakistan – And How It Threatens America (New York: Free Press, 2010).
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No Exit from Pakistan
Zia’s Islamization
Initial responsibility for Pakistan’s enthusiastic embrace of the most radical
Afghan fighters and their associates falls in the lap of the man who hanged
Zulfikar Ali Bhutto: General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq. Bhutto misjudged Zia
when he hand-picked him as army chief in 1976, thinking that the quiet general
with slicked-back hair and an obsequious manner would never challenge the
politician’s authority. But Zia was made of sterner, or at least more ruthless,
stuff. Not only did he dispatch Bhutto in 1977 in the face of wide international
condemnation, but he also stayed on to rule Pakistan until 1988, when he finally
met his end in a mysterious plane crash along with the American ambassador
and several other top Pakistani officials.82
Some biographers view Zia’s political successes as a consequence of his back-
ground and family upbringing. Born in 1924, his family hailed from Jallundur,
a town in the eastern part of Punjab that ended up on the Indian side of the
border after Partition. His father, a junior civil servant, was from the Arain
caste, stereotyped by the British colonials as hardworking, frugal farmers, not
soldiers. In this sense, Zia was the classic striver from humble beginnings. He
lacked the pedigree of the men who routinely rose to the most senior ranks of
the army. All of these traits made him look less threatening when Bhutto pro-
moted him to army chief of staff.83 But those same characteristics probably also
prepared him for the rigors of leadership. Zia, after all, exceeded expectations
and overcame his adversaries at multiple points throughout his career.
Other biographers stress that whatever Zia’s background, he was politically
gifted, coldly calculating, and more than a little lucky.84 Either way, Zia could
hardly have been more different from Bhutto. One of the most politically
relevant distinctions between them was the way they observed their Muslim
faith. Bhutto’s practices, common in much of Pakistan but especially his home
in rural Sindh province, were marked by a syncretic tradition that draws from
many sources for spiritual inspiration and teaching. The emphasis on scholars,
saints, and shrines has some similarities with the Shia sect of Islam, although
the vast majority of Pakistanis who follow such practices are in fact Sunnis.85
Zia, on the other hand, was raised in an austere tradition that rejected
medieval interpretations of Islamic law and held that the only two sources
of Islamic law were the Qur’an and hadith (the sayings of the Prophet
82 Nawaz, Crossed Swords, pp. 393–6.
83 See Shahid Javed Burki, “Pakistan under Zia, 1977–1988,” Asian Survey, 28, no. 10 (October 1988), pp. 1082–100.
84 Talbot, Pakistan, pp. 245–6.
85 Surprisingly, Bhutto’s own sectarian identity is contested. According to his family, he was a Sunni. According to many others, he was a Shia who may have hidden his sectarian identity for political or other reasons. See Benazir Bhutto, Daughter of the East: An Autobiography (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1988), p. 32; Vali Nasr, The Shia Revival: How Conflicts within Islam Will Shape the Future (New York: W. W. Norton, 2006), p. 88.
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Why Do They Hate Us?
97
Muhammad). He came much closer to the Sunni extremes revived at the end
of the nineteenth century by movements such as the Deobandis – from which
today’s Taliban draw inspiration – and the Salafis – from which al-Qaeda and
Lashkar-e-Taiba derive their views.86
Zia was more pious than radical in his own religious observance, and his
deep attachment to the army made it inconceivable that he would have sub-
scribed to the sorts of anti-state views held by al-Qaeda. He did, however, pur-
sue a policy of “Islamization” during his rule, which provided political cover
and funneled resources to some of Pakistan’s most extreme Islamist groups.
Islamization also had an especially durable and poisonous effect on Pakistan’s
educational system. Public schools were weakened, their textbooks and cur-
riculum infused with jihadist ideology, rhetoric, and historical revision.87 The
decay of public schools also contributed to the rise of private ones. The best
of these were priced beyond the reach of most Pakistani families. As a con-
sequence, religious seminaries (known as madaris or madrassahs) became an
increasingly common option.88 In many instances, such seminaries were unpre-
pared to teach children the sorts of knowledge or skills required for jobs
outside the mosque. In a small but influential number of cases, seminaries
were simply dressed up militant training camps that prepared students only to
serve as cannon fodder in
Afghanistan or Pakistan’s other enduring insurgency,
Kashmir.
Zia’s campaign was also a scheme to construct a unifying national identity
and legitimize his own undemocratic authority. Once Bangladesh had bro-
ken away from Pakistan in 1971, Pakistan had even less reason to claim to
be the Muslim homeland for South Asia. Even in the half of Pakistan that
remained, significant ethnic and linguistic diversity ruled out cultural appeals to
unity. Zia mistakenly believed that “Islam” offered a solution.89 The problem
was that Islam meant different things to different Pakistanis. Religious cleav-
ages ran through Pakistan just as they distinguished Zia from Bhutto. Rather
than pulling the country together, Zia’s Islamization strengthened divisions in
86 For a detailed discussion of the Deobandi tradition in historical context, see Barbara Daly Metcalf, Islamic Revival in British India: Deoband, 1860–1900 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005).
87 For recent examples of this curriculum, see Pamela Constable, Playing with Fire (New York: Random House, 2011), p. 139; Fair, The Madrassah Challenge: Militancy and Religious Education in Pakistan, pp. 16–28; Zubeida Mustafa, “The Continuing Biases in Our Textbooks,”
Policy Brief, Jinnah Institute, April 30, 2012, http://jinnah-institute.org/programs/governance/
429-the-continuing-biases-in-our-textbooks.
88 According to official figures, 1,000 new madrasas were opened in the years from 1982 to 1988.
See “Pakistan: Madrasas, Extremism and the Military,” July 29, 2002, International Crisis Group Asia Report No. 36, p. 9.
89 For more on Zia’s belief that Islam would provide the unifying principle for Pakistan, see Husain Haqqani, Pakistan: Between Mosque and Military (Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2005), pp. 131–7.
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No Exit from Pakistan
increasingly violent ways.90 Sectarian and theological debates fed spasms of
communal bloodletting.91
U.S. dollars undoubtedly contributed to radicalizing trends in Afghanistan
and Pakistan, and America’s departure from the scene in the 1990s left a