Why Americans looked the other way as Pakistan made the bomb
* Book claims Zia assured US congressmen Pakistan would not build a delivery system
* US believed cutting aid could replace Zia with anti-US govt
* CIA started replacing Ojhri weapons soon after blast
By Khalid Hasan
WASHINGTON: General Ziaul Haq extracted a promise from President Ronald Reagan as the war in Afghanistan raged that Pakistan would work with the CIA against the Soviets in return for massive US aid and a US promise “to look the other way” when it came to Pakistan’s nuclear programme, which was then on the verge of producing a weapon.
According to ‘Charlie Wilson’s War,’ a book about former congressman Charlie Wilson, Zia had no illusions about Reagan standing up for Pakistan if Congress found out what was going on. Stephen Solarz, chairman of the sub-committee in the House dealing with South Asia was no friend of Pakistan and was getting ready to order hearings so that aid to Pakistan could be cut.
The book says that in 1985, the CIA had managed to penetrate Pakistan’s nuclear programme and was reporting on its progress. At the Solarz hearings, the CIA said that if funding to Pakistan was cut, Gen Zia might present a bill to the US for helping the CIA in Afghanistan running into several billion dollars a year. Zia told Washington’s UN ambassador Vernon Walters that Pakistan was not making a bomb.
When later two senior State Department officials told the military president that he had misrepresented the situation, Zia replied, “It is permissible to lie for Islam.” Despite continuing US pressure, Pakistan did not stop work on the bomb.
Wilson, the book claims, was also responsible for “putting Pakistan and Israel together” in a “back channel of communications and areas of mutual interest that they were pursuing. This was of enormous value to Pakistan which otherwise would have had to worry more about Israel sending planes or saboteurs to blow up its nuclear facilities.”
Wilson maintains in the book that it was clear to the administration that “without Zia running Pakistan by martial law, there could be no Afghan war”. Solarz, who was working ceaselessly to have all aid to Pakistan cut off, was confronted at a Pakistan embassy dinner by Zbigniew Brzezinski, former US national security adviser, who asked him point blank if he knew what the success of his move would result in. The Afghan resistance would collapse. The Soviets would triumph. The Zia government in Pakistan would disappear and be replaced by an anti-American one in Pakistan armed with a nuclear weapon.
To fight the opposition to Pakistan in Congress, Wilson organised a powerful delegation to Pakistan during the Thanksgiving holiday when Americans normally don’t leave home. In a speech at the official banquet, he turned to Zia and said, “Mr President, as far I’m concerned you can make all the bombs you want because you are our friends and they, the Indians, are our enemies. But not all Americans feel the same way, and there are some questions, Mr President, that you have to answer because this issue is getting hot.” In answer, Zia put away his prepared speech, sent out all the attendants, had the door bolted and assured the congressmen that Pakistan’s nuclear programme was peaceful and that it would never build a delivery system. He said at this stage in the Afghan war, if the Americans cut off aid, it would amount to a “betrayal of history.”
He said whether there was American aid or not, Pakistan would continue to fight the Soviets. He also declared that Pakistan was not prepared to accept any “conditional elements”. The final decision on what to do with Pakistan was to be taken at the joint conference between the relevant House and Senate committees. Wilson’s adroit lobbying bore fruit and Pakistan won the day. Wilson thinks that the Zia victory in Congress was an important factor in the Soviet decision to pull out of Afghanistan.
The book says Zia stalled the Geneva talks for a month to give the CIA enough time to stockpile weapons in Pakistan to deal with the remnants of Soviet-backed elements in Afghanistan after the pullout. These weapons were stored at the Ojhri Camp which blew up and with it went $100 million worth war equipment, made up of 30,000 rockets, millions of rounds of ammunition, vast number of mines, Stingers, SA-7s, Blowpipes, Milan anti-tank missiles, multiple-barrel rocket launchers and mortars. A hundred Pakistanis died and 1,000 were injured.
Zia called his ambassador in Washington, Jamshed KA Marker, and asked him to tell the CIA and Wilson to replace the weapons. Within 24 hours, huge US cargo planes were unloading Stingers and other weapons into Pakistan direct from the frontline stores of NATO.
In 1988, Wilson rushed to Islamabad to attend Gen Zia’s funeral. He walked up to Gen Hamid Gul, Gen. Akhtar Abdul Rehman’s successor, broke into tears and said, “I have lost my father on this day.” The victory parade in Kabul that Wilson and Zia had planned was to have both of them riding white horses side by side down the main avenue with the Mujahideen lining the street and shouting Allah au Akbar.
Wilson was planning to get married in Pakistan and it was going to be a grand occasion with all those who had played a role in the CIA’s conduct of the Afghan war. However, the wedding did not take place nor would the CIA have allowed all those who had played such an important role in the war to be publicly identified.
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