From Kabul to Kashmir

With the Soviet occupation, the ‘Afghan Jihad’ started. The United States, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Iran perceived distinct advantages in supporting the Afghan rebels. Zbigniew Brzezinski, National Security Advisor to President Jimmy Carter, saw the Soviet invasion as both an opportunity and a threat.

After the crushing defeat in the Vietnam War in 1975, the United States saw an opportunity for retribution against the Soviet Union, which had supported the Vietnamese communists. The threat of Soviet domination in Kabul would also jeopardise its ally, Pakistan, and the critical US oil supplies in the Persian Gulf. Afghanistan, according to Brzezinski, would become a strategic “bear-trap” in their backyard.

The bear-trap, conceived by the CIA, provided military training in covert operations and frontline combat to the Afghan Mujahideen, along with unconditional terror financing. A direct American intervention was avoided for fear of a nuclear war with the Russians, and therefore, day-to-day operations were delegated to its proxy, Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI).

The proxy war was a blessing in disguise for Pakistan’s incumbent president, the globally derided military dictator, General Zia-ul-Haq. He had ousted Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and falsely implicated him in a murder charge, and finally executed him based on the sentence of a Kangaroo court.

Consequently, Zia was denounced as an international pariah. However, in the decade when the Soviets pulled out of Afghanistan in 1989, his status changed from a vilified outcast into a war hero feted by the West. Pakistan’s goal was to decimate the power of the communists in Afghanistan, who had long diplomatic ties with their arch-enemy with a formidable army, India.

And so, with the United States’ support, Pakistan established training camps in the lawless Northwest Frontier Province (NWFP), an area dominated by Pashtuns, who predominantly belonged to the Sunni sect. This training and financial support transformed the ISI, an ineffectual organisation, into a dangerous hydra-headed monster.

With the Soviet exit in 1989, rival Mujahideen gangs, pitted against each other, went on a murderous rampage. As a consequence, a devastating civil war ensued, causing widespread destruction, death, mayhem, and large-scale displacement, leading to one of the worst refugee crises of the era.

Unsurprisingly, the Kashmir uprising began in 1989, the same year the Afghan war ended. The ISI and the Pakistani military establishment have since been engaged in state-sponsored terrorism in the Valley. Their morbid obsession with India has given the Pakistani army an existential reason for its dominance in Pakistani politics and foreign policy.

After the Afghan Jihad, the ISI’s political clout grew exponentially in Pakistan. The ISI spied on politicians from the opposition parties, rigged elections, and coerced and bribed them into subjugation. Over time, the military-mullah-militant nexus subordinated every democratic process and secular institution in the country.

Zia overthrew Bhutto in a coup and set Pakistan on a perilous path to Islamisation, based on a narrow Hanafi interpretation of Islam. He ostracised Shia, Ahmadiyya, and Nizari Ismaili sects and declared them as “infidels.” He also introduced the draconian blasphemy laws to oppress Christians and Hindus indiscriminately.

Pakistan, which attained independence in 1947, has regressed into a volatile and dangerous nation, filled with religious fanatics whose goal is the proliferation of terror and madrassas at the expense of economic development and social welfare. The Pakistan army and the ruling elite of Pakistan need a permanent enemy to justify their rule, or misrule, and India foots the bill because of the bitter legacy left by history.

[Contributed]

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Frontier
Vol 57, No. 52, June 22 - 28, 2025