(2 of 2)
American aid to Pakistan since 1981 has skyrocketed. The country serves as the arms conduit for more than 100,000 U.S.-supported mujahedin guerrilla fighters, who have had growing success recently in wearing down Moscow's forces. The Reagan Administration has proposed a new six-year military and economic aid package for Islamabad totaling $4.02 billion. Not even Zia's flaunting of his nuclear card seems likely to stand in the way of its eventual passage by Congress. Pakistan's strategic value in providing sanctuary and support for the mujahedin is too high to put at risk by once again withholding aid. U.S. officials are also worried that an aid cutoff would spur Pakistan to start nuclear weapons production and possibly even drive Islamabad into some sort of accommodation with the Soviets.
Pakistan's geopolitical role is an expensive one. Soviet warplanes intermittently bomb targets in the northwest frontier province along the guerrillas' infiltration routes. In recent months Peshawar and other districts in the northwest have been plagued by terrorist bombings that are believed to be the work of KHAD, the Kabul regime's secret service, or its Soviet counterpart, the KGB. So far this year the attacks have already claimed 39 lives, compared with 146 throughout 1986.
Zia has pursued a negotiated settlement of the Afghan war in a series of meetings, sponsored by the United Nations, with representatives of the Kabul regime in Geneva. Moscow has indicated that it would be willing to accept a "national democratic" government that includes elements other than Communists. A key sticking point: the timing of a Soviet departure from Afghanistan after a cease-fire takes effect. The Soviets, who want time to disarm the mujahedin, are holding out for 18 months. Zia has asked the Soviets to leave within seven.
Any new Afghan government, Zia concedes, must "have credibility with the Soviet Union." But he insists that Kabul must also have enough credibility with the 2 million Afghan refugees living in Pakistan to draw them back home -- and relieve Islamabad of the burden. Ambassador Hinton predicts that any new government in Afghanistan will be "very loose," with little central authority. Such an arrangement would also undoubtedly lead to an Afghanistan that is pliable to Soviet wishes. But on balance, Hinton says, "that would be a pretty good result."
FOOTNOTE: *Nuclear arsenals are maintained by the U.S., the Soviet Union, Great Britain, France, China and probably Israel and South Africa. India claims to have no nuclear stockpile.