The Road to Afghanistan - George Washington University

which was related to the cooling of relations between Zia ul-Haq and Carter. The Westcriticized the president of Pakistan for human rights violations, lack of democraticfreedoms, and the covert development of nuclear weapons. The CIA operatives quicklyfigured out that the president of Pakistan was certainly “a son of a bitch, but he was our sonof a bitch.” It was possible to agree with him on almost all issues pertaining to the supportof the Afghan resistance.The bureaucratic machine in Washington was launched in that direction, and noforce was capable of stopping it.On March 30, at a secret session of the Special Coordination Committee, arepresentative of the State Department reported that the Carter administration agreed thatthe United States should influence the situation in Afghanistan and should prevent theexpansion of Soviet influence in this region, as well as in other countries of the ThirdWorld. However, at that time there was no clear strategy about which steps to take to reachthat goal. Should the rebels be supplied with weapons and ammunition? Should they begiven financial support? What would Moscow’s reaction be? How far would thecommunists go in their response?The risk of provoking World War III was very high. Therefore, Americans wereproceeding with their secret plans with great caution. Brzezinski’s proposal was to provideassistance at first not by supplying weapons, but rather medicine, field radios, technicalassistance, and money. A sum of 500,000 U.S. dollars was allocated for these purposes, aswell as for propaganda and psychological warfare, in the summer of 1979. It was aminiscule sum in comparison with the billions of dollars given to the rebels later. However,American special services continued to exercise caution and secretiveness throughout the449