mitted to the spread of Islam in its more tra-
cooperation between the CIA and Pakistan's
Inter-Services Intelligence.29
ditionally strict forms.
Indeed, at the same time that the United
Pakistan's Agenda in Supporting the
States was strengthening its ties with
Afghan Mujahideen
Pakistan, Zia was trying to enhance his polit-
ical legitimacy in the Muslim world through
Beyond those common interests,
a policy of Islamization at home, including
Islamabad had its own separate reason for
the substitution of traditional Islamic pun-
supporting the anti-Soviet insurgency in
ishments for Western legal rules and the pro-
Afghanistan: Pakistan's traditional national
motion of religious schools (madrassas).
interest in maintaining a supportive regime
Those changes, however, also gave rise to
in Kabul to provide Pakistan with strategic
anti-American forces and sentiments as
depth in its conflict with India. That interest
demonstrated in the burning of the U.S.
was buttressed by the resentment of Zia's
embassy in Islamabad in November 1979.26
Islamic supporters at home and in other
Muslim countries (led by the Saudis) at the
fact that the atheist Soviets had seized con-
Afghanistan: The Pakistani trol of a neighboring Muslim state. Even
In Afghanistan,
Tail Wags the U.S. Dog
under the Reagan Doctrine, which aimed at
Washington
reversing Soviet gains around the world, the
It was in the context of transforming United States didn't share those long-term
found itself
domestic (the rise of the military-mosque Pakistani goals. However, Washington lacked
falling into the
nexus), regional (the 1979 Soviet invasion of a coherent approach of its own to a post-
trap of permitting
Afghanistan), and global circumstances (the Soviet Afghanistan.
emergence of OPEC and the changing trian-
The result was that Pakistan, led by Zia's
the Pakistani
gular Washington-Moscow-Beijing relation- military-mosque nexus, with the ISI as one of
"tail" to wag the
ship) that the ties between Pakistan and the its manifestations, was able to advance its
United States (between a client state and its parochial interests through cooperation with
American "dog."
benefactor) seemed to evolve into what com- the United States, a power that was promoting
mentators began describing as a full-fledged a broader and somewhat blurry global agenda.
"strategic alliance."27 As Pakistani journalist While the two players could find a common
Rashid Ahmed said in his book, Taliban: strategic and ideological basis for cooperation
Militant Islam, Oil and Fundamentalism in Central in Afghanistan, Washington found itself
Asia, the United States used Zia's Pakistan as a falling into the trap of permitting the Pakistani
conduit for close to $3 billion worth of covert "tail" to wag the American "dog." (That sce-
aid to the mujahideen fighting to expel the nario has occurred in other client statesuper-
Soviets from Afghanistan.28
power relationships, such as the ones between
There is no doubt that the two countries the United States and Israel and the Soviet
shared common interests in dealing with the Union and Cuba. The dangerous 1962 and
Soviet presence in Afghanistan, especially a 1973 showdowns between Washington and
concern that the invasion of Afghanistan Moscow occurred as a result.)30
reflected a major change in Soviet conduct
In the case of the Pakistani-U.S. relation-
and was part of a Soviet grand strategy to take ship, however, there was a long interval
advantage of instability in Iran (following the between the peak of U.S.-Pakistani coopera-
collapse of the pro-American shah), gain tion and the manifestation of the dangerous
access to the Arabian Sea, and control the oil outcome of the tail-wags-the-dog scenario.
resources of the Middle East. That concern The latter transpired on September 11, 2001,
explained the Carter administration's deci- 12 years after the Soviets had withdrawn from
sion to cooperate in a limited fashion with the Afghanistan and at a time when the relation-
Pakistanis in Afghanistan, including covert ship between Washington and Islamabad had
9