Word: afghanistan
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Embargoes frequently fail because other countries provide markets and supplies. Japan, Canada and Spain have become Cuba's major non-Communist trading partners. When President Carter imposed sanctions on grain sales to the Soviet Union following the invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, Moscow simply found new suppliers, principally Argentina. The U.S. had tried to prevent the sale of oil- and gas-pipeline equipment to the Soviets to express its disapproval of Soviet involvement when martial law was imposed in Poland in late 1981, but Washington backed off when its European allies raised angry protests. The U.S. also imposed a variety...
Unlike some alarmists in Islamabad, the Reagan Administration does not believe that the Soviet Union is about to take full-scale war into Pakistan. But the U.S. acknowledges Moscow's continuing attempt to bully Zia into backing off from his demands for a Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan, the return of the refugees to that country and free elections in Kabul. U.S. military aid to Pakistan's 478,600-member armed forces is substantial--about $1.6 billion promised for the 1981-86 period--and includes F-16 jet fighters, tanks, artillery, antiaircraft missiles and a radar surveillance system...
Nonetheless, the growing Soviet pressures are viewed with concern in Pakistan. Says a Western intelligence officer in Islamabad: "The Soviets have been telling the Pakistanis that the Soviet Union no longer wants to keep Soviet-Pakistani relations separate from the issue of Afghanistan. That, in effect, has torn up the tacit understanding that has existed between them." The understanding has been beneficial to Pakistan: since 1972 it has received an estimated $700 million in Soviet...
...some degree, the Soviets have been giving mixed signals on the subject. Even as the border situation grew more threatening last week, Soviet Ambassador to the U.S. Anatoli Dobrynin offered to work with the U.S. to resolve regional conflicts, including Afghanistan. Said he: "We don't believe there is no solution to Afghanistan." The trouble is that Moscow would define the problem as "continued intervention from Pakistan." But once that matter is solved, "the problem is solved," Dobrynin contended, and the Soviets could then "take our troops home...
...sees the situation, however, the Soviet military leadership is frustrated by the stalemate in Afghanistan, where 115,000 Soviet troops are engaged, and is preparing for an all-out campaign against the mujahedin, including their bases in Pakistan. Pakistani officials point out, for example, that Moscow seems to have lost interest in the resumption of the U.N.-mediated talks between Pakistan and Afghanistan in Geneva. If the Soviets are in fact determined to destroy the mujahedin once and for all, it stands to reason that they would exert increased pressure on the neighboring country that provides the guerrillas with sanctuaries...