Word: fazal
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...week, "it is capable of defending our borders against any aggression." That bravado is not necessarily shared by Pakistani military commanders stationed along the country's 800-mile frontier with Afghanistan. An entirely different assessment was given visiting British Foreign Secretary Lord Carrington last week by Lieut. General Fazal e-Haq, commander of Pakistan's Northwest Frontier. Pointing across the legendary Khyber Pass toward Kabul, Fazal said that the occupying Soviet armies would be able to strike across the border "with impunity...
...Fazal showed Carrington and accompanying foreign correspondents a British-built defense network of underground bunkers, bridges and tank traps that are sorely in need of repair. Reason: Pakistan has concentrated four-fifths of its armed forces along the eastern border shared with its historic enemy, India. Fazal currently commands only two infantry divisions, plus the famed Khyber Rifles formed by the British a century ago. Of the 40,000 men under Fazal's command, 18,000 are paramilitary troops equipped only with rifles...
...Fazal's divisions are armed with such obsolete equipment as 2½-ton American trucks, reconditioned after the Korean War. Roads in the area are not wide enough for modern tanks, and radar is virtually nonexistent along the western frontier. Nonetheless, Fazal estimated that the border could be made defensible within ten months by widening roads, upgrading communications and improving local railroads. The cost: $1 billion...
...aspirations" -as Afghanistan's new President, Babrak Karmal, has vowed to do. A friendly regime in a breakaway Baluchistan would give the Soviets an outlet to the Arabian Sea at the port of Gwadar and, from there, access to the Persian Gulf. "If I were a Russian," General Fazal told Carrington, "I would take the soft underbelly of Pakistan in Baluchistan and head straight for the warm waters of the Persian Gulf...